In framing the intentions of this study, the point was made at the outset that it would differ from narrative histories of Russia's incorporation of the Amur region, among other things by virtue of the fact that it would not attempt to explain the “why” of the annexation. To be sure, the story I have told offers insights – some of them telling – into this important question, but no argument as such is made, for the main point of the work involves something rather different. More than anything, Imperial Visions is an excavation of a geographical vision, which seeks to reconstruct and analyze the images through which Russians thought about and signified the Far East in the period under consideration. The rationale for this seemingly rather rarefied exercise, which the present work shares with a larger literature on envisioning, derives from the supposition that the images of a remote and little-known region can provide insight into the mind and culture of the individuals, groups, and societies that entertained them. Geographical visions, that is to say, can be taken as cultural artefacts, and as such they unintendedly betray the predilections and prejudices, the fears and hopes of their authors. Examining how a society perceives, ponders, and signifies a foreign place, – in other words, is a fruitful way of examining how the society – or parts of it – perceives, ponders, and signifies itself.