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The Great Northern Expedition ((ロシア語:Великая Северная экспедиция)) or Second Kamchatka expedition ((ロシア語:Вторая Камчатская экспедиция)) was one of the largest organised exploration enterprises in history, resulting in mapping of the most of the Arctic coast of Siberia and some parts of the North America coastline, greatly reducing the "white areas" on the maps. The endeavour was initially conceived by Russian Emperor Peter I the Great and implemented in practice by Russian Empresses Anna and Elizabeth. The main organiser and leader of the expedition was Vitus Bering, who earlier had been commissioned by Peter I to lead the first Kamchatka expedition. The Second Kamchatka expedition lasted roughly from 1733–1743 and later became called the Great Northern due to the immense scale of its achievements. The goal of the expedition was to find and map the eastern reaches of Siberia, and to hopefully continue onto the western shores of North America to map them, as well. Emperor Peter I had a vision for the 18th-century Russian Navy to map the entire Northern Sea Route. This far-reaching endeavour was sponsored by the Admiralty College in St. Petersburg. With over 3,000 people directly and indirectly involved, the Second Kamchatka expedition was one of the largest expedition projects in history. The total cost of the undertaking, completely financed by the Russian state, reached the estimated sum of 1.5 million rubles, an enormous amount for the period. This corresponded to one sixth of the income of the Russian state for year 1724.〔Hintzsche / Nickol, ''Die Große Nordische Expedition'', p. 200.〕 The important achievements of the expedition included the European discovery of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, the Commander Islands, Bering Island, as well as a detailed cartographic assessment of the northern and north-eastern coast of Russia and the Kuril Islands. The expedition also definitively refuted the legend of a land mass in the north Pacific. It also included ethnographic, historic, and scientific research into Siberia and Kamchatka. When the expedition failed to round the north-east tip of Asia, the dream of finding an economically viable Northeast passage, alive since the 16th century, was definitively at an end. == Background: first scientific investigation of Siberia and Bering's first expedition == The start of the systematic exploration and scientific discovery in the eastern part of Asia in the 18th century was due to the initiative of Tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725). In 1697 and 1698, he made an exploratory trip through a number of European nations, and became enthused with the idea of founding a scientific academy in Russia. This plan came to fruition in 1723/24 when he decided to draw foreign scholars to Russia and create a scientific academy in St. Petersburg. He hoped to create an extension of the scientific culture of Europe in his own land, and eventually to educate native scholars. In December 1725, the institution was inaugurated with celebrations. Young, mostly German speaking scholars formed the core of the Academy's personnel in the first decades of its existence. One of their tasks consisted of organizing and eventually accompanying scientific expeditions to the then unexplored parts of the Russian empire. During Peter’s lifetime, the German doctor Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685–1735) made a journey from 1720 to 1727 to western and central Siberia. This marked the beginning of investigations in the areas of geography, mineralogy, botany, zoology, ethnography, and philology, in this zone, as well as opening up the region to trade and economic development. Messerschmidt's Expedition was the first in a what proved to be series of scientific explorations of Siberia. Shortly before his death in February 1725, the Tsar signed an order authorizing a second great expedition to the east. Over the course of his life, Peter had met many times with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). At their final meeting at Bad Pyrmont in 1716, Leibniz posed the question as to whether a land bridge existed between northeastern Asia and the North America, a point of great relevance in the contemporary discussion about the origins of humanity, among other matters. It was generally desired that the belief in the common origin of humans not be abandoned, which posed the problem of the origins of human settlements in the New World. In order to resolve the question about the existence of a land bridge between the two continents, Peter the Great sent in 1719 the geodesists Iwan Jewreinow (1694–1724) and Fjodor Luschin (died 1727) to the easternmost reaches of his empire. The expedition was unsuccessful, as least in regard to the land bridge question, and in 1724, Peter gave the same aim to another expedition, the First Kamchatka expedition.〔The traditional presentation of the motivations behind the First Kamchatka expedition was the search for a land bridge. See, among others, Raymond H. Fisher in his 1977 book ''Bering's voyages: whither and why''. In contrast to this view, Carol Urness claims that the mapping of the eastern parts of Russia was the main goal. See Carol Urness: ''The First Kamchatka Expedition in Focus'', in: Møller / Lind, Under Vitus Bering's Command, Århus 2003, p. 17–31 (Summary of the thesis presented in the 1987 book ''Bering's First Expedition: A re-examination based on eighteenth-century books, maps, and manuscripts'').〕 This undertaking, lasting from 1728 to 1730, was led by the Danish captain Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741). Bering had been an officer in the Russian imperial navy since 1704. Using the ship ''St. Gabriel'', which had been built at the outlet of the Kamchatka River, Bering made two voyages north east in successive years (1728 and 1729), and at one point reached 67 degrees north, from which point the coast no longer extended towards the north. In both cases, he failed to reach the North American coastline due to adverse weather. Despite the newly acquired knowledge about the geography of the north east coast of Siberia, Bering's report on the expedition prepared after his return led to divisive debate because the question about the connection with North America remained unanswered, and this prompted Bering to propose a second Kamchatka expedition. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Northern Expedition」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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