Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917

" ...the first study of the Russian Empire in English which attempts in a sophisticated way, using the latest developments in colonial studies, to deal not only with imperial rule but with the mutual encounter with the non-Russian peoples...a new paradigm for looking at the imperial history of tsarist Russia." - Ronald Grigor Suny. "The volume is particularly useful for undergraduate survey courses on Imperial Russia and for graduate colloquia on the Imperial period which seek to consider, among other topics, the polyethnic/multinational character of the Russian state. The contributions bring together a wealth of perspectives, many of them not available elsewhere." - Mark von Hagen. "Russia's Orient" investigates the impact of the Russian Empire on its non-Russian peoples of the southern and eastern borderlands from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Using the methodological tools applied in recent years to the history of Western colonial empires, it expands the scope of Russian history to encompass the complex interaction between the conquered peoples and their rulers. It broadens imperial history to include the study of ethnic and religious differences that emerged from the Russian encounter with peoples whose cultures differed profoundly from their own. Fourteen essays develop thematic topics dealing with imperial policies and conceptions of colonial rule and with the impact of imperial domination on colonial peoples. Part one, Empire and Orient, examines the changing perceptions of colonial peoples that emerged among tsarist administrators and the educated Russian public. It reveals the influence of Enlightenment theories of human progress and of Romantic ideas of culture on Russian colonial policies and literary imagination. Part two, Frontier Encounters, explores the interaction between Russian colonial officials and settlers and frontier peoples. Examining territories extending from Kazan and Crimea through Turkestan to the Pacific Coast, the authors suggest that the imperial presence was a powerful, but not dominant force in the lives of these peoples. Imperial rule brought irreversible changes to the way of life of the borderlands peoples, who adapted to and resisted this rule by means that they themselves controlled.