Adventure of three Russians and three Englishmen in South Africa

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Title page of the Aventures de trois russes et de trois anglais dans l'afrique australe with an illustration by the illustrator Jules Férat
Illustration from Aventures de trois russes et de trois anglais dans l'afrique australe

Adventures of three Russians and three Englishmen in South Africa (also Adventures of three Russians and three Englishmen in South Africa ) is a novel by the French author Jules Verne . The novel was first published in 1872 by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel under the French title Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais dans l'Afrique australe . The first German-language edition appeared in 1875 under the title Adventure of three Russians and three Englishmen in South Africa . The English title of the novel isThe Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa . In English it first appeared under the title Meridiana: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa in November 1872. In 1874 an unauthorized version of Meridiana was published with the title Adventures in the Land of Behemoth .

action

An Anglo-Russian commission set out in 1854 to measure a meridian circle in the Cape Colony of South Africa over a period of eighteen months. The group consists equally of the three English astronomers Colonel Everest, William Emery and Sir John Murray as well as the three Russian astronomers Matthias Strux, Nikolaus Palander and Michael Zorn as well as a neutral French scientist. They are accompanied by a brave Bushman named Mokum . Your goal is to carry out measurements that serve to determine the exact meter . In the course of the novel it happens that the two leaders of the group, Everest and Strux, constantly clash out of national differences and out of scholarly envy. When the expedition members learned that the Crimean War broke out in 1854 , the group parted ways because of these national differences in order to continue their surveying work separately. Faced with a threat posed by a local tribe, the Makololos , however, the Russian and English scientists manage to overlook their national differences and reunite to finish their research together.

background

The introduction of the metric system did not go smoothly in the preparation phase. While the British have a technical lead, the Russians now want to catch up. In the novel, Verne describes the necessary geographical and geodetic information. The scientific basis is the exact measurement of the earth's surface and its graduation. The procedures required for this are extensively described in history.

literature

expenditure

  • Jules Verne: Adventure of three Russians and three Englishmen in Africa . Adapted from an old translation by Manfred Hoffmann. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-355-00864-8 .

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the new edition: Jules Verne, Adventures of three Russians and three Englishmen in Africa . Berlin 1989

Web links

Commons : The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais  - sources and full texts