John F. Baddeley

Who was John F. Baddeley?

John Frederick Baddeley was a British traveller, scholar and journalist, best known by his works on Russia and the Caucasus region.

He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire. After visiting Russia for seven months in 1879, Baddeley became the St. Petersburg correspondent for the London Standard, and began a lifelong relationship with that country, travelling widely and writing several important books on its history. In the summer of 1900 he made his first of several journeys to Siberia and the Russian Far East. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1902-1940.

His most outstanding work was Russia, Mongolia, China; being some record of the relations between them from the beginning of the XVIIth century to the death of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, A.D. 1602-1676; rendered mainly in the form of narratives dictated or written by the envoys sent by the Russian tsars, or their voevodas in Siberia, to the Kalmuk and Mongol khans & princes, and to the emperors of China; with introductions, historical and geographical; also a series of maps showing the progress of geographical knowledge in regard to northern Asia during the XVIth, XVIIth & early XVIIIth centuries.