Andrei Vinius's life and work attest to the importance of career bureaucrats in ushering Muscovy to a seat at the table of Europe's Great Powers in the Early Modern Age. Kees Boterbloem's study goes further and shows how some phenomena that we associate with mature capitalist economies and their impact on the "developing world" originate earlier than the Industrial Revolution. As Siberian overlord around 1700, Vinius helped Russia to exchange her previous guise as colony for that of coloniser in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Altogether, this first English-language biography of Vinius provides a deeper insight into the beginnings of Russia as a Great Power, and of the nature of cross-cultural contacts in the Early Modern World.

Dutch Sailmaker and sailor Jan Struys' (c.1629-c.1694) account of his various overseas travels became a bestseller after its first publication in Amsterdam in 1676, and was later translated into English, French, German and Russian. This new book depicts the story of its author's life as well as the first singular analysis of the Struys text.

This book investigates Russia's transformation into a European Power by way of the activities of the tsarist translator and official Andrei Vinius, who became an important advisor to Peter the Great. Vinius emerges as an influential conduit of Western culture and technology, who played a key role in transforming Muscovy into Russia.

Dutch Sailmaker and sailor Jan Struys' (c.1629-c.1694) account of his various overseas travels became a bestseller after its first publication in Amsterdam in 1676, and was later translated into English, French, German and Russian. This new book depicts the story of its author's life as well as the first singular analysis of the Struys text.