Imperial Policy Research Articles

Grenville's Postponement of the Stamp Act Reconsidered*

AbstractIn March 1764 George Grenville announced plans to raise revenues in America for colonial defence with stamp duties. Opinions differ about why Grenville then postponed the Stamp Act until a year hence. Writing in 1950, Edmund S. Morgan found the decision puzzling. Peter D.G. Thomas and John L. Bullion subsequently offered procedural explanations. Grenville envisaged the Stamp Act as a firm precedent for parliament's authority to impose direct taxation (‘inland duties’) in the colonies – a prospect that terrified Americans schooled in the common law, alert to dangerous precedents, and already prone to slippery‐slope reasoning. With the mundane details of the Stamp Act unavailable until after its passage, however, the postponement also raised imperial debate to a level of abstraction from which it never retreated. Grenville's postponement of the Stamp Act foreclosed prospects for compromise and set British imperial policy on a course that ultimately fomented the American Revolution.

The Issue of Mosul from Turkey and England Perspective: A Constructivist Reading

Musul, OsmanlıDevleti’nin bir vilayeti olarak yıllarca Müslümanlık, Hristiyanlık gibi dini grupların yanında Türk, Arap, Kürt gibi farklı etnik grupların yaşadığı bir yer olmuştur. Birinci Dünya Savaşında, İngilizler Irak’ı işgal ettikten sonra bu bölgede emperyalist politikaları bağlamından hükmetmeye çalışmışlardır. Musul 1924 yılında Milletler Cemiyetinin de desteği ile Osmanlı Devletinden koparılarak burada yeni bir düzen yaratılmıştır. Musul tarihsel olarak çoğunluğu Kürt, Türkmen ve Araplardan oluşan Sünni Müslümanların yaşadığı bir merkezdir. Çalışmanın amacı, Musul Meselesi Lozan Konferansı, Brüksel hattı gibi uluslararası antlaşma ve sözleşmelerde konuşulurken bölgenin salt doğal kaynakları veya maddi yönlerinin değil aynı zaman da kültürel ve tarihsel yönlerinin de önemli olduğunu ortaya çıkartmaktır. Bu çalışmada Musul Meselesi Türk ve İngilizlerin tezleri ile konstrüktivizm teorisi bağlamında analiz edilmiştir. Konstrüktivizm teorisi, devletler ve toplumlar arasındaki ilişkilerin realist teorilerin iddia ettiği gibi salt materyalist veya pozitivist olgulara dayanmadığını bunun ötesinde söz konusu ilişkilerin sosyal bağlamının da olduğunu öne sürmektedir. Dolayısıyla Musul halkının 1920’li yıllardaki demografik, dinsel ve kimlik bağlamında değerlendirilmesi önem arz etmektedir. Çalışmada İngiltere çıkarları bağlamında Musul’a yaklaşırken; Türkiye’nin ise ekonomik, siyasal ve güvenlik gibi gerekçelerle Musul’u kazanmak istediği bulgusuna rastlanmıştır.

Hocalı Katliamının Tarihsel Arka Planı ve Katliamın Türk Ve Batı Basınına Yansımaları

Azerbaycan’ın Dağlık Karabağ bölgesinde yer alan Hocalı, Erivan yönetiminin Dağlık Karabağ’a hâkim olma ve bunun akabinde “Büyük Ermenistan’ı” kurma gibi emperyalist bir politikayı hayata geçirme arzusu sonucu 25 Şubat 1992 gecesi Ermeni silahlı güçleri tarafından saldırıya uğramıştır. Hankendi’nde bulunan eski Sovyet Ordusu’na ait 366. Motorize Alayı’nın da destek verdiği bu saldırı esnasında resmî rakamlara göre 106’sı kadın, 63’ü çocuk, 70’i yaşlı toplam 613 kişi katledilmiş; 76’sı çocuk 487 kişi ağır yaralanmış ve 1.275 kişi esir alınmıştır. 150 kişiden de bir daha haber alınamamıştır. Gayriresmî rakamlara göre ise katledilenlerin sayısı 1.300, yaralı sayısı 1.000’in üzerindedir. Ermenistan’ın Hocalı’da gerçekleştirdiği katliam insanlık aleyhine işlenen bir cinayet olarak tarihteki yerini alırken, bu vahşet Türk ve Batı basınında da yankı uyandırmıştır.
 Çalışmanın amacı, Ermenilerin Hocalı’ya saldırmasının nedenini, saldırı esnasında yaptıkları katliamı ve bu katliam dolayısıyla Hocalı halkının başından geçen trajik hadiseleri aktarmak ve Hocalı Katliamının Türk ve Batı basınına yansımalarını ortaya koyarak literatüre katkı sağlamaktır. Çalışmada, bahsi geçen süreç, konuyla alakalı çalışmalar, yerli ve yabancı süreli yayınlar ışığında irdelenmiştir.

Decentering European History from the Margins

Abstract The article considers the global historiography of Europe from two angles. First it outlines the difficulties, both historical and epistemological, that Europe poses as an object of study, especially after the historiographical transformations prompted by the events of 1989, the rise of postcolonial studies, the growing critique of Eurocentrism, and, most recently, the “global turn.” The conceptions of Europe that emerge from these currents have often been based on a rather homogenized vision of the continent, centered on the great nation-states of western Europe and their imperial policies. They also perpetuate, even as they criticize it, the legacy of a conception of modernity that positions Europe as both its historical center and the agent of its expansion on a global scale. The second part of the paper proposes to limit the blind spots inherent in this kind of vision by shifting our gaze to the eastern and Balkan margins of Europe, where the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires intersected over the “long” nineteenth century. This change of perspective displaces the history of Europe’s connection to modernity, revealing the great diversity of local actors, the importance of multicultural and pluriethnic societies, and the particular role of transnational populations such as Jews, who, while negotiating their own relationship to a European modernity, escaped the grip of national movements.

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Botany and national identities: The Tokyo Cherry.

When Japan faced the world after the collapse of its feudal system, it had to invent its own modern identity in which the Tokyo Cherry became the National Flower. Despite being a garden plant, it received a Latin scientific species name as if it was an endemic species. After Japan's colonial conquest of Korea, exploring the flora of the peninsula became part of imperial knowledge practices of Japan. In the wild, a different cherry was discovered in Korea that was proposed as the endemic parent of the Tokyo Cherry, supporting imperialist policies. Following Japan's defeat after the Pacific War, South Korea in turn entered its search for cultural identity. The supposed parent of the Tokyo Cherry was now successfully acclaimed as the parent species of the colonial oppressor's Tokyo Cherry and named the King Cherry. Such scientific practice into cherries smoothly intertwined with nationalism and its legacy continues to interfere with research today.

Performance, ceremonial and power in the basilikoi logoi by Theophylact of Ohrid

Abstract In this article, we analyse two basilikoi logoi by Theophylact of Ohrid addressed to the emperors Constantine Doukas (1081-1091?) and Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) and contest recent scholarship which traces criticism to Alexios I by the use of subversion of traditional rhetorical topoi. We do not question the presence of such subversions, but rather their function in the text. For that, they are studied in their performative contexts: ceremonial events, performative practices and the political circumstances in which their composition possibly took place and when they were performed. By doing so, it is noticeable that criticism to the emperor in such situations is hardly conceivable and the inadequacies of the praises present in the texts can be interpreted as a response to already existing criticism to current imperial policy. Moreover, by comparing both orations as autonomous works, it is possible to perceive a clear shift both in the power balances in the recently established Komnenian consortium and in the relationship between Theophylact and major political player of his time

“Filipino Seekers of Fortune”: Jazz as Labor in 1920s Colonial Asia

ABSTRACT Filipino musicians were critical for the spread of jazz throughout Asia yet their place in histories of the music remains peripheral. I argue that the emergence of the Filipino jazz musician was based on contradictions central to a new imperial jazz economy: the possibilities of jazz as a form of labor in colonial Asia have to be paired with the devastating impact of U.S. imperial policies. Furthermore, the Filipino semimonopoly on musical labor in Asia that brought many Filipinos a sense of political pride was made possible by racialized hierarchies of work that served to undermine claims for Philippine independence.

THE SITUATION OF THE ORTHODOX MONASTERIES OF THE KYIV EPARCHY IN THE LATE XVIII – EARLY XX CENTURY

The article analyzes the influence of Russian imperial policy on the situation of Orthodox monasteries of the Kyiv diocese, reveals the results and tragic consequences of secularization reform for diocesan monasteries, examines the long process of restoring monastic life from the late XVIII to early XX centuries. The research is based on the methodological principles of historicism, scientific objectivity and a systematic approach in combination with general scientific and special historical methods. Their application made it possible to find out the reasons for changes in the territorial boundaries of the Kyiv diocese and the impact of this factor on the number of its monasteries. By the decision of the Holy Synod in 1797, the territory of the Kyiv eparchy was brought in line with the new provincial territorial division. The situation of Orthodox monasteries and measures to change their status are analyzed. It is proved that the implementation of the manifesto on the secularization of spiritual land ownership in the Ukrainian lands dealt a severe and irreparable blow to Orthodox monasteries and monasticism. There was a sharp reduction of Orthodox monasteries with a simultaneous decrease in the number of monks, which had disastrous consequences not only for the church and monastery life of Ukraine, but also for the Ukrainian identity. The study of their position, the process of restoration of monastic life during the outlined chronological period, determined the relationship between the monasteries of the diocese and the outside world.

GERTRUD BÄUMER’S TRAVEL TO ISTANBUL (1918) AND THE OTTOMAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

1908 yılında ilan edilen İkinci Meşrutiyet ile başlayan Osmanlı Devleti’nin son dönemine damga vuran özgürlük ve reform talepleri Osmanlı kadın hareketine olumlu katkı yaparak bu alandaki gelişmeleri hızlandırdı. Bu dönemin bir diğer öne çıkan gelişmesi, Balkan Savaşları (1912-1913) Birinci Dünya Savaşı (1914-1918) ve ardından gelen İstiklâl Harbi (1919-1922) ile on yıllık savaşlar dizisidir. Savaş koşulları altında kadınların toplumsal hayattaki rolleri arttığından kadın hareketi de güç kazandı.
 Almanya, özellikle 19. yüzyılın son çeyreğinden itibaren Osmanlı Devleti’ne yönelik nüfuz politikasını daha sistemli hale getirdi. Şansölye Otto von Bismarck’ın görev süresinin sonlarına doğru başlatılan girişimler 1888 yılından itibaren, II. Wilhelm’in Alman tahtına çıkmasıyla daha kapsamlı bir hal aldı. Almanya, II. Abdülhamid’in modernleşme taleplerini karşılayacak uzmanlık alt yapısı ve sermayeye sahipti. Bu durum iki imparatorluk arasında iş birliklerini çoğalttı. İş birlikleri, Almanya’nın özellikle İngiltere ve Fransa gibi dönemin emperyalist devletlerinin karşısına rakip olarak çıkmasına neden oldu. 
 Osmanlı Devleti’nin son dönemi dış politikası ile alakalı çalışmaların odak noktalarından biri olan Almanya ile ilişkiler daha çok askeri, diplomatik ve iktisadi açılardan incelenmiştir. Oysaki Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nda Almanya ile kurulan ittifak kültür, eğitim gibi alanlarda da önemli gelişmelerin yaşanmasını sağlamıştır. Almanya kültür faaliyetlerini Osmanlı Devleti ile ilişkilerinin uzun süreli ve kalıcı olmasına yarayacak bir araç gibi gördü ve Osmanlı’da eğitimin modernleşmesi için faaliyetler yürüttü. Osmanlı kadın hareketinin en talepkâr olduğu bu alanda Alman ve Osmanlı kadın hareketi kesişmektedir. İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, Balkan Savaşları sonrası iktidarı tam anlamıyla ele aldığından kadın hareketi cemiyetin sosyal politik görüşlerine göre şekillendi. Osmanlı Devleti’nin son döneminde kadınlar toplumsal hayatta ve meslek, eğitim alanlarında daha görünür hale geldi. 
 Avrupa’da kadınların hak mücadelesi çok daha eskiye dayanmaktadır. Almanya’da kadın hareketi 19. yüzyılın ilk çeyreğine kadar uzanmaktadır. Eğitim hakkını elde etme mücadelesi bu alanların başında gelir. Dolayısıyla Almanya’da öğretmenlik kadın hareketinde öne çıkan meslek koludur. Almanya Osmanlı kültür politikaları konusunda Türk kadınının geleceği ile yakından ilgilenmiştir. Savaşın son yılında İstanbul’a gelerek Dârülfünun’da Türk Kadın Hareketi (Türkische Frauenbewegung) başlıklı bir konuşma yapan Alman kadın hareketinin öncülerinden Dr. Gertrud Bäumer’in konuşması Alman kültür politikası için bir örnektir. Bäumer’nin Almanya’da Ernst Jäckh, Friedrich Naumann gibi Alman emperyalist politikasını destekleyen liberallerle kurduğu ilişki onun İstanbul seyahatinin politik bir yönünü de göstermektedir. Özellikle Ernst Jäckh, Osmanlı Devleti ve Almanya kültür iş birliklerinin yürütülmesinde ilk sırada gelen isimdir. Savaş zamanı çok defa İstanbul’a geldi, Osmanlı Devleti’nin geleceği ile alakalı çeşitli kitaplar kaleme aldı. Onun desteği ile gerçekleşen bu seyahat Alman emperyalizmin ideolojik boyutuna da ışık tutmaktadır.

Dealing in Debt: The Role of Credit in Early Sino–U.S. Trade

This essay explores the development of Sino–U.S. commercial and arbitration practices that grew out of credit transactions and operated in relation to, but distinct from, the greater Canton system that primarily served Beijing and London. Without dismissing the importance of silver and Pacific trade goods to early Sino–U.S. trade, this essay traces the financializing trade practices and emerging regulatory strategies that rose alongside the traffic in specie and commodities. Chinese merchants who traded with foreigners at Canton became increasingly eager for U.S. specie payments as China’s imperial policies as well as Britain- and India-based traders siphoned silver away from Canton. The eagerness for American specie remittances coupled with the relationships cultivated by resident American agents like John Perkins Cushing led Chinese merchants to increasingly trade with Americans on credit. Credit transactions facilitated the expansion of Sino–U.S. trade, the movement of opium, and the entry of Chinese merchants into Atlantic commodity and capital markets. Credit transactions also presented the problem of how to enforce payment and collect bad debts. Whenever the informal personal networks they had forged to secure credit relationships proved insufficient, merchants on both sides of the globe looked to U.S. legal institutions to mediate commercial disputes. Thus, even as the silver U.S. traders supplied in Canton worked to integrate Americans more firmly into Britain’s commercial empire in Asia, credit transactions and formal and informal dispute resolutions arising therefrom carved out separate avenues of direct Sino–U.S. exchange that were of mutual interest.

Russia’s war goals in Ukraine

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It examines both the stated goals and the deeper reasons, noting that the invasion owes more to the imperialistic policies of the Russian leadership than a desire to remove a “neo-Nazi” government in Kyiv or to protect the quasi-states of Donetsk and Luhansk. It looks also at hostile Russian attitudes toward the European Union, NATO, and the United States and the importance of the capture of Mariupol as a pathway to Crimea. It observes that the attacks on civilians and atrocities that Russia has perpetrated to date reveal a desire to end Ukrainian statehood and expand further into territories of the former tsarist empire. The costs of the war and the economic limitations of Russia are likely to undermine such ambitions.

Claudia Milian, LatinX

Reviewed by: LatinX by Claudia Milian Ariana E. Vigil (bio) Claudia Milian, LatinX. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Pp. 116. Claudia Milian's most recent book, LatinX, is a short but thorough meditation on terminology, cultural production, and social and ecological movements. The author explains that her scholarship has been guided by the question of how one can "theorize the contested terms of Latino/Latina when … there [are] no academic or cultural concepts" applicable to her own subject formation (2). As a "Salvadoran child brought to the United States by her mother," she and many others, including but not limited to the millions of Central Americans who migrated to the US in the last half century, have fallen through the "Latin cracks" of the terms "Latino" and "Latina" (1, 2). While she briefly defines the term "LatinX"—explaining that the gender-inclusive denomination for US Latina/os arose in queer electronic spaces in 2004—she wisely side-steps the question of "correct" definitions. Rather, Milian is concerned with how the term marks "how one navigates the world" and in exploring the "possibilities" and "pathways" of LatinX peoples and movements (77, 39). Following up on her 2013 book, Latining America: Black-Brown Passages and the Coloring of Latino/a Studies, in which Milian sought to interrogate and understand the varied geographies of Latinness, LatinX explicitly moves away from the slash (/) and grounds its investigations in three pillars of thought. These three pillars—LatinX, the Global South, and ecological devastation—offer linguistic, social, historical, cultural, and political contexts for entering into discussions of [End Page 111] LatinX while remaining closely attuned to the coming future. The first chapter, "Articulations," traces the discursive emergence of LatinX, guiding readers through the deployment and manifestation of LatinX subjects and ontologies in spaces as diverse as families made possible through assisted reproductive technologies and individual engagements with hypercommodification. The second chapter, "Forms," turns to the figure of the Central American migrant child to demonstrate how LatinX can capture "the emergence of uprooted subjects thrown into an unexpected array of circumstances" (35). This chapter, which draws from and furthers Milian's significant contributions to the field of US Central American studies, is a highlight of the book and valuably grounds theoretical discussions in the material realities of contemporary migrants. The last chapter, "Numerosities," offers a sophisticated connection between the previous two, articulating the need for new language to understand the impending global climate disaster while illustrating the connection between climate change and migration. This chapter also illustrates the book's larger focus on unknown futures. LatinX is theoretically innovative and draws from a range of fields and disciplines—including contemporary Latinx studies, US Central American studies, and security and migration studies. The two chapters devoted to Central American migration and ecological devastation assure that the work speaks to contemporary and visible manifestations of a changing world. Her discussion of the Central American migrant child in "Forms" engages with Tell Me How It Ends, Valeria Luiselli's account of translating questionnaires administered by Citizenship and Immigration Services to migrant children. Milian offers a larger perspective on the migration of Central American children, invoking the history of two Salvadoran children taken from their parents in the mid-nineteenth century and put on tour as part of US and European interest in the "natural history" of the Western hemisphere (45). These abused and exploited children foreshadowed "the grotesqueries of the Central American future," manifested more recently in the "unresolvable question" that starts off Luiselli's questionnaire: "Why did you migrate?" (46, 45). Milian is careful to not apply the label of "crisis" to the Central American children who migrate to the United States, instead asserting that the Central American minor/the minor Central American "is disruption embodied" and a "sign of repetitive crisis and failure" (44, 54). "Crisis," however, is a term appropriate to discuss the accelerated pace of global climate change and ensuing ecological disaster. This crisis is inextricably connected to Central American migration, which has been fueled by US imperial policies and exacerbated by climate change, in which US industries and the US military especially play an outsized role. The last chapter of the book looks at environmental...

The use of agencies by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR to control academic historical science in Soviet Ukraine (1953)

One of the working methods of the state security bodies of the Ukrainian SSR, which were then part of the combined Ministry of Internal Affairs with the scientific intelligentsia, namely with the employees of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, was revealed. Through the agent, who worked in this structure, state security officials tried to influence the personnel of the Institute and the main areas of its scientific activity. The agent's report was summarized and thoroughly analyzed. In his reports, a description of the state of work on the main research of the Institute’s scientists was provided, with the corresponding assessments characteristic of the era of Stalinist dominance, and, as a rule, a negative description of the Institute’s leading scientists and managers. Attention is focused on several main aspects: the agent work of state security agencies among the scientific intelligentsia and the state and development of historical science in the republic at one of the turning points in its history, because it was in the middle of 1953 that the issue of the main directions of further political, ideological and social development of the state was resolved.
 A new important historical document from the Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, which had not been published before, has been introduced into scientific circulation. Biographical materials on the names of the leading historians of Ukraine who worked at that time were added: O. K. Kasimenko, F. P. Shevchenko. Their characteristics in the indicated generalization of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR and modern assessments of the scientific activity of these scientists were compared. It is emphasized that, in general, O. K. Kasymenko and F. P. Shevchenko supported progressive positions in historical science, taking into account the extent to which it was possible under the conditions of the totalitarian regime in the USSR regarding the history of Ukraine. Considering the current wartime, when ideologues of the aggressor state are constantly searching for “historical roots” in their claims to Ukraine, while referring to the alleged “achievements of historical science”, the topic, related to revealing the influence of totalitarianism on historical science, and turning it into a tool imperial policy, acquires undeniable relevance.

Reconceptualizing the Global Transformation of Islam in the Colonial Period: Early Islamic Reform in British-Ruled India and Egypt

Abstract Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European empires extended their rule over most of the Muslim world. The present article argues that these empires promoted three interrelated political discourses; namely, a discourse on utilitarianism, a discourse on civilizational progress, and a discourse on liberal imperialism. The empires also encouraged Islamic reform movements, which entailed cooperation between Muslim thinkers, European officials, liberal intellectuals, and Orientalists. Reform movements legitimated the three aforementioned discourses in terms of premodern Islamic religious concepts (e.g. ʿaql, maṣlaḥa, maqāṣid al-šarīʿa, iǧtihād, taqlīd). These concepts were reinterpreted and tacitly linked to imperial policies concerning race, technology, industrial capitalism, and authoritarian violence. The article examines this process by considering the British Empire, and its relationship to Islamic reform projects in India and Egypt. The article discusses nineteenth century British political discourses as developed in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. The article then discusses Islamic reform in India, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān and Amīr ʿAlī, as well as their relationships with British figures like William Muir and John Strachey. Next the article discusses Islamic reform in Egypt, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rašīd Riḍā as well as their relationships with British figures like Lord Cromer and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

“HIS LOYALTY IS REPUTED”: POLITICAL ACTIVITY OF NAIB OF DERBENT IMAM KULI-BEK

The accession of Derbent to the Russian Empire as a result of the Persian campaign of Peter the Great and being the part of it until 1735 is one of the important milestones in the centuries-old history of Derbent. The peaceful process of joining the city to the empire was greatly facilitated by the political position and activities of the city ruler in the person of Naib Imam Kuli-bek, who decided not to resist the imperial troops and peacefully surrender the city to Tsar Peter the Great. Being approved by Peter I in the same position, Naib developed an active political activity with the imperial authorities, demonstrated timely concern for protecting the city from attacks by mountaineers and providing food for the townspeople, shared managerial and judicial functions with the Russian commandant A.T. Junger. The study of the political activities of Naib Imam Kuli-bek, the nature of his relationship with the Russian central and regional authorities makes it possible to deepen and expand historical knowledge about the events in Derbent, and in the Eastern Caucasus as a whole, related to imperial policy in the region in the first third of the 18th century. However, a special study of the activities of Naib Imam Kuli-bek in domestic historiography has not yet been undertaken, which is the reason for the relevance of the present study. The article aims to analyze the activities of the Naib in building relations with the new imperial government, integrating Derbent into the political, legal and economic space of the Russian Empire; show cases demonstrating loyalty (loyal speech, offering a key, honoring the monarch, a visit to the imperial court) on the part of the Naib, and power and favor (approval in office, rank, gifts, awards) on the part of sovereigns. The study has been prepared on the basis of an analysis of available works and a wide range of documentary data from the collections of federal and regional archives, a significant part of which is being introduced into science for the first time.

Jeopolitik Bir Faktör Olarak İngiltere’nin Azerbaycan Çıkarlarında Ermenistan (1917-1919)

The geopolitical interests of Great Britain in Azerbaijan, as well as the policy of the Caucasus in general, are considered an integral part of the historical Eastern question. It is an undeniable fact that historically every great power has used various pretexts and factors to maintain its own imperialist policy. These factors can be observed in the geopolitical interests of the great powers in current events in the world. XX. at the beginning of the XIX century, Armenians were one of the main factors in the pursuit of Britain's geopolitical interests both in the Ottoman geography and in the South Caucasus. The priority of the UK was to decipher which nation among the various ethnic and religious groups in the Caucasus could seriously resist the Turks. They did not trust the Azerbaijani Turks, who sympathized with the Ottomans because they were Turks. In turn, the Azerbaijani Turks were very worried about the British assistance to the Armenians. This aid was even used by the Armenians to annoy the Azerbaijanis. These actions of the Armenians have created public opinion that the British government is pursuing an openly anti-Islamic policy. In this study, information is discussed that the UK plays a key role in the emergence of the Armenian problem and its transnational problems, including its expansionism, and uses Armenians as the main tool in its geopolitical interests in the South Caucasus.

Seeing the Pain of Others: Understanding Human Rights Abuses Through Journalistic Writings, Films, Documentaries and Photography

This article analyses the understanding of the pain of others and scrutinizes human rights violations committed against colonial subjects and vulnerable groups by colonial and nation-state actors. It employs an interdisciplinary perspective analyzing journalistic writings, films, documentaries and photography that cover human rights abuses committed against oppressed people. It elaborates on some human rights abuses rooted in the colonialism of European expansionism and other imperial policies that have destroyed the cultural distinctiveness of indigenous people. Exploitation, violence, exclusion are the main elements of colonialism and they are deeply connected with imperialism, the nation-state and the free market. Human rights abuses are discussed here in the context of critiques of colonialism and violence in the works of scholars such as Aime Cesaire, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon and Michael Taussig. This article shows that films, documentaries, journalistic writings and photography are significant genres that can expose crimes committed against colonized subjects by colonial powers and vulnerable society by modern nation-states. It also indicates that instead of whitewashing the oppressors these genres can challenge and prevent further crimes and human rights abuses by inviting the spectator to face past crimes; form solidarity with victims; be vigilant about state crimes; take action against injustice.

Imperial Power and The Policy of Transformation of the Outlying Lands

The article examines the structure and content of the monograph “Center and Regions: Economic Policy of the Government on the Outlying Lands of the Russian Empire (1894–1917)” which was prepared by a team of St. Petersburg and Moscow historians under the editorship of M.V. Khodyakov; it analyzes the characteristic features of the authors’ approaches and the significance of this work for current practices of studying the Russian Empire’s outlying areas. This monograph is a non-ordinary historiographical phenomenon in terms of its goals (to give an integral, comprehensive view of the economic policy of the center in relation to the “outlying regions”), the number of tasks implemented and the total extend of the work done. The monograph includes 31 paragraphs, each devoted to poorly studied or entirely unexplored problems. However, due to the unsatisfactory elaboration of fundamental theoretical and conceptual issues, as well as the scale of the project, and the limited time span set for its implementation, the reviewed work contains a number of shortcomings: a weak introduction (especially a historiographical survey), superficial conclusions (or their absence in paragraphs), the inconsistency of the subject of some paragraphs with the matter of economic policy. But despite of all the shortcomings, this work represents a significant contribution to the study of the frontier spaces of Russia as regards both the concrete historical material introduced into scientific circulation, and the non-trivial attempt itself to create a generalizing picture of imperial economic policy on the outlying areas of Russia in the late 19th – early 20th centuries.

Policing Exhibit B in St Denis and Paris

This article will consider the protests against Brett Bailey’s 2014 performance installation Exhibit B at the Théâtre Gérard Philippe (TGP) in the Paris suburb of St Denis and at the Espace Centquatre within Paris itself. Rather than focusing on the ethical and political questions raised by the piece, I will analyse how in the first instance the deployment of police highlighted the specific importance given to the theatre within French state cultural policy. Following this, I will analyse how this incident exemplified a distinct manifestation of an imperial ‘afterlife’ of the French state. Building on Kristin Ross’ work as well as Laura-Ann Stoler’s elaborations on French colonial aphasia (active forgetting), I aim to tease out how the heavy-handed deployment of the police at the specific location of the TGP and the softer strategy deploying an ‘exclusion zone’ around the Espace Centquatre exemplified the persistent continuation of France’s imperial policies as they are applied to racialised populations within its own ‘metropolitan’ territory. This will lead me to question some of the spatial and temporal assumptions underpinning some of the causal narratives regarding contemporary racism in France, grounded in assumptions that the brutal facts of colonialism happened on far away continents, or to use Anne McClintock’s formulation, ‘over there’.