Geography of land ownership in Belsky District in the 16th-17th centuries: GIS reconstruction

The article presents the results of a study of the previously unexplored history of land ownership in the volosts of Belaya – an important region on the Russian-Lithuanian border in the 14th to 17th centuries. The subject of the research is the geography of land ownership, including its distribution, sizes, ratio of different types, and developed land. The sources of the study were the census books of the Belsky district from the second half of the 17th century and the act materials from the first half of the 17th century – the Polish period in the history of Belaya. These sources contain information not only about landowners of this period but also from the earlier Moscow period (the second half of the 16th – early 17th centuries). In the work on localizing the toponyms of the 17th-century sources, cartographic materials from the General Survey of the 18th century were used. Geoinformation technologies were applied in the study. The geoinformation project developed in the NEXTGIS environment allowed processing a large volume of historical and geographical information. The integration of data from various sources enabled a retrospective analysis of the dynamics of land ownership in the Belsky volosts in the 16th-17th centuries for the first time. The boundaries of land allotments allowed for the visualization of the limits of land holdings in the 16th-17th centuries. The geography of palace and noble land ownership was characterized. Formed from confiscated lands, mainly from the Vitebsk Jesuit college, palace land ownership in the Belsky district in the 1650s to 1670s was only slightly inferior in size to that of the nobility and the Cossacks. The continuity of a number of land holdings is traced in two aspects. Firstly, this is the continuity of the borders of land holdings of the Russian nobility in the second half of the 16th – early 17th centuries and the estates of the nobility in the 17th century. In particular, the holdings of the Tatev, Travin, and Temirev families from the 16th century remained within their borders for the nobility both during the Polish period and after Belaya was incorporated into the Russian state. Secondly, there is continuity in the holdings of the nobility in the first and second halves of the 17th century. The ownership of the same estates by representatives of noble families, such as the Poplonsky, Rachinsky, and others, is traced. The continuity of the geographical boundaries of land ownership likely accompanied the preservation of the parameters of land development. A significant factor in the preservation of archaic features was the presence of extensive forest and wetland areas. The data obtained significantly enrich our understanding of the historical geography of the Russian borderlands.

land ownership, uezd, volost’, geoinformation technologies, map, palace land, szlachta, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian state, historical geography