The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian History: The Role of Rivers, Portages, Ostrogs, Monasteries, and Furs

The Urge to the Sea by Robert J. Kerner offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Russian expansion by centering the humbler infrastructures—rivers, portages, ostrogs (frontier forts), monasteries, and the fur trade—that powered a continental “urge to the sea.” Moving across the long durée from the earliest chronicles to the Muscovite and imperial frontiers, Kerner shows how waterways and portage chains linked interior heartlands to distant seas, how monastic networks anchored colonization, and...