title: The economic and cultural development of Siberia
abstract: Apart from the Amur district, which was not incorporated into the Russian empire until 1858, the conquest of Siberia was completed by the mid-seventeenth century. Thus by 1900 Siberia had been a Russian dominion for much longer than the Caucasus, the Crimea or the Baltic territories. None the less, it long remained an underdeveloped territory and was widely believed to be a land of misery peopled only by exiles and convicts. Recognising that this popular misconception might well harm the develop