The Enlightenment in the East:
Representations of Russian Colonization in the work of William Coxe.
Siberia, William Coxe, Enlightenment
We intend, through this research, to study the representation of the Russian colonization of Siberia, made by the Englishman William Coxe. The author was an important member of English high society at the end of the 18th century. He wrote and published the book “Account of the Russian Discoveries Between Asia and America”, in the late 1780s. In this work are found several trends of the Scottish Enlightenment, an intellectual and literary movement of the time. This movement perpetuated various economic and cultural notions that epistemologically justified European colonialism and imperialism. It is, in short, a study through the work “Report of the Russian Discoveries Between Asia and America” of how the Enlightenment approached and justified the territorial expansion of European countries, mainly the British Empire, during the 18th century.