Petlin's mission to China

The Petlin mission is an official diplomatic trip of Russian representatives to China in 1618 - 1619 .

As evidenced by the map published by Sigismund Herberstein in 1549 after his trips to Russia, in the 15th century. it was believed that the Ob flows from the "lake of China" ( Kithay lacus ), next to which is the "kingdom of China", with its capital in Hanbalik . This picture was reproduced on later maps, for example. map of asia chondia (1610 g)

The trip was made on the initiative of the Tobolsk governor Prince I. S. Kurakin . The mission of 12 people was led by Tomsk Cossacks - teacher Ivan Petlin ^[1] and Andrei Mundov ^[2] . Petlin spoke several languages ​​and already had experience in diplomatic work ^[3] .

The mission was instructed to describe new routes to China, collect information about it and neighboring countries, and also establish the sources of the Ob River . In China, Ivan Petlin was to announce where the mission came from and find out the possibility of establishing further relations between Russia and China.

Having left Tomsk on May 9, 1618, together with the ambassadors of the Mongolian “Altyn Tsar” ( Altan Khan ), the mission climbed the Tomi Valley, crossed the Mountain Shoria , crossed the Abakan Range , Western Sayan and penetrated into Tuva . Then she crossed the upper reaches of Kemchik (the Yenisei basin), crossed several ridges ^[4] and reached the mountainous (1425) light- salted lake Uureg-Nuur . Turning east and descending into the steppe, three weeks after leaving Tomsk, the mission arrived at the headquarters of the Mongol khan at the closed lake Usap ( Ubsu-Nur ).

From here travelers traveled southeast, crossed Khan-Huhei - the north-western spur of the Khangai Range - and Hangai itself - and along its southern slopes covered about 800 km. At the bend of the Kerulen River, they turned southeast and crossed the Gobi Desert . Short of Kalgan , Petlin first saw the Great Wall of China .

In late August, the mission reached Beijing , where it held talks with representatives of the Ming Dynasty government.

Due to the lack of gifts, Petlin was not accepted by the emperor Zhu Yijun , who ruled under the motto “Wanli” ( Chinese 萬曆 Wànlì), but received his official letter in the name of the Russian tsar with permission for the Russians to re-send embassies and trade in China; as for diplomatic relations, it was proposed to conduct them by correspondence. The diploma for decades remained untranslated until N. G. Spafariy began to study it, preparing for his embassy. The common expression “ Chinese letter ” concerned this particular document, which was in the Ambassadorial order, and the contents of which remained a mystery ^[5] .

In the future, Russia, occupied by the wars with Poland and Turkey , for a long time did not renew ties with China. Nevertheless, I. Petlin’s mission was of considerable importance, and I. Petlin’s report on the trip “ Painting the Chinese state and Lobinsky and other states, residential and nomadic, and uluses, and the great Ob, and rivers and roads ” ^[6] - became the most valuable, most complete description of China since Marco Polo , containing information about the land route from Europe to China via Siberia and Mongolia . Already in the first half of the 17th century , the Mural was translated into many European languages. The best list of “Murals” was stolen from the Ambassadorial order (or secretly bought from a thief) by the British ambassador John Merrick ^[7] . Information from this instance was used by John Milton in his Treatise on Muscovy.