Imperial State Research Articles

Judenschutz in gemischt-herrschaftlichen Kleinterritorien der fränkischen Reichsritterschaft

Abstract The article deals with the general conditions of Jewish life in two Franconian noble territories in the 17th and 18th centuries. The two market villages of Küps and Mitwitz were divided between different lords. Their population included Jewish inhabitants as well as representatives of both Christian denominations. These villages are thus characteristic of the settlement structure of Jews in the pre-modern period. The settlement of Jewish families was, on the one hand, a privilege of the imperial nobility, with which they demonstrated their imperial status to the outside world. On the other hand, the spatial and lordly fragmentation offered opportunities for settlement among different rulers – a circumstance that Jewish actors deliberately incorporated into their actions. They were well informed about the ruling conditions and knew how to make effective use of the existing competitive situation in order to expand their scope of action.

Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815 by M. K. Beauchamp

Reviewed by: Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815 by M. K. Beauchamp Aaron R. Hall Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815. By M. K. Beauchamp. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 314. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7428-9.) In 1803 the United States became the latest empire striving to govern the complex world encompassed by the territory of Orleans. Native nations, enslaved Africans, free people of color, Creole slave owners, and Anglo-American settlers populated the region, and each group pursued competing desires for autonomy and freedom, power and security, and health and wealth. This internal heterogeneity was compounded by delicate geopolitical relations with imperial rivals and indigenous neighbors. If eventual statehood and affluence through expropriated labor and land was the common aim of Anglo-American arrivals, then it was the daily work of U.S. administrators to steer the territory toward these ends. That meant maintaining order while producing a new one. A cohort of local officials made the orderly administration of Louisiana their business with varying degrees of diligence and faithfulness. In Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803–1815, M. K. Beauchamp shows that the problems these officials encountered, the resources they accessed, and the policies they adopted “rendered Louisiana’s territorial experience republican in theory but imperial in practice” (p. 3). Taking an administrator’s-eye view of early national Louisiana, Beauchamp delivers a fine-grained analysis of how officials cultivated and exercised authority during Louisiana’s formative decade under the jurisdiction of (but not yet within) the United States. In ways that were unique to Louisiana but that also resonated with other zones of territorial rule, officials deployed techniques of imperial governance: accommodating local elites, moderating the metropole’s directives, arbitrating between factions, tailoring racial exclusions to suit strategic concerns, displaying military capacity, and modifying institutions in response to discontent. Through a careful reading of state papers and administrative correspondence, Beauchamp delivers a sophisticated account of the reorganization of Louisiana, a process that appears at once abrupt or gradual and shallow, depending on subject and vantage point. Instruments of Empire is a clarifying contribution to Louisiana political history and a valuable [End Page 347] addition to a field of scholarship on the early federal government in which continuities of political practice loom large (see Gautham Rao, “The New Historiography of the Early Federal Government: Institutions, Contexts, and the Imperial State,” William and Mary Quarterly 77 [January 2020]: 97–128). Instruments of Empire unfolds in six thematic chapters addressing different facets of official concern. It opens with a chapter analyzing external challenges to American sovereignty, introducing territorial officials’ abiding anxiety about Creole loyalties. As Spanish power receded, however, American officials came to trust the Francophone “ancient Louisianans” with greater authority (p. 183). Next, Beauchamp draws out administrators’ multipronged approach to Native American relations before the post-statehood arrival of enfranchised, land-hungry settlers. Their initiatives included efforts to maintain peaceable relations with the Comanche, counter Spanish influence among the Caddo and the Wichita, incorporate the Native communities around New Orleans known as petites nations, and court Choctaw allies. A significant third chapter illustrates how the violence of racial enslavement was foundational to governance. Slavery was the subject of extensive regulation by new elected bodies, and it created a shared interest through which American order could be appreciated by new and old slaveholders. At no time was the centrality of slavery more evident than during the suppression of the German Coast uprising, when U.S. troops provided critical support. This bloodshed confirmed slaveholders belonged to “a common planter class, since the rebels did not distinguish between Anglo and Francophone plantations” (p. 104). Given this evidence, one is left to wonder whether concerns about Creole loyalty were exaggerated. When Anglo-Americans took charge, free Black Louisianans hoped to gain rights by being the most loyal of allies; but in chapter 4, Beauchamp shows that they held little leverage to move territorial officials. The arrival of statehood in 1812 would only empower white Louisianans to make that racial order...

The Causes of Failure Greek Minority Army in the Battle of Sakarya

Ankara Operation launched by the Greek Army with the support of the Entente Stateshad ended with a great defeat in the Sakarya regions without achieving its goal for signing of the Sevres Treaty by the Ankara Government and break the violent resistance against the invasions. With the defeat, the course of the Greek Asia Minor Army's Anatolian adventure had changed, Greek commanders, who had been thinking about the attack until that day, started defensive operations after the Battle of Sakarya. The reasons for the failure had explained in detail by the military experts of the period in their post-war memoirs. At the end of the war, with a rebellion that started in Greece, many people including politicians and soldiers who failed in the Sakarya War were tried and six Greek Ministers and Commanders, including the prime minister of the period Gunaris, were executed. In this sense, the Battle of Sakarya has been a turning point for the rulers of both countries. The Greek governments, who sacrificed the future of their countries for the sake of the interests of the imperialist states, paid a heavy price for the mistakes they had made. On the other hand, for the Turkish Nation, it has been the most important gain in the construction of a modern nation as a result of saving its independence and future with its own determination, decision, and struggle. The aim of the work is to analyze the causes of the defeat in the Greek Army`s Sakarya Battle. In the subject of the work is one of the most important battles of the National Struggle period the Battle of Sakarya is emphasized the importance of the loss of the Battle of Sakarya Greek History. In the study, Turkish and Greek Military History was analyzed using first-hand sources, in the context of the case-event relationship. The study covers the period of Sakarya battle.

The Beautiful Public Danube: Water Uses, Water Rights, and the Habsburg Imperial State in the Mid-nineteenth Century

AbstractThis article analyzes an 1869 law from Cisleithania that defined all running waters as public goods. Economic and political actors debated the issue of water rights over several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, as is shown in contemporary publications, proceedings of assemblies, and administrative archives. The legal solution that was ultimately adopted established the management of water rights and uses according to a particular form of property which was intentionally preferred over a system of private appropriation. Looking in detail at what “public good” meant for the actors, this article argues that settling the legal status of rivers served to both consolidate the imperial state's power over society and to make water resources available to a productivist economic system. The new relationships to the environment that emerged during this time were inseparable from contemporary political and economic developments, and legislating was one way to bind these aspects together. Moreover, the case of water rights in the Habsburg Empire adds nuance to binary oppositions between private property and commons that dominate the study of property regimes and environment today. It invites us to consider how the establishment of a productivist economic system rested on a combination of different forms of property and strong state intervention.

The Western Edge of the Russian Empire and the Polish Uprising of 1830–1831: A Variant of Practice of “Russificationˮ of the Region

Some initial positions in the study of ethnopolitics in a particular region of the Russian Empire – the western region – are determined, while the interrelation of such categories as empire, multiculturalism, Russification, unification, state unity in the context of the Polish Uprising of 1830–1831 is established. On the basis of legislation and archival materials, the conditions, ideas, directions, stages and means of including the territories returned from Poland into the unified political and legal space of the imperial state are consistently considered. The author asserts the idea and creates the belief that the state unity of the Russian Empire was determined by the historically established conditions of the civilizational order both in the center and in the regions.

CRIMES OF THE ARMENIAN FORMATIONS AGAINST THE AZERBAIJANI PEOPLE: IN THE STATEMENT OF HISTORICAL FACTS

      The history of the crimes committed by the Armenian formations and their patrons against the Azerbaijani people has more than 200 years. From the 16th century, new centralized states that arose in Europe and in its east began to wage colonial wars for the acquisition of new lands. In the military-occupation and colonial policy of the Russian Empire, formed in the first half of the 18th century, the South Caucasus, in particular Azerbaijan, occupied a special place. The military-political circles of the Russian Empire preferred to use the Armenians as an instrument of death to implement the occupation plan. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, tsarist Russia resettled more than 1.3 million Armenians from the territory of Iran (during the reign of the Qajar dynasty) and the Ottoman Empire to the South Caucasus. Hostile military-political circles in 1905-1906. royal, in 1918-1920. Soviet Russia, also France, USA and Great Britain; in 1920-1991 THE USSR; and in 1992-2020, along with the Western powers, the Russian Federation continued to use the Armenians as a tool of death to carry out their dirty plans. The Patriotic War, launched by the people of Azerbaijan on September 27, 2020 for the liberation of Karabakh, not only destroyed Armenian fascism, but also frustrated the hostile plans of its patrons. This purposeful policy of the tsarist government continued throughout the 19th century, and as a result, many Armenians resettled in the territory of Northern Azerbaijan. As the tsarist official and publicist N. Shavrov wrote in 1911: “1 million Armenians out of 1 million 300,000 were not local. They were resettled by us." At the beginning of the 20th century, their main patron in the South Caucasus was the Caucasian governor I.I. Vorontsov-Dashkov. In his letter to Nicholas II dated October 12, 1912, he wrote: “By patronizing the Armenians, who always provide us with great services, we have received faithful allies.” The essence of the destructive colonial policy of the Russian Empire in the South Caucasus, accompanied by national conflicts in this region, was perfectly described by Ismail Khan Ziyadkhanov, deputy of the First State Duma from the Elizavetpol province (Ganja - J.B.). During the discussions on the clashes between the Tatars (Azerbaijanis - J.B.) and Armenians in Irevan and on measures to ensure the safety of the population at the 25th meeting of the 1st session of the 1st convocation, held on June 12, 1906, he said: “They told us Muslims: you have been economically enslaved by the Armenians, they are well armed, intending to create their own kingdom, and one day you will see that you are no more. Armenians were told that the idea of pan-Islamism was deeply rooted in all sections of Muslim society and that one day the Muslims would cut you to pieces. The provocation was carried out in this way.  In February 1917, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Provisional Government was formed. By the decision of the Provisional Government, adopted on March 3 of the same year, a special committee for the management of the South Caucasus, OZAKOM, was established. On October 26, 1917, after a military coup in Russia, the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd. The state independence of Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries was recognized in accordance with the documents signed by the chairman of the NCC, V.I. Lenin. However, among the countries of the South Caucasus, the state independence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was not recognized. The main reason for this was not to lose Baku oil. For this reason, the Bolsheviks, who seized power by force, toughened the character of the tsarist colonial policy towards Northern Azerbaijan. The history of the crimes committed by the Armenian fascism against the Azerbaijani people as a tool in the hands of the imperialist states in the 18th-20th centuries is confirmed on the basis of the facts reflected in archival documents and published scientific works. The cited archival documents and scientific sources unambiguously state that as a result of the use of Armenians by the imperialist powers as a tool for the implementation of their aggressive plans, the territories of the Azerbaijani people were occupied and divided, a policy of ethnic cleansing and deportation was carried out. Acts of genocide were committed. As a result, the people of Azerbaijan suffered heavy human and land losses. The Patriotic War, which began on September 27, 2020 and ended with the victory of the Azerbaijani people on November 8, 2020, within 44 days, along with the destruction of Armenian fascism, laid the foundation for the return of what was lost over all periods of history.

The significance of the Russo-Japanese War in the fate of Japan and Asia in the XX century

The article examines the fact of Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War as the starting point of Japan's historical development in the XX century, which determined the vector of further changes in Japanese foreign policy and played a significant role in the fate of Asian nations. In modern Russia, the 1904-1905 war is often perceived as a problem exclusively of Russo-Japanese relations and a factor clouding the prospects of good neighborliness. The author of the article aimed to determine the historical significance of Japan's victory in this conflict as an important moral factor for Japanese society, which had a strong international influence in the future. For this purpose author studied materials about the Russo-Japanese War, events preceding the Russo-Japanese war, its prerequisites, directly on the Russo-Japanese War and its results. Based on the data obtained, the author suggests that the results of the Russo-Japanese War had a decisive influence on Japan's transforming into an imperialist state in the first half of the XX century, in what the main role belongs to the acquired from the war victory conviction about the right and ability of Asian nations to resist European colonialism. It is the point from where the further Japanese militaristic policy of the 1930s and 1940s proceeds, which was of great importance in the history of Asian nations, as well as Russia. The article is intended for a wide range of readers interested in Russian and world history, especially for those who want to learn more about the Russo-Japanese war and the non-obvious consequences of Russia's failure in the conflict with Japan.

Introduction: Global Travel, Exploration, and Comparative Study of Empire

During the late nineteenth century large numbers of long-distance travelers, often elites from imperial states, ventured abroad. The purposes of these travels included for scientific or academic research, for reporting or other information-gathering purposes, and for touristic experiences. These imperial travelers' observations and experiences can be analyzed to provide us a fuller picture of imperial peripheries. Most existing studies of long-distance travel focus on individual travelers' accounts of specific journeys in isolation, rather than in a comparative framework. Comparative study of travel accounts can be used to better understand why different imperial actors supported these sorts of travels, and how written descriptions provide us with varied views of empire. Each travelers' experiences should be analyzed holistically, by investigating their biographical information, identities, class positions, and other individual characteristics, to effectively analyze the significance of their observations.

Millions of Living Dead: Fugitives, the Polish Border, and 18th-Century Russian Society

Millions of Living DeadFugitives, the Polish Border, and 18th-Century Russian Society Evgenii V. Akelev (bio) and Andrey V. Gornostaev (bio) In 1761, Mikhail Lomonosov astutely noted that among other causes of population loss in Russia—such as diseases, murders, and accidents—was the issue of the "living dead" (zhivye pokoiniki): "From border provinces, people leave for other countries, especially for Poland, and, as a result, the Russian Crown loses its subjects." He subsequently compared the Russo-Polish border to a "great hole [velikaia skvazhina] that was impossible to seal" to prevent ordinary people from slipping out of the country. Some fled because of seigniorial demands and conscription, while others, affected by the Schism, moved to the Polish town of Vietka. Finally, he proposed that the Russian government should alleviate the tax burden and eliminate conscription to make borderland residents less likely to flee and use troops to bring the "living dead" back to the empire.1 Lomonosov's concern with population loss was widely shared by his contemporaries and further accentuated by several official reports that mentioned "over a million people" [End Page 269] dwelling abroad.2 Thus in his comments, Lomonosov succinctly captures the essence of a problem that figured on the imperial agenda throughout the 18th century: the existence of a porous western border that created an opportunity for many thousands of Russian subjects to escape and begin a new life in the Commonwealth. From the 1720s onward, Russian rulers became continuously preoccupied with both the scale of emigration to Poland-Lithuania and the state of the western border. They viewed these issues as intertwined, because imperial subjects would not have been able to leave if the border had been sufficiently guarded. Considerable efforts hence were exerted to restrict departures. At the same time, the population flight abroad revealed the most oppressive features of Russia's social order and prompted government administrators to consider existing policies on noble-peasant relations and Old Believers. The most ambitious and problematic point on the agenda, nevertheless, was to discover ways to return fugitives to Russia. This article investigates these interrelated processes by focusing on interactions between the authorities and fugitives (peasants, town residents, Old Believers, soldiers), which took a number of forms—such as petitions, deployment of military force, and issuance of amnesties. Considered together, they allow us to understand the "imperial repertoire," the ruling strategies used by Russian central and provincial officials to deal with specific situations that arose because of the problematic border with Poland-Lithuania. As Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper note, "an imperial repertoire" was not "a preset formula for rule" but improvisations and decisions often "shaped by past practices and constrained by context."3 Specifically, we argue that attention to the porousness of the Russo-Polish border and processes associated with it enables us to view the imperial state not as rigid and limited in its capacity to control the population but as experimenting with various approaches and constantly adapting to changing circumstances along the border and within the country.4 [End Page 270] Likewise, the examination of the western border complicates our understanding of cross-border migrations. Commonly, social historians tend to simplify this issue by presenting it as resistance to oppressive features of the imperial regime and ignoring fugitives' expectations for potential benefits in the receiving country.5 By contrast, historians of borderlands argue that we need to view borders "as historical constructs that empower some at the expense of others," and therefore our task is to understand the effect that borders exert on different people.6 This article demonstrates that ordinary people had motivations and considerations that went beyond resistance and were based on their knowledge of border conditions, advantages, and freedoms available in different places. For those living on the Polish-Lithuanian side, the border represented a bargaining chip that helped them interact with the Russian government at a different level, as independent parties that could make demands and concur with or disregard official orders when they so pleased. The exploration of the early modern Russo-Polish border also contributes to the growing field of borderlands studies, whose scholars actively research the significance of mapping, treaties, demarcations, negotiations, and violence...

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins

Reviewed by: Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins Angus Mitchell Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. By Caroline Elkins. London: The Bodley Head, 2022. The display of the Imperial State Crown adorning the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was a potent reminder that Britain still inhabits a past and present linked by symbols of empire. During the days between her death and state funeral, global news reports recycled a clip of film showing the late queen making a statement on her twenty-first birthday from a garden in Cape Town promising that she would devote her life to “the service of our great imperial family.” Back in 1947, this comment was received with a sense of innocent pride, but the notion of Britain’s “great imperial family” has not aged well. In this latest study to strip away the lustre of empire, Caroline Elkins asks why this is. Legacy of Violence adds to a succession of recent academic interventions revealing the systematised use of force and associated weapons systems required to curate and manage dirty and messy inheritances. Other authoritative works on this shelf include Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire (2019), Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Potential History (2019), Priya Satia, Time’s Monster (2020), and Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums (2020). Each of these interventions has exposed the deceptive premise of empire as an engine of liberal progress and universal benevolence. Instead, Britain’s imperial prowess is shown to have deployed and finessed the technologies of war, secrecy and violence aided by the archive, photography and museums to extend and legitimise belief in liberal imperialism. Beyond the enduring military conflicts, the maintenance of empire became a project of information management, surveillance, cognitive dissonance and Orwellian doublethink. Secret state agencies created an alternative moral universe functioning outside law and democracy. As professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, Caroline Elkins established her reputation for her work on Kenya’s Mau Mau insurgency and her patient examination of Britain’s secret Hanslope Park archives, where many unknown unknowns were stored until they came to light in 2011. Her methodology scrutinises the intersections of history, law, secrecy and transparency and the role of the archive in managing perceptions. A key component of imperial authority was to deny the right to know the truth and to unashamedly manipulate what was known through select release of documentation. The opening section of Legacy of Violence deals with the period from eighteenth-century India to the outbreak of war in 1939, showing the mutually constitutive relationship between imperialism and liberalism and how empire became the faith of the nation. The middle section examines “Empire at War” and the world order that emerged from the empire’s Churchillian years and the increased role of policing tactics, covert military action and information management. Increasingly, the use of “special powers” and emergency regulations were adopted to defend the realm. The final part—Trysts with Destiny—scrutinises the post war / Cold War period and the economic dependence of Britain on the U.S., Europe and “the colonies” to restore national solvency. Elkins brings harrowing insights into the interconnecting and escalating violence flows circulating through a series of imperial trouble spots and the policing tactics used by the personnel who moved from one imperial outpost to another. Threats from communist, nationalist and anti-colonial insurgencies in Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus and Kenya were ruthlessly suppressed through torture and mass incarceration. Evidence of such tactics became potentially incriminating and a challenge to maintaining the moral high ground. Central to her analysis is the idea of legalised lawlessness and how the law was instrumentalised as both policy and in practice to justify systematised violence. In the words of the political philosopher, James Fitzjames Stephen, “law is nothing but regulated force.” Elkins shows how the British belief system, apparently based on the rule of law, human rights and an open society, has constructed a framework of norms that enables the liberal world system to continue to this day to ravage, pollute, slaughter, extract, divide and devastate in the name of progress and development. The legacies of empire are still evident in the...

Wojna w Ukrainie – przyczyny i skutki po ponad roku trwania

The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than a year now and there is no indication that it will end soon. The causes of its outbreak are very complex. One of them was the victory of the counter-revolution and the collapse of socialism, followed by the collapse of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. At that time, fifteen independent republics were established to varying degrees – their disintegration took place not only ideologically and politically, but also economically. In many of them, nationalisms arose or were revived, including those based on religion, which included not only the main former union republics, but also numerous national minorities, particularly the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and the Volga region. Some of them turned into local wars. An important role in the disintegration of the countries of the former Soviet Union and the weakening of the Russian Federation was played by external forces, imperialist states, mainly the US, some European countries, NATO in general, and the rivalling with Russia European Union and other forces of international capital. The war in Ukraine has deeper causes, and in case of Russia’s defeat, it will have further adverse consequences for it as a great power, and may even become the beginning of its disintegration. Hence, the result is the full determination of the Russian ruling forces to achieve victory. At the same time, Ukraine enjoys the support of the entire „global West”, led by the US, NATO, and the European Union. The war was preceded by numerous growing contradictions and accompanying conflicts, which took the form of the ‚Orange Revolution’ in 2004, the so-called Revolution of Dignity and the Maidan coup, the declaration of independence by Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics in 2014. It took another eight years for the conflict to escalate into a full-blown war, although Russia officially still defines it as a „special military operation”.

Buddhism and Imperial States in Medieval China

The subject of the study is Buddhism in the context of the state system of medieval Chinese society. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the place of Buddhism in the traditional Chinese concept of government, as well as in the context of studying the general parameters of the functioning and interaction of religious and secular institutions of government. Special attention is paid to the relationship between the state and Buddhism in medieval China on the example of the analysis of Hui Yuan's polemical treatise "Shamen Bujing wangzhe lun" 沙門 不敬 王者 論 ( A treatise on monks who do not honor the ruler) As a unique monument in the history of ideological thought in China, the main conclusions of the study are that Buddhism was actively used in the politics of the medieval states of China, but it never managed to subdue the state, but on the contrary, it itself turned into an auxiliary means of government. The analysis of Hui Yuan's treatise "Shamen bujing wangzhe lun" was made for the first time" 沙門 不敬 王者 論 ( A treatise on monks who do not honor the ruler). Hui Yuan tried to prove to the Chinese authorities the Sangha's right to autonomy. The treatise provides a theoretical justification for the autonomy of the Buddhist community, Hui Yuan even managed to convince opponents to preserve the monastic sangha's right to independent governance, but Buddhist monasticism in subsequent eras could not maintain its position in imperial China.

Can Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer Save the UK ?

Can Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer Save the <scp>UK</scp> ?

Autocracy, Nationality, Progress: Urban Space and Russian Social Investigations of the 1830s

Abstract The 1820s and 1830s saw the beginnings of the modern social-scientific study of urban life. In Great Britain and France, these years gave rise to the “Dickensian” anxiety about cities as squalid, disease-infested slums. This article examines how the physical space of St. Petersburg and Moscow was represented during these years by four pioneers of the study of Russian urban society – Vasilii Androssov, Aleksandr Bashutskii, Semen Gaevskii, and Andrei Zablotskii-Desiatovskii. Drawing on ideas and methodologies of Western contemporaries, especially Alexander von Humboldt and the French hygienist Louis-René Villermé, they depicted Russia’s capitals on three spatial scales: that of the individual house or street, the city as a whole, and the entire planet. Rejecting the pessimism of their Western counterparts, they depicted St. Petersburg and Moscow as wholesome cities managed by a wise government and inhabited by a benign population. However, they also argued that the forces driving the development of both cities were partly independent of the imperial state and could only be understood by trained experts. They thereby contributed to the rise of a public opinion engaged in critical discussion about Russian society, and bolstered both Nicholas I’s nationalist ideology of Official Nationality and his government’s cautious efforts at socioeconomic modernization.

‘New Russia’ and the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Southern Ukraine

Abstract Russia’s conquest of the northern shores of the Black Sea in the late eighteenth century and their renaming as ‘New Russia’ contributed to a wider movement of colonisation, settlement, and re-signification of territories worldwide under the aegis of imperial ideology. The adoption of the new name was also a way to erase the memory of the former inhabitants of the region—in the case of Southern Ukraine, its Tatar and Cossack populations, as well as its Greek and Jewish minorities. However, the coloniality of ‘New Russia’ was always up for debate in Russian official discourse: because the conquests happened in contiguous territories, Southern Ukraine was both an object of colonisation and an agent of further conquest, especially in the direction of the Caucasus. Inventing ‘New Russia’ thus asserted the colonial and ‘oriental’ significance of the Black Sea steppes, while entrenching Russia’s own imperial status and suggesting a place where Russia’s future might be.

TURKISH INTERVENTION IN SYRIA AND GEOSTRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS ON THE EUROPEAN UNION

Operation "Peace Spring" is an event of major importance in understanding the relationship between Turkey and Syria, the future relations between the two states and the European and international community.Turkey's design of a security zone has created stability for the state in question and destabilized the entire region at the societal level. Thus, the instability generated is a vulnerability for European and international security, and can be exploited by countries that oppose the democratization process or countries that have political andfinancial interests in that area. In today's society, disinformation is a real risk, being a measure implemented by many state and non-state actors in order to achieve security objectives. The phenomenon is also present in the current case study, playing an important role in the evolution of regional instability. The implications for the European Union security stem from soft-power influences in the collective minds of imperialist states that threaten the continent, the continued disinformation of policymakers, and the influence of decision-making indemocratic states. The Operation set a precedent for the current military conflicts in the vicinity of Romania, being visible the intention of the Russian Federation to create a "safety zone", following the recent expansion of democratic and societal values.

The Brazilian Imperial State and the military colonisation of Amazonia (1840-1867)

Resumo: Este artigo apresenta a investigação referente à participação do Estado Imperial brasileiro no processo de ocupação da Amazônia brasileira, no período de 1840 a 1867, no projeto político articulado de colonização das áreas inóspitas consideradas como sertões e de controle da população indígena. O estudo realiza uma análise exploratória, a partir da historiografia especializada e de documentos, acerca do arcabouço jurídico-administrativo do processo de ocupação na região Norte do Brasil. Além disso, apresenta os resultados da pesquisa sobre a colonização militar, por meio do levantamento e análise das fontes produzidas pelo Ministério de Negócios da Guerra, articulando as fontes produzidas com os interesses do Estado brasileiro quando o país ainda trabalhava a construção do território e buscava a sua identidade. Tendo por enfoque a Nova História Política, a análise foi embasada pela documentação produzida pelo Exército no período. Assim, analisamos o papel histórico dessa instituição de Estado destinada ao controle das fronteiras e examinamos as tensões sociais neste espaço em torno da ocupação histórica do território e na construção de um ideal de ordem e civilização desejado pelo Estado.

The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India-China Border, 1842–1962 by Kyle J. Gardner

Gardner gives us a comprehensive account, at once compelling and authoritative, of what he calls the “frontier complex” along the high Himalayas from its early exploration to the 1962 war between India and China. An initial introductory chapter examines the meanings of frontiers, borders, and borderlands in the context of contemporary theories of space and place. He then proceeds to an account of the precolonial history of Ladakh. This high desolate plateau, Gardner insists, was no “geographic periphery,” but a “religious, political and commercial nexus” sustained by trade (above all in pashmina wool, used in fine shawls) between Central Asia, Tibet, and India (28, 59). The territory possessed no marked borders, only “border points” where kingdoms met and taxes were levied.Tension emerged between two visions of a border for Ladakh as the British began exploring into the Himalayas from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Was it to be a “bounded” territory, with a boundary devised to exclude hostile neighbors from advancing into India? Or were the existing “open” borders to be expanded by developing roads and communication? Boundaries of course, as Gardner describes in a fascinating chapter, require surveys, which are meant to produce maps. But in this remote, arid region, the normal “scientific” trigonometric practices of the Survey of India proved impractical. Hence the British devised what they called the “water-parting principle” whereby the edge of a watershed—in this case that of the Indus River—was used to establish a border (81). But the origins of the Indus lay high on the slopes of unmarked and unclimbed ridges, while the local streams themselves, as one official put it, were of a “tortuous, shifting, and erratic character” (71). As a result, even up until 1947, maps of India included no northwestern borders at all. The “cartographical thinking” that imbued maps with authority had failed (62, 88).Control required communications. In 1850 the British began construction of the Hindustan-Tibet Road, followed in 1870 by the Treaty Road negotiated with the Kashmir maharaja to expand access to Central Asian markets. As acknowledgement of British supremacy, the Kashmir maharaja was obliged to submit an annual tribute of one horse and twelve “shawl” goats. (Alas, taken from their lofty habitat, the goats invariably died.) In any case, by the century’s end British interests had shifted from trade to security. Roads initially meant to facilitate movement had, especially with the growth of Russian encroachment, been transformed into “tools for restricting potentially dangerous ‘trans-frontier’ people” (131). In this new climate of “invasion anxieties,” Boundary Commissions flourished, and adventurers like the “frontier hero” Francis Younghusband set out to “open” Tibet. Still, throughout, “a motley assortment of nomads, traders, and goats” remained as “symbols of the limits of imperial state legibility” (178, 179).The concluding chapter takes the reader into the Independence era. In a time of nationalism, nations required boundaries. A geography integrated into the “geobody” of the nation also demanded, in an era of geopolitical rivalries, “a strong and scientific borderline” (229). This left Ladakh in a paradoxical position as both central to emerging national rivalries and yet as an increasingly isolated and ambiguously defined territory. The outcome was Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1955 drawing of a definite, but undemarcated, boundary line, and the consequent Chinese advance across the Aksai Chin plateau. The 1962 war produced the Actual Line of Control, a border, as Gardner points out, based on no particular geographic principle, but nevertheless one central to the Indian nation, even “something to die for” (253).This impressive volume will engage the interest not only of scholars of South Asia but also of geographers, political scientists, and environmental historians who seek to understand the interplay of geography, geopolitics, and the making of states.

Pentingnya Irian Barat Bagi Indonesia

Historically, Indonesia was a former colony of the Dutch East Indies or the former Dutch East Indies. The issue of West Irian as a continuation of the dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands officially only arose at the enda of 1949. At the time, Indonesia was making vigorous efforts to find a away out through negotiations to resolve political disputes between the two sides, by the intercession of the United Nations (UN). The research method used in this study is, History research method, as for the stages of Historical research, namely, heuristics, criticsm, interpretation, and historiography. The data analysis techniques used are historical data analysis techniques. Using documentation and library data collection techniques. A dispute with the Dutch Colonial Government as a result of the colonialist’s appetite to occupy Indonesian territory was resolved in the hague through the round table conference in 1949 which resulted in Dutch recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty and independence. However, in the conference there is still an unresolved issue, namely the status of West Irian. The purposw of The Liberation Of West Irian from dutch neo-capitalists was Sukarno did not want to be indifference again if West Irian was freed and became the henchman of the liberal capitalist imperialist state that Sukarno considered could harm the existence of the Republic Of Infonesia social democratic state at that time.

Заперечення Голодомору: методи та наративи

Hiding of the mass extermination, denying the very fact of extermination are essential components of the crime of genocide. The article analyzes the stages of denial of the Holodomor, highlights the models of this denial, as well as the evolution of the main narratives that opponents of the genocidal qualification of the Holodomor are trying to spread. The Soviet Union consistently denied the Holodomor 1932–1933 and actively opposed the dissemination of information about it. The communist regime’s denial of reality was so widespread and pervasive, that even in 1930th in official documents of state and party authorities marked “for official use” and in some cases even “top secret”, the word “famine” was hardly used. Soviet authorities called the catastrophic famine “food shortages” caused by crop failures. Simultaneously with the blocking of information about the Holodomor, the communist regime resorted to a counter-propaganda operation, which consisted in refuting those reports of starvation and deaths, which, despite all the efforts of the Soviet secret services, infiltrated the West. In the USSR communist authorities used tactics that could be described as “aggressive erasure” to deny the Holodomor. This campaign was a combination of destruction of documentary evidence of a crime with the active intimidation of witnesses, who were unequivocally made aware that they must forget everything they saw. Authorities used repression against those who tried to preserve the memory about the Holodomor. In the late 1980s the soviet communists had to admit that the famine of 1932–1933 did occur in Ukraine, but as an official explanation for those events was proposed a version that absolved the Kremlin of responsibility for the multimillion casualties of the Holodomor. Soviet propaganda claimed that the causes of the famine were: objective difficulties in the period of agricultural transformation, organizational weakness of the newly established collective farms, lack of experienced personnel and agricultural machinery, sabotage by the kulaks etc. The main negative role was allegedly played by the disorganization of agricultural production, which, in turn, was caused by the abandonment of “the Lenin plan of cooperation” of farmers, and the accelerated pace of collectivization. At the same time, the propaganda called the accelerated pace of collectivization a forced step by the Soviet government, which felt threatened by the external invasion of the imperialist states and therefore had to prepare country for war at a rapid pace. At the same time, soviet propaganda continued to deny fact that the famine was anti-Ukrainian. The communist regime claimed that the famine affected the entire territory of the USSR, ad had no local specifics in Ukraine and others regions of the country with densely Ukrainian population (especially the Kuban). Calling the famine a “common tragedy of the entire Soviet Union” authorities insisted that its intensity throughout the USSR seemed to be the same everywhere. Denial of the Holodomor did not stop after the collapse of the USSR. At the beginning of the XXI century struggle against the recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide has become one of the priorities of the policy of memory in the Russian Federation. The main narratives of denying the Holodomor today are the allegations that the famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine was not intentional, was not related to the anti-Ukrainian policy of the Bolsheviks, did not have fatal demographic and social consequences. A characteristic feature of the denial of the Holodomor in Russia in the second half of the 2000s was its twofold nature: along with the moderate denial of an academic nature there was an aggressive propaganda narrative of polemical and journalistic denial, the main purpose of which was anti-Ukrainian mobilization of Russian society.