Imperial Institutions Research Articles

Blindspots in the Historiography of Russia’s Colonial Rule over South Ukraine and Crimea

Abstract The rethinking and decolonization of Russian history has become a significant challenge for historians. This process should cover primarily the history of the Russian empire. The study of different regions of the Russian empire is one of the possible approaches because the empire was heterogeneous. The history of imperial institutions would thus move to the sidelines, while the history of regions, cities, different social, ethnic and religious groups, as well as the interaction within and between them should become the primary focus of historians. This approach would foster a shift from a Moscow-centric view.

“Nothing Left for Women but Voting”: Suffrage, Empire, and Race in Carrie Chapman Catt’s Early Twentieth-Century Philippine Travel Narratives

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the sojourn of suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt to the Philippines in 1912. Catt travelled to various parts of this Southeast Asian country to investigate conditions shaping local women's lives and help form their own suffrage organisations. Personal accounts of her travels provide a crucial look into Catt’s observations, representations, and perceptions of aspects such as American imperial institutions, including public schools, hospitals, and prisons, and the social and economic standing of Filipino women. Throughout her travels in the Philippines, Catt witnessed the development of the American colonial state’s project of modernity and hegemony as an imperial citizen who also fought for the expansion of democratic rights. Enmeshed in the conflicting processes of complicity and resistance, she engaged in complicated meanings of expansionism, political empowerment, and social hierarchies. I argue that while travelling afforded Catt an opportunity to transgress prescribed political and social spheres, it also served to consolidate her place on the world stage as she promoted a new brand of citizenship that marshalled difference within the framework of white supremacy.

System trybutarny i jego dziedzictwo we współczesnej dyplomacji Chińskiej Republiki Ludowej

The tributary system and its legacy in contemporary Chinese diplomacy The article is devoted to the issue of the classical Chinese view of diplomacy. Their consequence was the creation of the tributary system. The tributary system was developed during the Ming dynasty. The legacy of the tributary system influences China’s foreign policy today. The article is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author discusses the functioning of the tribute system. It describes the stages of its formation and the imperial institutions responsible for the empire’s foreign policy. In the second part, the author analyzes the influence of old traditions on the foreign policy of the PRC after 1978. He describes the issue of Sinocentrism that still influences the Chinese view of the world. The author described China’s influence in selected Asian countries. It also talks about the most important Chinese initiatives in the international arena.

Archives of Discrimination

Abstract The present article traces the history of multiple private and state archives in Daghestan. Such collections bear imprints of competition between particular individuals and factions. As we shall see, various parties exploited the cultural resources available to them in order to project their subjectivities onto the textual and material evidence. Shifts in cultural values and fashions, together with transformations in language use and an ongoing struggle for personal and communal representation, contributed jointly to the formation of multi-layered discourses on the past. If we are to make sense of our sources, therefore, we must engage with a multitude of competing discourses that have privileged one type of historical view over others, thereby shaping the contours of the body of available material, and rendering information lacunae not just unavoidable, but themselves reflective of past events. Colonialism and coloniality are not alone in having helped configure the power structures that we find manifested in state archives. In fact, much of the competition, marginalization, and careful selection took place even before the transfer of documents to imperial institutions.

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

Blasphemy and Violence during the Russian Revolution and the Early Years of the Soviet Union

This article analyzes incidents of blasphemy that occurred both during and in the period immediately following the Russian Revolution. The debate on blasphemy in revolutionary Russia was initially tied to the political system and ecclesiastical structure of the Romanov Empire. One possible explanation for this anomaly is the political discourse of a “victorious revolution”, according to which revolutionary turmoil had birthed a modern, progressive and secular society. A reconstruction of debates on blasphemy, and of sacrilege too, do not fit this narrative. The Soviet state used a rhetoric that would historically have been seen as blasphemous as well as actions that would have been dubbed sacrilegious to push its agenda for modernization, for the redistribution of material resources, the de-legitimization of imperial institutions and the neutralization of political opponents. Violence was a steady companion here. It could take the form of repression by removing relics and liturgical vessels that were venerated by individual believers. It could be cleansing whereby the relic of a saint would be destroyed. Violence also emerged in the physical exchanges between State officials and believers resisting the unsealing of relics and usage of liturgical vessels outside of worship or mass as well as countering the expulsion of church valuables. Finally, a form of symbolic violence could be found in the way in which the faithful were forced to attend the display of relics in public exhibition hall or in the photographic coverage of sacrilegious acts. This was a deliberate move to confront and hurt the feelings of individual believers. This was a deliberate move to confront and hurt the feelings of individual believers.

"Our Faunal Defense in Africa": Imperial Survivalism, Anglo-American Conservation, and African Independence in the Twentieth Century

"Our Faunal Defense in Africa":Imperial Survivalism, Anglo-American Conservation, and African Independence in the Twentieth Century John M. Kinder In December 1948, journalist Charles V. Murphy published a lengthy report on the state of European zoos in Life Magazine. Just one of a number of similar articles released in the aftermath of World War II, Murphy's piece described his recent encounter with Walter Van den bergh, director of the Antwerp Zoo and inventor of a new barless birdcage. Van den bergh's tale of wartime hardship mirrored that of zoo professionals throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. During the war's first winter, the zoo's stock of "meat-eating animals—lions, tigers, bears, and pumas—60 in all, were shot at the request of Antwerp authorities." By the war's end, Antwerp's once-impressive animal collection had been reduced, in Van den bergh's words, to "a few monkeys and chimpanzees, a few dozen different kinds of birds and a pair of long-horned African Watussi." And yet, like many European zoo directors at the time, he remained optimistic that the industry could recover quickly. Already, the zoo had been partially repopulated with exotic water buffalo, okapi, and other large mammals—"gifts," Van den bergh explained to the American reporter, "of the administration in the Belgian Congo." In fact, he added, "two gorillas are at this moment en route to us by airplane from Stanleyville."2 That Van den bergh would point to colonial Africa as a bountiful resource for zoo animals is no surprise.3 In Western eyes, Africa was one of the few zoological bright spots of the postwar era. Not only had it largely escaped the environmental devastation of the war years, but in 1948, most of the continent remained under the dominion of European colonial powers. Much to the dismay of First World zoo professionals, however, early optimism proved to be short-lived, soon to be replaced by paranoid fears of political upheaval and mass extinction. Even as large regions of the Communist world, including much of Eastern Europe and Asia, were cut off from Western animal dealers, a rising tide of anticolonial movements across Africa threatened to dissolve the centuries-old network of imperial exploitation and exchange that had long served as the zoo industry's invisible backbone. Indeed, from the perspective of Western zoo leaders and conservationists, both in Europe and the United States, African political independence threatened not only the future of zoos but also the species health of the entire planet. Building upon the work of Renato Renaldo, Melani McAlister and others, this article examines how British and American conservationists understood and sought to exploit a perceived animal crisis that first emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century and culminated during African decolonization. My goal is not to recount the long and unwieldy history of Anglo-American interventions in African wildlife policy. Nor is it to evaluate the relative success or failure of native Africans' own efforts to conserve their local wildlife and ecosystems. Rather, I chart the development of a discourse I call imperial survivalism.4 Born of a stew of political anxiety and race science, imperial survivalism described a two-pronged effort to prolong the survival of imperial institutions and to use the language of threat to justify the claims of empire in a post-imperial world. As it applied to African wildlife, imperial survivalism associated animal extinction with the rise of Indigenous sovereignty. It figured zoos and in situ animal parks as both metaphorical arks and as embodiments of racist (and genocidal) fantasies of an Africa without Africans. As it evolved from the 1910s to the late 1960s, imperial survivalism sought not only to "save" African animals but also to ensure that colonial-era authority survived the turmoil of independence. In tracing the development of these ideas, I use as touchstones the writing and public rhetoric of three prominent figures in Anglo-American conservation history: taxidermist and zoo advocate, William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937); biogeographer and writer, Georg Treichel (1931-2008); and conservationist and former head of the London Zoological Society, Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975). While all three were keenly aware of the environmental...

K průběhu henleinovského povstání na Osoblažsku a ve Městě Albrechticích v září 1938

The study describes and analyses the progress of the pro‑Nazi uprising of the German population of the Osoblažsko promontory and the city of Albrechtice in September 1938. The research is primarily based on the records from the post‑war Czechoslovak investigation and then on German sources from the period of Nazi occupation. Attention is paid to the social and professional structure of the insurgent leadership as well as the role of imperial institutions. The study also seeks to analyse the relationships between the components of the insurgent apparatus (party leadership, local public officials, command corps of paramilitary formations and other). Another area of research is the defence strategies and self‑stylization of the insurgents during the post‑war investigation. The course of events described is perceived within a wider strategic and political context

Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700–950)

Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700–950)

An Ottoman Imperial City in Transition: Transformation of Urban Governance in Edirne (18th -19th Centuries)

Modern historiography has a consensus over Edirne’s well-established socio-spatial and political position that reached its peak during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this period, the city gained a de facto capital status as consecutive Ottoman sultans permanently resided in Edirne. While the physical presence of the Ottoman sultans and imperial institutions in Edirne brought about a spatial and demographic stability to the city until the late eighteenth century, Edirne witnessed major transformations through new imperial implementations throughout the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the new reforms brought about the proportional participation of city dwellers in the city’s governance, including the non-Muslims. Based on Ottoman archival sources and Muslim court registers of Edirne, the present paper investigates how the reforms of the nineteenth century transformed this “imperial city” vis-à-vis its urban governance. The paper suggests that in the nineteenth century Edirne was not the same imperial city governed in a more autonomous way in the eighteenth century anymore. However, while centralization efforts meant that military, administrative and financial responsibilities in the administration of provinces were converged, now as a provincial center, Edirne maintained its position in the Tanzimat era when a more participatory system in this ethno-religiously diverse city formed.

Imperial Science in Central and Eastern Europe

The history of imperial science has been a growing topic over recent decades. Overviews of the imperial history of science have rarely included the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires. The history of Central and Eastern Europe has embraced empire as an analytical and critical category only recently, having previously pursued national historiographies and romanticised versions of imperial pasts. This article highlights several key narratives of imperial sciences in Central and Eastern Europe that have appeared over the past twenty years, especially in anglophone literature. Interdependence between national and imperial institutions and biographies, the history of nature as an interplay of scales, and finally, the histories of imagining a path between imperialism and nationalism, demonstrate how the history of imperial science can become an important part of the discussion of Central European history from a global perspective, as well as how the history of science can be factored into the general history of this region. Finally, I argue that the imperial history of science can play an important role in re-thinking the post/decolonial history of Central and Eastern Europe, an issue that, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has become the centre of intellectual attention.

Considering Imperial Complexity in Prehistory: A Polyethnic Wari Enclave in Moquegua, Peru

Wari is thought by many to be the first Andean Empire (ca. 600–1000 AD); however, the means of expansion, the areas controlled, the strength of the polity, and the nature of Wari institutions remain largely contested. In general, models describing the Wari polity are simplistic and do not exploit sophisticated approaches developed by historical archaeologists. Wari expansion into the Moquegua Valley, Peru, was originally interpreted as an intrusive colony or distant outpost, perhaps to engage its southern neighbor, Tiwanaku. It was presumed that migrants from the polity’s core established settlements and imperial infrastructure in an unoccupied ecozone. Recent research of households in the colony reveals diverse domestic material culture, diets, and use of living space. Those who lived in Wari-affiliated settlements were probably drawn from other imperial provinces and communities from other areas of the drainage. Forced relocations are common among historically documented empires, but willing pioneers may have selected for this tenuous frontier. Regional-scale data show that Wari had the strength to change the local economy and control this distant frontier province; household-scale data reveal the polyethnic nature of the colonial enclave and provide clues to understand early imperial institutions.

Imperial Landed Endowments (Vakıf Çiftliks) in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: The Case of Pertevniyal Valide Sultan’s Endowments in Thessaly

Abstract This article takes Pertevniyal Valide Sultan’s endowments as a case study and proposes an original contribution to the literature by discussing the transformation of Ottoman endowment management throughout the nineteenth century. The account books of landed estates (çiftliks), other endowment documents, and the Ottoman imperial archives constitute the basis of explaining different phases of estate management practices for endowments in the Thessaly region of northern Greece. The main argument is that, in contrastto the administration of earlier endowments in the region, the central administration of Pertevniyal Valide Sultan’s endowments expanded its control over its provincial revenue sources. This transformation became possible with the help of negotiations and alliances with several imperial and provincial institutions. This article also contributes to understanding social and economic life in Ottoman çiftliks by analysing land, production, and taxation relations in Thessaly.

Peering Inside the White Container: Feminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR

Peering Inside The White ContainerFeminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR Sailaja Krishnamurti (bio) As a new board member, I welcome this opportunity to respond to Judith Plaskow’s essay, “Race, Racism, and the JFSR,” part of a series of actions that Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) has undertaken as a response to growing concern about anti-Black racism and carceral violence in the United States. When I was invited to join the board in 2020, I was glad to become part of an academic community that has made so many important interventions in the field. But as Plaskow rightly observes, for many of us scholars of color, the journal still feels like a “white container.” To understand this problem, I invite readers to reflect on three questions. First, what does the word race mean in FSR’s action plan? There is a critical difference between advocating for “diversity” and committing to antiracist work. Let me contextualize my question by first interrogating my own position in this discussion. I am a queer cisgender woman of Brahmin (upper caste) Hindu South Asian descent. I live and work in Canada, the carceral state next door. As a racialized settler on colonized land, and as an academic of color with tenure, I occupy positions of marginalization and of privilege in academia and in North American society. I locate myself this way as a practice of interrogative positionality, a method which asks that we continually reexamine our locations, orientations, and relationships to power.1 From this vantage point, I can see that I am one of those non-Black scholars of color whose numbers, Plaskow notes, have grown on the board in recent years while the number of Black scholars has stayed steady. Non-Black women of color are indeed often used as an alibi in equity initiatives: the number of women of [End Page 51] color goes up, and “diversity” is achieved.2 Why is it that non-Black women of color like me grow in number in academic spaces when Black women do not? The core problem—that white supremacy, class inequality, and anti-Black racism are deeply embedded in American and global history and culture—cannot be addressed through institutional diversity initiatives that do not radically change institutions. It requires an explicitly antiracist approach that understands anti-Black racism and settler colonialism as institutional ontologies and as transnational phenomena. A second question therefore arises: What does it mean to engage in “the study of religion” when we know that our field owes its existence to colonial, orientalist, and imperial institutions? These are the same institutions that are responsible for exploiting people of color all over the world. Some traditions, and some scholars, sit more comfortably in relation to the term religion than others. Assumed divisions between insider and outsider, practitioner and scholar continue to shape our theories and methodologies. It is inevitable, therefore, that efforts to diversify representation within the field will expose the limits of what “religion” itself can contain. Plaskow writes that “like systemic racism, Christian hegemony is built into the fabric of the academy and society in ways FSR has been unable to escape” (7). Indeed, white Christian hegemony is so deeply enmeshed in the academy that we must ask how we can challenge it as long as we are so invested in maintaining its terms and structures. Here is one small and unscientific example. A brief search of JFSR’s hundreds of articles shows that only eighty-three contain the word Hindu, and of those, only sixteen are authored or coauthored by scholars who are (or at least whom I know to be) racialized people. I offer this observation to make two points: a) diversity in the coverage of religious traditions does not always equal racial diversity, and b) white scholars continue to dominate many fields of religious studies, particularly those which have been historically connected to the colonial apparatus. In her 2020 blog post “Not Just the Syllabus, Throw the Whole Discipline in the Trash,” Harvard MTS scholar Ciarra Jones writes that the “foundation of American academia is white supremacy. By refusing to reimagine not only the canon but also the theories and methods...

Imperial Judicial Policy in the Central Asian Suburbs in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries: Main Forms, Directions, and Results

One of the important directions of modernization of the Central Asian outskirts of the Russian Empire was the formation of the region’s judicial system. During the second half of the 19th century, a complex configuration of regional justice was created, which was supposed to act not only as a way of coordinating social interaction but also as a means to express the political interests of the state. The purpose of the work is to identify and analyze the main forms and directions of the judicial policy of the Russian Empire in the Central Asian outskirts in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century. The judicial reform carried out in the Russian Empire in 1864 led to the implementation in the Steppe Region and Turkestan of a set of measures aimed at the re-organization of the judicial and legal system. This process reflected the orientation of the social policy towards modernization. During the reforms of the 1868, 1886, 1898, imperial judicial institutions and legal norms were imported into the region. However, the traditional court also retained significant positions. The justice system of the Central Asian outskirts did not meet the needs of society. The preservation of the People’s Court did not allow the local population of the region to be fully incorporated into the all-Russian legal space. Those processes demonstrated the incompleteness of the judicial and legal system reforms and the need for systemic modernization.
 The article is intended for specialists interested in the national policy of the Russian Empire, and the history of the Central Asian region.

On Shaky Ground

On Shaky Ground

“...COMING TO COMMON PEACE TOGETHER WITH OUR ALLIES”: ROMANIA’S FOREIGN POLICY BALANCING DURING WORLD WAR I

The article covers the course of negotiations between the plenipotentiaries of Romania and the leading states of the Entente and the Quadruple Alliance during the First World War. Facing the dilemma of determining its own foreign policy orientation – by joining one of the mentioned military-political blocs, the Romanian government was hesitating for a long time to come to a final decision. At the same time, largely due to this balancing process, official Bucharest managed to preserve its sovereign right to work out and make the most important decisions, while consistently defending Romania's national interests. By taking the side of the Entente and receiving comprehensive military assistance from Russia, Romania at the same time faced enormous military and political problems due to military superiority of the allied Austrian and German forces at the Balkan theater of hostilities. Their occupation of much of Romania forced official Bucharest to seek an alternative, making it sign a separate agreement with the Central Block states. At the same time, its ratification was being delayed in every possible way, which enabled Romania to return to the camp of war winners at the right time. At the same time, official Bucharest made the most of the decline and liquidation of imperial institutions in Russia and Austria-Hungary at the final stage of the First World War, incorporating vast frontier territories into the Kingdom. Taking advantage of the revolutionary events in Russia, the Romanian government succeeded, in particular, in resolving the “Bessarabian problem” in its favor. In addition, Romania included Transylvania, Bukovina and part of Banat. An important foreign policy achievement of Romanian diplomacy was signing of the 1918 Bucharest Peace Treaty, as well as its participation in the Paris Peace Conference.

Die Reichstagsteilnahme des livländischen Deutschordenszweiges und seine Beziehungen mit dem deutschen Zweig (ca. 1520‒1560)

The participation of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order at the Imperial Diets and its relations with the German branch (from the 1520s to the 1550s) This article discusses the relations of Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order with the German branch from the secularization of Prussia (1525) to the beginning of the Livonian War (1558), and concentrates on the topics that were connected with the participation of the Order at the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. Before the aforementioned period, the branches had very few direct connections, and relations of the Livonian branch with the Empire were usually mediated by the Grand Master of the Order. After 1525, the German Master largely took over the role of a mediator, as he became the acting head of the Order and had close relations with the central Imperial institutions. The latter became increasingly important for the Livonian Master, who became an Imperial prince most probably on the 24th of December 1526. This enabled him to participate in the Imperial Diets. At the Diets, the branches represented their interests usually separately. This was partially caused by the fact that these diverged quite strongly: while the German branch aspired for the recuperation of Prussia, tried to protect the Order’s possessions from increasing intrusions of German princes, and paid the Turkish taxes to obtain support from the Emperor; the Livonian branch wanted to obtain support against the Russian threat and rivals inside Livonia, while also trying to avoid paying Imperial taxes. Additionally, the Duke of Prussia was the neighbour of Livonia with whom the Livonian branch usually tried to maintain normal relations. Nevertheless, the branches communicated quite actively during the Diets and supported each other, at least in a rhetorical capacity. Additionally, Livonian envoys normally went firstly to the German Master for consultations and headed to the Diets only thereafter. Thus, the communication was quite vivid, but did not leave many marks to the official documentation, as especially the Livonian branch preferred to represent itself as a separate and independent member of the Empire in front of the Imperial Estates.

Hindistan’daki İngiliz Kulüpleri ve Millî/Emperyalist Kimliğin Pekiştirilmesi: Tom Stoppard’ın Indian Ink Adlı Oyunu

Throughout the British Raj, British colonisers built many clubs in India. These clubs functioned as socialising areas for the British where they met, danced, listened to music, played polo/cricket, read newspapers and magazines, and held conversa-tions. They were also race-selective; they accepted particularly the British (and some of them accepted Europeans, as well) as members or guests, and excluded indigenous Indians. Moreover, they had been instruments for the British to enforce their national and imperial identities in India. In this sense, the British club in India was a microcosm of Britain, the representation of the British Empire’s ideologies and a symbol of racism. British colonisation in India, power relations and hegemonic struggles between the coloniser and the colonised in this colony had been significant issues that have attracted the attentions of many literary and historical figures, and have been topics for many literary works. Within the light of these points, and in relation to Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, this article aims to discuss the function of the British club in India as an imperial institution that reflects the Eurocentric worldview, East-West dichotomy, and British national and imperial ideologies during the British Raj.

왜 고려전기의 國制는 황제국 체제로 보일까? - 후대 감각과 지식의 소급 적용으로 탄생한 고려전기 황제국 체제 -

In the early Koryo dynasty, its political regime was not an empire. Nevertheless, in the eyes of today’s people, the early Koryo period has been regarded as an imperial regime. This point of view was derived from the modern knowledge and perception about binary opposition between emperor institution↔lord institution. This view stems from the process of modern appropriation of imperial institutions and their retrospective application to the early Koryo period.<BR> In the early Koryo period, Koreans were not aware of the emperor’s institutions, and some contemporary institutions were not even conceived as an imperial institution. However modern people applied their knowledge retrospectively to find numerous emperor institutions in the early Koryo period. It was assumed that the emperor institutions were chosen in binary opposition of emperor institution↔lord institution, and that it was deliberately and consistently selected from an independent standpoint. This means that the idea of the early Koryo imperial regime was born through the prism of the modern perception about emperor institutions.