The proposed project is aimed on writing a monography in possible co-authorship with a historian of astronomy and a sinologist. This monography is going to demonstrate the importance of natural philosophy in general and astronomy in particular for the process of empire building. To supplement the unspecified considerations, three cases were selected for more in-depth study: The French Empire, or, more precisely, The First French Empire between the Great Exploration period and the French Revolution, The Russian Empire between its establishment and the Napoleon War, and the Qing Empire in the period of its heyday. Some contemporary consequences, in particular new views on the imperialism issue, must also be included.

As a significant and important part of this wider vision, a single, but specifically interesting and instructive episode will be put in focus. It is the negotiations of Russian and Chinese missions in small Siberian town Nerchinsk. The negotiations took place in 1689 and, strictly speaking, preceded the establishment of the Russian Empire; nevertheless, in the preparatory documentations and in the Treaty itself both parts of the summit are called "Empires," which manifested at least the intention to be treated as representatives of a emperors, but, in fact, symbolism is much more emblematic: the subject of negotiations was ultimately the fair distribution of dependent lands or, formally speaking, division of colonies.

The Russian astronomical school was created following the French model and under supervision of French astronomers, the role of Delisle brothers were the most significant. They not only organized systematic observations in different locations but also provided the use of collected data for mapping of the Empire. French astronomers, at the same time, created a communicative link between Russian scholars in Saint Petersburg (then mostly of the German origin) and the European scholars in Beijing.

The summit in Nerchinsk left a set of rather contradictory documents which caused unended disputations among scholars as well as among politicians. It launched a long series of diplomatic disagreements and sometimes military conflicts which were ended only in 2005 when a new treaty between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, the work upon which started as early as in 1994, was signed.

According to our main thesis, the decisive advantage of the Chinese team at the negotiations consisted in better understanding of connections between earthy and celestial events. These connections could be and were interpreted in wider sense, but here the implication is very pragmatic: locations on the earth surface can be determined through the observations of celestial bodies conducted in these locations.