Johan Gustaf Renat
Encyclopedia
Swedish Empire
The Swedish Empire refers to the Kingdom of Sweden between 1561 and 1721 . During this time, Sweden was one of the great European powers. In Swedish, the period is called Stormaktstiden, literally meaning "the Great Power Era"...
military
Caroleans
Caroleans were the soldiers of the Swedish kings Charles XI and Charles XII.-The Carolean army:To compensate for the lack of manpower and resources Sweden strived for innovative ways to make an effective army...
and cartographer. He is mainly known for his role in bringing detailed maps of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
to Europe after several years in captivity.
Early career and Russian Captivity
Renat was the son of Dutch JewishHistory of the Jews in the Netherlands
Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the 16th century and World War II.The area now known as the Netherlands was once part of the Spanish Empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence...
immigrants who converted nationalities in 1681, the year before his birth.
He served in the army of Charles XII during the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...
as a warrant officer (styckjunkare) in the artillery, but was captured by the Russians after the Battle of Poltava
Battle of Poltava
The Battle of Poltava on 27 June 1709 was the decisive victory of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld in one of the battles of the Great Northern War. It is widely believed to have been the beginning of Sweden's decline as a Great Power; the...
. In Russia
Tsardom of Russia
The Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 till Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 a year...
, Renat assisted Peter the Great with producing maps of Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, and in 1711 he was sent to Tobolsk
Tobolsk
Tobolsk is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers. It is a historic capital of Siberia. Population: -History:...
. 1716 Renat and other Swedish prisoners-of-war took part in Ivan Buchholz's expedition to explore the gold deposits around the Lake Yamysh, but the expedition was ambushed by a Zunghar force and Renat would spend the following seventeen years in Zunghar captivity.
Zungharian Captivity and Return to Sweden
In DzungariaDzungaria
Dzungaria, also called Zungaria, is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang. It covers approximately , lying mostly within Xinjiang, and extending into western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan...
, Renat helped the khans Tsewang Rabtan
Tsewang Rabtan
Tsewang Rabtan was a Choros-Oirat prince and the Khong Tayiji of the Zunghar Khanate from 1697 until his death in 1727. He was married to Lha-bzang Khan's sister.Tsewang Rabtan married his daughter to Lha-bzang Khan's son in 1714...
and Galdan Tseren
Galdan Tseren
Galdan Tseren was a Choros-Oirat prince and the Khun Tayishi of the Zunghar Khanate from 1727 until his death in 1745.Galdan was the oldest son of Tsewang Arabtan. After the assassination of his father by rival factions, a civil war followed between his sons of which Galdan emerged victorious and...
to organize their campaigns against Qing rule in Central Asia. Among other things, he organized an artillery regiment and helped the Zunghars to cast cannons.
Renat also discovered that a Swedish widow was in Zunghar captivity, Brigitta Scherzenfeldt
Brigitta Scherzenfeldt
Brigitta Christina Scherzenfeldt, as married Bernow, Lindström, Ziems, and Renat, , was a Swedish memoirist and weaving teacher who was captured during the Great Northern War and lived as a slave in the kingdom of the Kalmyks in Central Asia...
, who hailed from Bäckaskog
Bäckaskog Castle
Bäckaskog Castle in Kristianstad Municipality, Scania, southern Sweden, was originally a monastery built in the 13th century. It was transformed into a castle in the 16th century. The castle is located on the isthmus between Ivö Lake and Oppmanna Lake.The monastery was closed down by the Danish...
in Scania
Scania
Scania is the southernmost of the 25 traditional non-administrative provinces of Sweden, constituting a peninsula on the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, and some adjacent islands. The modern administrative subdivision Skåne County is almost, but not totally, congruent with the...
and had followed her late husband to the war. After the loss of her husband, Scherzenfeldt had ended up with the Zunghars and she assisted the Zunghars with textile production. She later married Renat.
In 1733, Renat and his wife was allowed to leave and he returned the following year to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, accompanied with four Zunghar female servants, who he baptized when they arrived in Sweden. Renat's family bought a house in Gamla stan
Gamla stan
Gamla stan , until 1980 officially Staden mellan broarna , is the old town of Stockholm, Sweden. Gamla stan consists primarily of the island Stadsholmen. The surrounding islets Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen, and Strömsborg are officially part of, but not colloquially included in, Gamla stan...
where they settled down. In 1739, Renat was promoted to the rank of captain in the Swedish army.
Central Asian Maps
Renat brought two detailed maps of Central Asia with him, which spent a long time in relative obscurity. In 1878, the Swedish author August StrindbergAugust Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
, who then worked as an assistant library at the Swedish Royal Library
Swedish Royal Library
The National Library of Sweden is the national library of Sweden. As such it collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, as well as content with Swedish association published abroad. Being a research library, it also has major collections of literature in...
rediscovered the maps and sponsored their republication in Russia 1881. A decade later the originals were discovered in the library of Uppsala University
Uppsala University
Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...
, where they are still held.
During his famous row with the Swedish cultural establishment in the early 1910s, Strindberg would use the maps to show that Nikolai Przhevalsky
Nikolai Przhevalsky
Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky and Prjevalsky, ; —), was a Russian geographer of Polish background and explorer of Central and Eastern Asia. Although he never reached his final goal, Lhasa in Tibet, he travelled through regions unknown to the west, such as northern Tibet, modern Qinghai and...
was not the first European and Sven Hedin
Sven Hedin
Sven Anders Hedin KNO1kl RVO was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, as well as an illustrator of his own works...
was not the first Swede to have visited the lake of Lop Nor.
Sources
- Perdue, Peter CPeter C. PerduePeter C. Perdue is an American author, professor, and historian. He is a professor of Chinese history at Yale University.Perdue has a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in the field of History and East Asian Languages...
. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. - Poppe, Nicholas. "Renat's Kalmuck Maps." Imago Mundi 12 (1955): 157-59. Available through JSTORJSTORJSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
. - Selling, Gösta. "Artur Hazelius födelsehus I." Fataburen: Kulturhistorisk tidskrift (1926): 65-118. (in Swedish)
- Åberg, Alf, and Göte Göransson. Karoliner. Höganäs: Bra böcker, 1976. (In Swedish.)
Work
- Renat, Johan Gustaf. Carte de la Dzoungarie: dressée par le suédois Renat pendant sa captivité chez les kalmouks de 1716-1733. S:t Petersburg: Societé Impériale Russe de Géographie, 1881.