Imperial Project Research Articles

Water, Bodies, Space: New Directions in World Environmental History

Water, Bodies, Space:New Directions in World Environmental History Jack Bouchard Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire. By faisal husain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 278 pp. ISBN 9780197547274. $35.00 (hardcover); $35.00 (ebook). An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic. By kate luce mulry. New York: New York University Press, 2021. 362 pp. ISBN 978-1-4798-9526-7. $35.00 (hardcover); $35.00 (ebook). Mapping Nature Across the Americas. Edited by kathleen a. brosnan. and james r. akerman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. xii + 416 pp. ISBN 978-0-226-69643-0. $70.00 (hardcover); $69.99 (ebook). Sometimes it is the sudden intrusion of new questions, and the unexpected perspectives they offer, into the field of World History which has galvanized efforts to push our work and teaching forward in new directions. What does the Ottoman Empire look like from the viewpoint of a marsh in southern Iraq? How could England's Charles II dream of improving his subject's physical health in eastern England by radically transforming the landscape in which they lived? What does an Indigenous place-name on a European colonial map signify, and what can that tell us about local ecologies? These are some of the inquiries posed by a new generation of environmental historians, and they speak to the potential for their works to change how we study the past on a global scale. We are living through a transformative moment in the field of environmental history. The climate crisis has catalyzed both a surge in interest and a revolution in methods. Not only are more and more [End Page 133] explicitly "environmental history" studies appearing on the market, but increasingly other fields are producing works with an environmental inflection. A proper survey of recent publications in environmental history is becoming increasingly untenable, given the volume of output, such that to understand these transformations it is useful to examine the edges of the field, the places where scholars are pushing into new subject, methods, and conceptual approaches. Three new works offer a snapshot of the evolving field, and its potential to contribute to world history: Faisal Husain's Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire; Kate Luce Mulry's An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic; and Mapping Nature Across the Americas, a collected volume edited by Kathleen A. Brosnan and James R. Akerman. ________ Faisal Husain's Rivers of the Sultan is a wonderful addition to global environmental history, and a welcome contribution to histories of the Mideast and early modern empires. Of the three works, Husain's is perhaps the most explicitly environmental but also the most ambitious in its methods, combining several overlapping environmental history approaches. Rivers of the Sultan explores the history of the Tigris-Euphrates basin from the early sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. As Husain argues, historians have treated these waterways as "dismembered bodies," a practice which flies in the face of science, historical memory, and the behavior of states. This new study instead "[adopts] a hydro-scale that considers the fluvial system as a continuous whole. Unified under Ottoman hegemony, the natural drainage pattern of the twin rivers fostered intimate bonds between upstream and downstream provinces, transporting not only water and sediment but also boatloads of men, guns, and grain that cemented the Ottoman presence in the east" (p. 5). This builds on recent advancements in water history, and a push for more river-stories in our literature.1 Such an integrative approach allows him to explain the ways that regional hydrographies and ecologies were exploited by, and thwarted, the Ottoman state: "From the sixteenth century, Istanbul put this natural [End Page 134] waterwheel to work for the benefit of its imperial project" (p. 3). We are meant to see empire from the perspective of a riverbank, and the view upends how historians have spatially oriented Ottoman history. Husain's work is divided into three parts. Part I, "The Amphibious State," examines the problem of fortification and shipbuilding in the Ottoman Empire and Tigris-Euphrates basin more broadly to understand the practical...

Does "White" Equal "White Supremacy"?

Does "White" Equal "White Supremacy"? Marcia Noe (bio) What do we think of when we hear the term "White supremacy"? A Grand Dragon in a hood and sheet? A Tiki Torch-bearing neo-Nazi? Britt Halvorson and Joshua O. Reno would like to change that perception. In Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy in the American Midwest, they offer us a new way to conceptualize White supremacy: they argue that it is less an individual mindset or pattern of behavior than it is a part of the systems and structures of power that control resources and lives. Halvorson and Reno's case rests on their analysis of midwestern works of the imagination, as well as accounts from popular media, and the ways in which these works enact a pastoral mythology that constructs the Midwest as White. Further, they maintain that the whiteness of these works enables White supremacy, which, in turn, furthers nationalist and imperialist projects. Undeniably, White supremacy is an egregiously serious problem. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 733 hate groups in the United States, 47 of which are categorized as White nationalist organizations.1 Many of these are located in the Midwest, and Halvorson and Reno are right to inquire about the region's participation in this heinous social movement and to analyze the ways in which midwestern discourse informs identity and shapes thinking about race. As Jon K. Lauck observes, "regional identities arise from the aspirations, visions, and self-perceptions of those who create and monopolize the discourses about the localities and regions in which they occur."2 Lauck is talking about the kinds of stories we tell about ourselves as Midwesterners. These stories, derived from agrarian principles, portray Midlanders as virtuous, industrious, and self-reliant. Are these White stories? And, if they are, does that whiteness equate to White supremacy? And does this implicate the region in national and global racist endeavors? Halvorson and Reno would answer yes to these questions. [End Page 141] Energized by the attention directed at White working-class heartland voters in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Halvorson and Reno address what they believe is a culturally misplaced emphasis. Trumpism is not a new thing, they point out, showing how, throughout the region's history, midwestern pastoralism has been portrayed on stage and screen, in the visual arts and in popular discourse, as normative virtuousness through which good, elite Whites distance themselves from deplorable, racist Others. They contend that this conceptualization does not address the region's structural racism and its depredations. "We need fresh, new ways of thinking about and seeing what racism is and does in order to begin the multigenerational, hard, and unglamorous work of dismantling white supremacy," they assert (4). Perhaps a useful way to understand this argument is to reflect on second-wave feminism's conceptualization of "woman" compared to that of third-wave feminism. Fifty years ago, second-wave feminists talked about "women" and "women's rights" in an essentialized way that tacitly equated "women" with White, middle-class, cis-gendered heterosexual women, thus eliding women of color, queer women, and working-class women. More recently, third-wave feminists have offered the corrective of intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw. This new way of thinking jettisons a generic woman to make way for an inclusive feminism that acknowledges that oppression is experienced differently by women of different races, classes, and sexual orientations.3 Similarly, Halvorson and Reno are arguing that the Midwest has been constructed in just such an essentialized manner that elides ethnic and racial differences. However, the authors stumble when they take their claims one step further. Their argument is grounded in Frances Lee Ansley's definition of White supremacy: "a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and nonwhite subordination are daily resonated across a broad array of institutions and social settings" (53). This definition is capacious enough to include almost everything White or "coded White" and thus fails to provide an adequate warrant for Halvorson and Reno's claims that "the whiteness of the Midwest...

On Slavery, Medicine, Speculation, and the Archive

In 1777, word spread along the Amazonian coast that the “cruel contagion of smallpox” was circulating in the Portuguese frontier captaincies of Grão-Pará and Maranhão.1 Rumor often announced the arrival of smallpox before authorities.2 The rumors wound their way along the roads and waterways of Belém, the capital of Grão-Pará, to the ears of thirty-three enslaved Africans, all of them property of Chief Physician Bento Viera Gomes. They were terrified of the ongoing outbreak—and of their enslaver. They knew of Gomes’s attempts to prevent the spread of smallpox by inoculating a group of soldiers stationed nearby. The soldiers refused the inoculations, fearing the disease and the procedure.3 To prove the procedure was safe and effective, Gomes conscripted the thirty-three to serve in an inoculation demonstration for the soldiers. As Gomes remarked, the enslaved people “(although equally fearful)…had no choice but to obey.”4 Each of them, between the ages of three and twenty-five, underwent the procedure. All survived. Nevertheless, this brief chapter in the history of inoculation brings questions of survival, quality of life, and archival objectivity to the fore.The slave trade and slavery established power relations that shaped the terms of scientific and medical knowledge production and practice. European imperial and medical archives naturalize these power relations. It is the historian’s task to unsettle and expose them. The intellectual foundations that presuppose inoculation as an inherent good because it saved lives (and it certainly did) do not prioritize Black people’s healing and well-being. To do so requires affective labor that begins with archival critique and proceeds with speculation.We find this inoculation story buried in a flurry of accounts from medical practitioners around the Portuguese-American colonies discussing plans for the implementation of the Jennerian cowpox vaccine.5 As a show of expertise to the Crown, physicians like Gomes highlighted their prior experiences using inoculation and demonstrated their knowledge of the literature, citing works such as Thomas Dimsdale’s recently translated inoculation manual.6 Vague allusions to inoculations performed in the British colonies, the primary competition for Amazonian industries, also pepper the pages. Perhaps Gomes read the Letters and Essays published by the notorious physician John Quier who experimented with smallpox inoculation on young, pregnant, and elderly enslaved Africans in Jamaica.7Too often, the history of inoculation serves as a prelude to triumphalist narratives of the resounding success of the Jennerian vaccine. Yet in the archival record, undercurrents of exploitation are plain: “they had no choice but to obey.” Enslaved people were the ideal candidates for inoculation demonstrations because colonists and slaveowners viewed them as replaceable commodities, chattels, and units of labor.8 They were expendable, yet essential to the imperial project.9 In Grão-Pará, inoculation would enable the imperial project to proceed despite its health consequences. Most enslaved people survived smallpox outbreaks or inoculation only to die of other causes. Even lifesaving technical and medical advancements can work to maintain the social, environmental, and existential order. Rather than sustaining life, smallpox inoculation reproduced and maintained the intertwined systems of imperialism and slavery, with their violence, pernicious inequity, morbidity, and needless death.Perhaps we might imagine beyond the thirty-three enslaved Africans’ fears and their enslavers’ reputed successes, through wonder, speculation, and questions.10 How much care and tenderness persisted amid the violence? Did parents or siblings hold the three-year-old as they prepared to receive an inoculation? Were mothers forced to hand over their children to strangers in the process? Did they smell the infected, who braced themselves to have smallpox pus removed? Did the infected person look at the recipient reassuringly? Did they exchange words, prayers, hopes, or ask questions about the procedure? Perhaps the twenty-five-year-old assisted, hoisting the small children into their lap and calming them before the incision. Which women (because it was usually women) tended the children until they recovered? Who hovered, feeding them vegetables and broth while their fevers broke, administering treatments, and applying balms and oils to their skin, ensuring they did not scratch and infect their pustules, or worse, disrupt the incision? Even without answers, these questions and errant speculations trouble the foundational liberal narratives of inoculation as progress.Speculation offers a way to divest from autopoiesis in slavery’s afterlife.11 What if we pursued and imagined thriving, not just preserving life? We could then confront our current ontologies of health and healing, and include anti-racist, feminist, environmentalist, and abolitionist collectivist politics that far exceed the neoliberal health care offered by a practitioner–patient dyad. If we want healing to account for Black life and thriving, we will have to reckon with history. We must examine the suffering and death European medical intervention rendered permissible and sustainable for their imperial projects—as well as their enduring legacies in medicine, public health, and science.

After the Railways Are Built: Makrani Labor and Illegible Claims to Land and Belonging in Sindh

Abstract This article focuses on an incident involving a series of evictions experienced by a group of Makrani laborers who made their living by earning daily wages at the Hyderabad railway station in early twentieth century Sindh. In this piece I critically analyze two imperial projects: first, the construction of the Indian railways and second, the promotion of “free” wage labor by the colonial regime in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery. By critically interrogating the promises of both “free labor” and “technological progress” this article argues that survival in the Sindhi countryside depended on a group’s ability to assert legible claims to both belonging and to land. Through an in-depth examination of the conflicting land claims, bureaucratic exchanges, and discourses around wage work that these evictions provoked, this paper reflects on the enduring entanglements of race, labor, technology, and empire in this region of British India.

Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control

Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control

The Doctor's Garden: Medicine, Science, and Horticulture in Britain

The Doctor's Garden: Medicine, Science, and Horticulture in Britain

Crafting a colony: Geochemical insights into 1000 years of state craft in the Moquegua Valley, Peru

The long-distance movement of craft items and ideas about their manufacture contribute to imperial projects; facilitating the dissemination of ideologies, serving as tribute, and acting as media for actors to assert affinity with elites and for elites to reward subjects. We interrogate how pottery production and distribution were influenced and involved in different imperial strategies over approximately 1000 years in one Andean valley. Attractive to colonizing polities for its agricultural potential, the Moquegua Valley was first incorporated into expansive states during the Middle Horizon (500–1000 CE) when both the Wari and Tiwanaku established provincial enclaves there. In the 15th century, the valley was subject to Inka colonization. A century later, it was Spanish imperialism that shaped Moquegua’s sociopolitical dynamics. Despite this recurrent pattern of conquest and incorporation, the nature of these incursions likely varied. The elemental data discussed here were generated through LA-ICP-MS on ceramics excavated from archaeological sites that span this millennium of imperialism; they include ceramic material associated with all four political incursions as well as the four centuries long Late Intermediate Period (LIP) when Moquegua was not under the influence of external state authority. Coupled with a robust compositional database of clays that facilitates distinguishing imported ceramics and also the exploitation of different resources within the valley, the data from Moquegua present an opportunity to a) reconstruct a diachronic picture of resource acquisition, the organization of production, and participation in local, regional, and long distance exchange networks and b) interrogate similarities and differences in how craft was implicated in diverse strategies of statecraft. The elemental data suggest that crafting activities were configured in different ways for each of the four expansive polities in Moquegua. As such these data add weight to recent scholarship that argues that crafting activities in contexts of imperialism cannot be reduced to simple models. Additionally, the data from the LIP contribute to comparative dialogue on production and exchange during periods of political localism, and illustrate the ways in which crafting activities participate in intercommunity dynamics during periods of social turmoil.

The role of temple institutions in Wari imperial expansion at Pakaytambo, Peru

During the Andean Middle Horizon (CE 600–1000), the highland Wari emerged as an expansive power that formed the largest pre-Inka imperial project in the Andes. Although territorially discontinuous, the introduction of Wari state institutions to disparate regions of Peru knit together far-flung and diverse social groups. Recent excavations at Pakaytambo in southern Peru have uncovered a Wari ritual complex replete with a d-shaped temple, patio-group architecture, and monumental platform construction. The complex was established in the upper Majes-Chuquibamba drainage of Arequipa at ∼ 1700 masl and was strategically placed along a major pre-Inka road at the nexus of highland-coastal populations and socio-ecological zones. In this article, excavations at Pakaytambo are presented and discussed in terms of architectural canons, site chronology, and material studies in consideration to broader changes during the late Middle Horizon. d-shaped temples represent the most ubiquitous form of civic-ceremonial architecture related to Wari religious institutions and imperial ideology. Thus, Pakaytambo provides invaluable insights into the production of state authority through public ritual and performance in regions beyond a state heartland. A focus on institutions, their group members, norms, shared objectives, and archaeological patterning provides a middle-level unit of social analysis complimentary to high theory of the state.

The Weapons of Revolution: Global Merchants and the Arms Trade in South America (1808-1824)

This article investigates the role that the arms trade connected to Hispanic American Independence Wars played in the transformations at the origins of 19th century globalization. It looks specifically at how arms supplies to governments encouraged the early post-mercantilist development of South American commerce, and some of the domino effects of such development. This turning point in economic history is analyzed through the biographical trajectories of merchants who were well positioned between geopolitics and trade, and who had “imperial” functions without being formally involved in imperialist projects. Business and political correspondence, notarial documents, and customs registers from archives in Europe and the Americas reveal the workings of networks and business affairs of global merchants whose companies were major arms importers in Buenos Aires during the years leading to Chile’s liberation. The threads of John McNeile’s (an important but neglected figure) and David DeForest’s networks hook onto the principal economic and political laboratories of the countries from whence most arms were imported: Great Britain and the United States. They reached Chile and Peru from Buenos Aires and remained crucial to the liberation campaigns, encouraging further commercial expansion along the American Pacific coast and toward Asia, and pioneering financial adventures. Relations between commercial houses active in Hispanic America and Asia reveal British and US transpacific networks and ties between Hispanic American and Asian commerce and economies. The article thus shows how, by bringing together fragmented and scattered sources from both sides of the Atlantic, the significance of the arms trade in South America as a driving force of globalization emerges.

Re-thinking Colonialism and Social Policy: With the Logic of Imperialism

This article explores the relationship between colonialism, imperialism, and social policy. Drawing on critical theories of colonialism and imperialism and the role of science and race in the bourgeois ‘imperialist project, we argue that social policy cannot be fully understood without considering the ways in which colonialism and imperialism's thought and practice shaped the historical development of social policy. The article examines key concepts such as hegemony, power, race and ‘science’ and demonstrates how they can be used to analyze the impact of colonialism and imperialism on social policy. By rethinking the relationship between colonialism, imperialism, and social policy, we propose a new framework for understanding the role of social policy in the reproduction of global inequalities. Social policies on welfare, informed by the imperialist logic of race and science, were all ingrained in the practice of colonial authorities and the colonial state as rationales for maintaining the empire. Ultimately, the article suggests that a critical approach to understanding colonial social policy, which considers race, is necessary to analyze the origin of social policy and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism in contemporary society.

Colonial Encounter and Imperial Legacy in Paul Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown

The article explores the issues of colonial encounter as well as imperial legacy on the basis of Paul Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown novel from 1966. The imperial project was heavily promoted by the authorities in the 19th century, but the dissolution of the Empire between the 1940s and the 1960s led to the emergence of a critical type of historical fiction crafted by British writers who experienced the imperial system at first hand. The Jewel in the Crown exemplifies complex attitudes as well as archetypal patterns among the colonisers and the natives in British India. The analysis shows that the coloniser is a failed figure who is unable to understand and co-exist with the colonised.

NATO and the Long War on the Third World

The global balance of power shifting. The resistance to NATO's push for a New Cold War is growing, particularly among the Third World countries that have historically borne the brunt of the West's imperial projects. It is the role of socialists living in the imperial core, Paweł Wargan writes, to support the peoples of the Third World as they rise up in the new era.

От Рима к Третьему Риму? Данте и Тютчев в поисках Империи

The article compares Dante’s and Tyutchev’s conceptions of empire. Despite the fact that their imperial projects are separated by six centuries, they are con­nected with the comprehension of the Roman Empire as the historical destiny of the European world. A comparison of their concepts is of particular interest due to the fact that in Dante we find recognizable features of New Age political and legal thought, while in Tyutchev we find an interpretation of their mani­fested consequences. Conceptualizing the concept of empire as interpreted by the poets, the author comes to the conclusion that empire as an idea conceived over the actual geopolitical reality was considered by them as having no fixed spatial and temporal boundaries – it is not a static political body chained in boundaries, but a sort of canon of a large political space formed by the “radia­tions” of empire. At the same time, the idea expressed by V.S. Solovyov and Y.M. Lotman of the kinship of the poets’ ideas about empire is only partially true. Dante and Tyutchev proposed fundamentally different grounds for the legit­imacy of the right (power) to empire and, accordingly, came to different conclu­sions about the subject of this right and the direction of translatio imperii. In Tyutchev’s system of ideas Dante’s justification of the autonomous political order of the empire – an “earthly paradise” within which the goals of “corrupt­ible” man are achieved – with the help of arguments to reason and the nature of things turns out to be the origin of the destructive to European civilization ten­dencies, that he witnessed.

A Model of Civilization: Imperial Projects, Indigenous Peoples, and “Domiciliation” in Upper Canada, 1784–1844

From the 1780s to the 1840s, First Nations leaders and imperial officials in the Great Lakes region frequently made common cause to promote the establishment of Indigenous communities within the territories claimed by the British Empire. Largely made up of refugees from across the newly established international border, these settlements offered Indigenous Peoples the possibility of safety and prosperity, while imperial administrators viewed them as crucial props to British power. Although these projects often invoked the discourse of civilization, the approach they advocated was a far cry from the vision of assimilation that is often understood by “civilization” in today’s historiography. Drawing on the model of the nations domiciliées of the St. Lawrence Valley, these projects could be better understood as following a model of “domiciliation,” defined by military alliance, Indigenous autonomy, and the selective adoption of elements of transatlantic culture. This model, however, was consistently challenged by a discourse of “half-civilization” that by the mid-1840s gave rise to a more totalizing policy of assimilation.

Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts

Reviewed by: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts James Womack Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts. (Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History) Boston: Academic Studies Press. 2021. xxviii+ 235 pp. $109. ISBN 978-1-64469-698-9. The editors of this attractive volume stress their desire to distance the study of Ivan Goncharov from a 'conventional psychological, Freudian approach' (p. xiv), while escaping the 'unquestioned dominance of Oblomov' (ibid.) in the author's œuvre. Laudable yet complicated aims. In particular, the Freudian toolbox is and remains useful for unpacking Goncharov's infantilizing fantasies. Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century is to be praised for its ambition and its work of contextualization and expansion. It rouses readers of Goncharov from the comfortable divan of tradition on which, in our dressing-gown-clad idleness, we might prefer to subside. The collection is divided into four sections, each with a different perspective and depth of focus. The first two essays, by Sergei Guskov and Kirill Zubkov respectively, deal with Goncharov the man, including his work as a Petersburg official (chinovnik) and, more specifically, as a censor. As is only natural, essays on similar subjects cover similar material: both authors quote Aleksandr Druzhinin's refusal to 'consider' Goncharov's acceptance of the post as 'disgraceful but […] a writer shouldn't be a censor' (pp. 18 and 2s). However, each critic takes this quotation in a different direction. Zubkov positions Druzhinin's opposition within the framework of the 18 3os rise of the 'thick' journals: an aesthetic judgement in the face of uncomprehending 'official' censorship. Guskov's discussion leads us back to Goncharov's work, showing how, for example, the sympathetic (and extremely amusing) portrayal of cultural and generational tsuris in Goncharov's first novel, A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia, 1847), benefits from its author's role, which allowed Goncharov to see both sides of various societal divides. A section consisting of three essays on 'The Challenges of Philosophy' makes claims for Goncharov as a consciously philosophical writer: Vladimir Ivantsov's essay on Platonic subtexts in Oblomov is detailed and compelling, although I could not help feeling that the world of forms identified with the 'oblomovskii Platon' (Oblomov's Plato) might twist quite easily into the Freudian readings this volume wants to escape. Victoria Juharyan's argument that Goncharov's three novels form a unified 'Hegelian project' (p. 74), is cleverly made, but occasionally feels as though the texts are being read in the service of a pre-existing thesis, rather than being allowed to suggest their own conclusions. For example, 'A Common Story can be read as a parody of the often-misrepresented Hegelian notion of "reconciliation with reality"' (p. 81): 'can be read' is given a lot of heavy lifting to do here and elsewhere. Sonja Koroliov brings us back to Oblomov via Derrida and Schopenhauer: it would [End Page 150] be interesting to read a longer discussion of Oblomov's prelapsarian yearnings in the light of Derrida's idea of le don, a topic with which Koroliov engages only briefly (p. 109). The third, thematic group of essays contains some of the richest writing in the volume: in particular, Valeria Sobol's discussion of the Gothic in relation to The Precipice (Obryv, 1870) opens up engaging areas for future study, connecting what is usually perceived as Goncharov's realism to such fruitful intertexts as 'Gogol's "The Portrait" and the opening chapters of Maturin's Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer' (p. 122). One might notice in passing—again?—that the connection between Freudian theory and the Gothic is long-established. Ani Kokobobo and Devin McFadden's queer reading of The Precipice is a pineapple of an essay: spiky yet juicy. The last group of essays is not thematic, but instead focuses on a single text, Goncharov's travel book The Frigate 'Pallada' (Fregat 'Pallada', 1858). Aleksei Balakin's analysis of this work's 'aesthetic construction' (p. 155) nicely complements Lyudmila Parts's discussion of 'Palladaʹ's imperial project through the lens of laughter and various other physiological indicators of assumed superiority...

Goncharov in the Twenty‐First Century By IngridKleespies, LyudmilaParts. Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021, xxviii + 234 pp. $109.00. ISBN 978‐1‐64469‐698‐9

Goncharov in the Twenty‐First Century By IngridKleespies, LyudmilaParts. Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021, xxviii + 234 pp. $109.00. ISBN 978‐1‐64469‐698‐9

Autonomy

In Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), Walter Pater asks if “modern art” can “represent men and women in these bewildering toils so as to give the spirit at least an equivalent for the sense of freedom?” I discuss how the notions of both subjective and aesthetic autonomy that Pater refers to here have gotten a bad rap for the past century or so for helping facilitate the liberal, capitalist, and imperialist projects of the nineteenth century. I then argue, however, that the version of autonomy described in the writings of Pater and other Victorian aesthetes and decadents is actually quite different from the bourgeois, Enlightenment notion of sovereign subjectivity that has been rightfully critiqued by postmodernists and poststructuralists. I end by suggesting that aestheticist and decadent versions of autonomy, which affirm humanity's capacity to unmake and remake ourselves and our society via the aesthetic, might serve as a resource for countering the racist Western myth Sylvia Wynter refers to as “biocentricity”: the notion that humankind,and thus the hierarchies that justify the uneven distributions of power, is wholly and intractably in thrall to natural laws beyond our control.

LETTERS OF M. M. SPERANSKY FROM SIBERIA AS A REFLECTION OF IMPERIAL GEOGRAPHY OF GOVERNMENT

The article analyzes the letters of M. M. Speransky, related to the period of his stay in the post of Siberian governor general (1819-1822). The complex of these letters is a unique historical source. Addressed to Emperor Alexander I, large state dignitaries, friends and daughter, they contain valuable information about Speransky’s activities in Siberia. These correspondences are essentially reports on the routes of the movement of the Governor General, its perception of the region and the procedure for managing there, the fight against the abuse of local officials and the measures taken in this regard. In letters to his daughter Elizaveta, Speransky reports some details of his personal life in Siberia, frankly shares his most exciting thoughts and experiences. In general, the letters of the Siberian period are a large-scale reflection of the outstanding statesman and the reformer regarding the general state of public administration in the huge part of the Russian Empire. Being a Siberian governor general, M. M. Speransky was an active participant in the imperial project of “embedding” Siberia into Russia.

French goose games of the mid 18th century as sources for the study of the anthropology of power (based on the State Hermitage collection) in Modern history

In this article we will focus on French board games of the mid-18th century – the Fortification Game and the New Marine Game. The purpose of this study is to analyze the discourse and symbolism of these engravings and consider the ideas that they conveyed. In this study, we are primarily interested not in the mechanics and rules of the game of goose, but in the symbolism and iconography used in XVIII century France. Our goal will be to analyze the discourse of the goose board game of the middle of the 18th century. The sources on which the study is based are kept in the Department of Western European Art of the State Hermitage. When conducting research, our methodology will be based on the principles of a new cultural history, a new political history and a history of mentalities. Considering these sources within the framework of the discourse of the Enlightenment, in conclusion it will be shown that these games carried powerful messages—sometimes hidden, sometimes overt—taking advantage of the printing medium to display endlessly adaptable iconography. Both the Fortification and the New Marine Game contained dedications that were of a military-patriotic nature. They served as a means of training, education, propaganda and promotion of the ideas of the imperial project to maintain the prestige of France on the world stage in the middle of the 18th century.

Die Verwendung der Reichssteuer von 1427 im Spiegel der Quittungen und Rechnungsbücher

This paper examines the accounting book "Liber Teutonicorum des Ausgebens" and quittances from the state archive in Nuremberg about the imperial tax from 1427, whose intent was to finance the war against the Hussites in Bohemia. Unlike older studies, which focused on the concept and failed enforcement of the tax, this paper raises questions about the use of the collected tax money and the responsible actors involved. Therefore, the aim is to provide a new perspective to assess the imperial project, which historians often claim as a failure. Starting from the normative text of the tax law, first the members of the two institutions are determinated responsible for administrating and spending the money and it is showen how they worked together. In the second step, the quittances are discussed and the possible need for accountability for both institutions to the king and prince-electors. That leads to the third question about the role of external actors in decision-making, where the entries in the accounting books are analyzed.