3-005-510 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Asian Men, 1880. From a collection of 71 items (photographs and negatives on glass) made in the late 19th century and early 20th century by the famous revolutionary-populist and social and political activist N.A. Charushin (1851-1937) and by N. Petrov. Charushin began serving a hard labor sentence in the Transbaikal Territory in 1878. The collection illustrates aspects of Transbaikal history in this period, with a particular emphasis on the tea trade with China, which at that time was one of the main branches of the economy of the region. The photographs show various technological processes of growing and preparing tea, sections of trade routes, as well as views of China, Mongolia, Buryatia, and various towns and villages of Transbaikal, as well as images of local people of different ethnicities and nationalities. Several of the photographs, including one of the large and imposing Russian consulate, were taken in Urga, at that time the capital of Outer Mongolia (and known today as Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia).