Italian Imperialism Research Articles

Forging Ethno-Nationalism in Tigray (1943–1975)

ABSTRACT In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ethiopia’s Tigrayan elites harbored deep-seated resentments toward the Shewa Amhara ruling class, mainly driven by the suppression of the 1943 Tigrayan peasant rebellion. These resentments catalyzed the rise of ethnonational consciousness within Tigray, manifested through deliberate attempts to undermine Ethiopian culture, tradition, and heritage with a paradoxical ownership claim of Abyssinian history. Tigray’s pivotal role as the nucleus of the Aksumite civilization within the broader Abyssinian context is palpable memory. This civilization extended across territories such as Eritrea and Amhara, encompassing various less-visible groups. Tigrayans featured prominently in the Solomonic Dynasty, stretching from the legendary Queen of Sheba to the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution that toppled Emperor Haile Selassie (r. 1930–1974). Before the advent of Italian imperialism in Eritrea and the Southward expansion of Menelik II (r. 1889–1913), the Tigrigna-speaking regions, along with the Amhara, had served as the epicenter of the Abyssinian politics and cultural sphere. This paper scrutinizes the emergence of Tigrayan ethno-nationalism amid the Marxist Revolution, juxtaposing it against entrenched Ethiopian values. It also highlights the historical significance of Welkait (a generic term used to refer to an area west of river Tekezé that includes Welkait itself, Telemt, Teg,edé, and Humera) and Raya – areas annexed by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991 and still in contention. The author offers an all-encompassing analysis, incorporating a wealth of secondary and primary historical sources, including archives, chronicles, inscriptions, memoirs, traveler accounts, and oral narratives.

Hegel and the Hatäta Zär'a Ya‛ǝqob: Africa in the Philosophy of History and the History of Philosophy

Abstract This article explores an episode in the reception of Hegel's philosophy of history and historiography of philosophy with reference to the question of the possibility of non-Western philosophy, in particular African philosophy. Section I briefly outlines the contents of the Hatäta Zär'a Ya‛ǝqob and the controversy over its authorship, focusing in particular on the argument of the Ethiopianist and scholar of Semitic languages Carlo Conti Rossini that ‘rationalistic’ philosophy was impossible in Ethiopia. In section II I suggest that a major component of the intellectual background to this notion of the impossibility of philosophy in Africa can be traced to Hegel's philosophy of history. To substantiate this claim I begin by providing an account of the broader historiographical shift between 1780 and 1830, in which Africa and Asia came to be excluded from the history of philosophy, and I suggest that Hegel's philosophy of history was decisive in this process. I examine how Hegel's account of history as the realization and actualization of freedom goes together with the development of cultural production culminating in philosophy, and how both of these processes (if they are really separate processes at all), can be mapped onto particular historical-geographical populations and cultures. I suggest that, even though this was not Hegel's intention, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this served as a cultural justification for political domination: those who are unfree are unfree because they are unthinking (unphilosophical), and those who are unthinking cannot be free. Finally in section III I connect this Hegelian conception to Conti Rossini's work, both his article on the Hatäta and as apologist for Italian imperialism. I conclude by reflecting on what this underexplored connection between Hegel and early twentieth-century theorists of culture might mean for attempts to construct global histories of philosophy.

Mare Nostrum: Italy and the Mediterranean of Ancient Rome in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract The Mediterranean has occupied a prominent role in the political imaginary of Italian Fascisms, past and present. In the 1920s to the early 1940s, Fascist Italy’s imperial project used the concept of mare nostrum – our sea – taken from the vocabulary of Roman antiquity, to anchor modern Italian imperialism within the authority of the classical past. In the postwar years, following decolonization in Africa, mare nostrum receded from popular discourse, previous claims to the Mediterranean suppressed. However, in the context of the so-called refugee crisis, Italy resurrected mare nostrum, in the naming of its military-humanitarian operation, a move rejected by the contemporary Italian far right. This article argues that configurations of the Mediterranean of ancient Rome have served to yoke Africa to Italy when articulated into a Fascist, imperial ideology, as well as to reify the boundaries between Europe and the non-European other, in the xenophobic discourse of the contemporary Italian far right.

Religion as Resistance: Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya

Religion as Resistance: Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya

Against Japanese and Italian Imperialism : The Anti-War Campaigns of Communist International Trade Union Organizations, 1931 – 1936

This essay discusses the international anti-war campaigns of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ISH) and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) against Japanese imperialism in Manchuria and Italian imperialism in Ethiopia during the first half of the 1930s. Both crises propelled international campaigns, ‘Hands off China’ and ‘Hands off Abyssinia’, that were orchestrated by the Third (Communist) International or the Comintern and the Red International of Labour Unions ( Profintern ) and their affiliated organisations such as the ISH and ITUCNW. Comintern / Profintern anti-war campaigns were organized under the banner of the prevailing ‘class-against-class’ strategy. In practice, this meant that the campaigns were both calls for international solidarity and at the same time attempts to position communist activities against those of the ‘social fascists’, i.e., socialist, social democratic, reformist and / or syndicalist controlled parties and trade unions.

From a Place in the Sun to the Heart of Darkness: Contemporary Crime Fiction and Italy’s Colonial Past

ABSTRACTFocussing on a group of recent novels set against the background of Italy’s colonies in East Africa during the Fascist period, this essay aims at investigating a fundamental tension within the tradition of Italian crime fiction, and, more specifically, of historical crime fiction. On the one hand, by shedding light into the darker and less explored corners of Italy’s past, the genre aims at serving as a sort of ‘new social novel’, to paraphrase the title of a 2004 book by Marco Sangiorgi and Luca Telò. On the other, the conventions and generic requirements of crime and detective fiction – in particular, its frequent recourse to stereotyped situations and characters – can hamper the reconstruction of complex experiences such as that of Italian colonialism. A detailed discussion of Giorgio Ballario’s novels featuring the Major of the Carabinieri Aldo Morosini (2008–2012), Davide Longo’s Un mattino a Irgalem (2001), Luciano Marrocu’s Debrà Libanòs (2002), and Andrea Camilleri’s La presa di Macallé (2003) will show how for contemporary Italian writers, as for many authors of late 19th- and 20th-century colonial novels, Africa often continues to be an empty space upon which to project European fantasies, regardless of whether the author’s intention is a critique or a celebration of empire. Only Camilleri manages to provide a more complex account of Italian imperialism by shifting his attention from the colonies themselves to the impact of colonialism upon the ‘motherland’, thus bringing into relief the constitutive function of colonialism in the formation of Fascist ideology.

History’s Flagstones: Nuruddin Farah and Other Literary Responses to Italian Imperialism in East Africa

In this essay I revisit Nuruddin Farah and argue for the importance of reading his work in conversation with the work of so-called second-generation Italian migrant writers like Igiaba Scego, Ubax Ali Cristina Farah, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, and Gabriella Ghermandi. I present an argument for viewing these writers as part of a transnational and translinguistic tradition of novel writing which responds to Italian imperialism in the Horn of Africa both during the colonial and neo-colonial periods. Nuruddin Farah's internationally acclaimed voice is part of a multilingual diasporic postcolonial tradition with an urgent ethic of remembrance and redress focused on Italian colonial discourses and the history and stories of the victims of Italian imperialism. This is an element of his work which has been seen as peripheral in Farah scholarship in the English-speaking Academy, while Italian scholars have noticed Farah's links with Italy but failed to recognize their importance or draw his work in a meaningful way into studies of Italian postcolonial literature. This state of affairs arises out of a failure to take a transnational and translinguistic view of what is essentially a novelistic tradition born in exile. This essay cannot pretend to be a comprehensive comparative reading of these writers; instead, it presents an argument for the urgency of such a reading. I show that Nuruddin Farah, despite his choice to write in English, is one of the most important contributors to the tradition of postcolonial Italian literature. I understand this to be not a national literature that is necessarily written in Italian, as has traditionally been the case, but rather as literature that contributes towards, to use Ato Quayson's terms, postcolonializing the Italian cultural sphere.

Colonising Italians: Italian Imperialism and Agricultural ‘Colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914

ABSTRACTThe historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy's empire-building and Australia's struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy's foreign policies after 1901 opened commercial opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy's diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.

Comparative Study of the Political View of Abdur-Rahman Al-Kawakibi and Shakib Arsalan

Both al-Kawakibi and Arsalan lived in late nineteenth century characterised with decline of the Muslim nations and the British, French and Italian imperialism. Muslims became promoters of the imperialist cause and Muslim elites were separating religion from politics an idea en route to secularism. The state of Muslims during this period was same everywhere, though varies in degree. Muslims lag far behind in almost everything. Al-Kawakibi and Arsalan rose to identify the causes of the decline of the Muslim ummah as majorly an internal factor than external. Similarly they promoted the return to Al-Qur’an and fundamental principles of Islam, and further advocated Knowledge for all, without dichotomy between religion and science. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p539

Italian Liberal Imperialism in China: A Review of the State of the Field

AbstractThe story of Italian imperialism in China is an almost forgotten one. Few know that the Kingdom of Italy was on the verge of war with the Qing Empire in 1899 and that, following its participation in the Boxer War a year later, it acquired a concession in Tianjin, which it kept until 1947. This nearly forgotten episode is important, however, for understanding Italian imperialism as a whole. For a number of years, research of Italian imperialist past has tended to pay more attention to fascist imperialism at the expense of liberal imperialism, at times making Italian imperialism in general appear as an outgrowth of fascism. This is dangerously misleading, as it was imperialism of the liberal era that first revealed expansionistic tendencies that would characterise Italian fascism half a century later. The historical importance of Italian liberal imperialism as a precursor of fascist imperialism and an important early signal of totalitarian proclivities of Italian political elites needs, therefore, to be critically reappraised.

Transformations of fascist imperialism: Greece from Le soldatesse (1965) to Mediterraneo (1991)

Abstract The article demonstrates the power of sociopolitical and cultural contexts that dictated the interpretations of fascist imperialism in the two most important films dealing with the wartime occupation of Greece. Analysis of both films is positioned in relation to the history of the wartime occupation, when Italian soldiers were moved by racist assumptions, rejected Greek culture and willingly perpetrated crimes against the Greek people. From war’s end to the early 1960s, official memory of brutal fascist imperialism had been obscured by a powerful myth that the Italian people had been good anti-fascists and sympathetic victims during World War II. But events of the early 1960s created a political crisis that demanded re-evaluation of the power and dangers posed by Italian fascism. The article explores the means by which Valerio Zurlini’s 1965 Le soldatesse/The Camp Followers attempted to awaken national memory of imperial exploitation and inspire in audiences both a powerful collective guilt and consciousness of the urgent necessity to combat neo-fascism. The article also exposes the influence of the sexual revolution on this film’s depiction of consensual heterosexual sex as the primary mechanism for peaceful Italo–Greek relations. It was this sensual approach to empire and not the anti-neo-fascist political mission that tied The Camp Followers to Gabriele Salvatores’ 1991 Mediterraneo. Inspired by the new political apathy and consumer culture of the 1980s and early 1990s, Mediterraneo created an imaginary fascist empire devoid of racism and the ideological commitments that divided Italian from Greek. The new film created the possibility of an Italian imperialism defined by leisure, an alteration of history that could only seem reasonable in a world redefined by sensual consumerism. The stark differences between these two films’ depictions of Italians in the fascist empire reflects a larger transformation of Italian national identity.

Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism. By Mia Fuller. Architext Series. Edited by, Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King. London: Routledge, 2007. Pp. xiv+273. $125.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsModerns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism. By Mia Fuller. Architext Series. Edited by, Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King. London: Routledge, 2007. Pp. xiv+273. $125.00.David RifkindDavid RifkindFlorida International University Search for more articles by this author Florida International UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 82, Number 1March 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649472 Views: 69Total views on this site © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Pensiero verticale: negazione della mediterraneità e radicamento terrestere in Vincenzo Cuoco

Rediscovered in fascist Italy, when Cuoco’s epistolary novel was read in a nationalist and anti-Jacobenean key, or even as the allegorical anticipation of Mussolini’s Italian imperialism, Plato in Italy is today regarded as a minor literary work to be quickly forgotten and archived as the pathological allegory of all the evils of Italian nationalism. By focusing on the figure of the Mediterranean, the reading proposed by this essay aims at re-reading Plato in Italy in a figural, rather than allegorical, way: its goal is to question canonical interpretations of the novel by restituting Cuoco’s nationalism to its radically anti-authoritarian logics.

Moderns abroad: Architecture, cities and Italian imperialism, by Mia Fuller, London and New York, Routledge, 2006, 273 pp., £61.00 (hardback) ISBN-978-0415-19463-1

Moderns abroad: Architecture, cities and Italian imperialism, by Mia Fuller, London and New York, Routledge, 2006, 273 pp., £61.00 (hardback) ISBN-978-0415-19463-1 Conventional accounts of Italian ...

Review: Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism, by Mia Fuller

Review: <i>Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities, and Italian Imperialism</i>, by Mia Fuller

The ‘Northern Dominator’ and the Mare Nostrum: Fascist Italy's ‘Cultural War’ in Malta

Within the wider attempt to transform Italian communities abroad into Fascist colonies, the Italian Fasci Abroad sought to build nationalist propaganda in the Mediterranean. The irredentist activities and the propaganda of the Fasci in Malta alarmed the British governors on the island, the British government and MI5. This article analyses the cultural conflict organised in Maltese schools, bookshops and universities by the Italian nationalists against the British protectorate–a conflict the British suspected could be followed by military activity, in particular when Italy began building its empire in Ethiopia. The nationalist offensive was supported in the 1920s and, more vigorously, in the 1930s by the Fasci, the Italian consulate on the island and, ultimately, the Italian government. Not even the Second World War and the bombing of Malta by the Italian air force concluded the conflict between Italian and British imperialism on the island.

Mia Fuller, Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xiv + 280pp. 74 figures. Bibliography. £58.00

<b>Mia Fuller</b>, <i>Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xiv + 280pp. 74 figures. Bibliography. £58.00

ANTI-COLONIALISM AND THE ITALIAN LEFT

Italy was, for a short period, an empire; and yet unlike other empires, it apparently lacked a vocal anti-colonial element. This article draws attention to the ambivalence of the Italian response to colonialism, by focusing on a specific moment of Italy's engagement with empire: the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini in 1935. On the one hand, this colonial war (one of the very last to be fought) consolidated a mass consensus around the regime. However, the Ethiopian war can also be read as the first opportunity that the Italian left had to articulate its anti-fascism on an international scale. The archives documenting the activities of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) between 1935 and 1946 allow us to reconstruct an oppositional narrative to colonialism that developed among the Italian left in the fascist years. The PCI sent an emissary, Ilio Barontini, to Ethiopia, to organize resistance against the Italian occupying forces. This mission, together with other anti-colonial activities of the PCI in those years, can be read as a pre-history of Italian anti-fascist resistance. The men who went to Ethiopia on an anti-colonial mission were there fighting against some of their fellow Italians, foreshadowing the civil war that would mark the Resistenza between 1943 and 1945. While Italian imperialism was among the bloodiest colonial enterprises ever undertaken, it is shown that in the 1930s there did emerge a vibrant critique of it, whose energies flowed into the anti-fascist struggle in the war years.

Das venezianische Albanien (1392-1479) by Oliver Jens s&gt; Schmitt (review)

350 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 immediate eastern neighbours. For the Anglophone reader Davies's and Moorhouse's work will open a very large window on the complex yet fascinating world of Central Europe, made even more compelling by their exertions. Abingdon School W. H. ZAWADZKI Schmitt,OliverJens. Dasvenezianische Albanien (I392-I479). SudosteuropaischeArbeiten , Ii o. R. Oldenbourg, Munich, 2001 . 70I pp. Maps. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography.Index. C69.8o. TWENTY years afterAlain Ducellier published his massiveLafafademaritime de l'Albanie. Durazzoet Valona duXIe auXVesiecle(Thessaloniki, I98I), a worthy and no less substantial sequel has been supplied by Oliver Jens Schmitt. Ducellier's book, despite its title, made little attemptto penetrate the fifteenth century;in dealing with politics, it emphasized the ties between Albania and the kingdom of Naples, and in dealing with trade it made heavy use of the archivesof Dubrovnik. Schmitt'sbook isbased on Venetian evidence, but like Ducellier he aimsto encompass a verywide range of topics.Thus he examines the Albanian aristocracy, homing in on noble families such as the Balshi, Thopia and Kastriota, whose outside ties, whether to the Serbs, the Neapolitans or the Ottomans, greatly affected the political evolution of the Albanian lands. He also passes under review, though briefly, the merchants who were present at Shkoder and other trading centres; and he has useful comments on the smaller towns and villages as well their economy, population, administration,as part of the Venetian overseas empire. Particularly notable is his analysis of the town statutes of Shkoder, based on a manuscriptin the Museo Correrin Venice. (Itis, however, a pity that he does not make more use of the physical evidence provided by the Rozafat citadel that stillsurvivesoverlookingShkoder).This leads him to presentan image of Albania under Venetian rule in which peoples, languages and religions coexisted and even intermingled, with speakers of Albanian, Dalmatian, Italian, and Slavonic tongues doing business together as they traded in fish, salt and other basic foodstuffs.His concern is with the period between the Venetian acquisition of Shkoder (Scutari) in the aftermath of the battle of Kossovo/Kosova and its loss as Ottoman power in Albania was steadily enforced, notwithstandingthe rearguardmovement led by Skanderbeg. There is thus much new and carefully digested material in this book. Inevitably, Schmitt covers some ground that is reasonablyfamiliar.On trade, he often relies on the work of Ducellier and Hrabak, based on the Ragusan archives. However, he does mobilize effectively the mass of information contained in Valentini'sActaAlbaniae Veneta (25 vols, Munich/Palermo/Milan, 1967-75). This is also the major source for his account of the political relationshipbetween Venice and the Albanian coast, the subjectof Ioo pages of variabledensity:he providesmuch detail on the earliestphases, but in later decades his discussion is too rapid and too lightly footnoted. Although he is anxious to place Skanderbegin the wider context of Venetian relationswith Albania, he explains less fully the intimate ties linking Skanderbeg to the REVIEWS 35I Neapolitan court, or how the politics of Italy in the era of the Peace of Lodi and the Congress of Mantua influenced the attitude of Venice towards the Turks. Yet he distances himself from some earlier, Albanian, historiography which predictably cast Skanderbegas the national hero defending Shqiperia against Italian imperialism (the Venetians occupying the role of Mussolini's Fascists here). Albanian scholarship on the Venetian presence in Albania culminated in L. Malltezi's Qytet e bregdetit shqiptar gjatM sundimit venedikas ('The Albanian Coastal Cities under Venetian Domination', Tirana, I988); and a great virtue of Schmitt's book is his review of existing literatureon medieval Albania, includingitemsthatremainvirtuallyinaccessiblein westernlibraries. Schmitt is unduly modest about the significance of his work. He contends that 'Venice's commercial interest lay not in Albania, but in the Levant' (p. 222). While no one would deny that the galleyfleetsbound forAlexandria were the glory of Venetian commerce, it is also clearfrom Schmitt'sworkthat the Adriatic was much more than a route to the East. For he also observes (p. 242) that the loss of Dalmatia to the Hungarians in 1350 created a crisis for Venice: the lack of secure harbours in the Middle Adriatic made the acquisition of dominion in northernAlbania especiallyvaluable. In addition, the goods to be acquired there, though modest...

Les trois christianismes et la Russie: Les voyageurs occidentaux face à l'Église orthodoxe russe XVe-XVIIIe siècle by Francine-Dominique s&gt; Liechtenhan (review)

REVIEWS 35I Neapolitan court, or how the politics of Italy in the era of the Peace of Lodi and the Congress of Mantua influenced the attitude of Venice towards the Turks. Yet he distances himself from some earlier, Albanian, historiography which predictably cast Skanderbegas the national hero defending Shqiperia against Italian imperialism (the Venetians occupying the role of Mussolini's Fascists here). Albanian scholarship on the Venetian presence in Albania culminated in L. Malltezi's Qytet e bregdetit shqiptar gjatM sundimit venedikas ('The Albanian Coastal Cities under Venetian Domination', Tirana, I988); and a great virtue of Schmitt's book is his review of existing literatureon medieval Albania, includingitemsthatremainvirtuallyinaccessiblein westernlibraries. Schmitt is unduly modest about the significance of his work. He contends that 'Venice's commercial interest lay not in Albania, but in the Levant' (p. 222). While no one would deny that the galleyfleetsbound forAlexandria were the glory of Venetian commerce, it is also clearfrom Schmitt'sworkthat the Adriatic was much more than a route to the East. For he also observes (p. 242) that the loss of Dalmatia to the Hungarians in 1350 created a crisis for Venice: the lack of secure harbours in the Middle Adriatic made the acquisition of dominion in northernAlbania especiallyvaluable. In addition, the goods to be acquired there, though modest, were the basic commodities without which the Serenissimacould not feed its substantialpopulation. But Venetian involvement dragged the Republic into a diplomatic quagmire. Serbs, Ottomans, Neapolitans, Hungarians and local magnates all vied for influence. In the fifteenthcenturyVenice did not quite know whetherto fight the Turksor to appease them. In Albania Venice had not merely a 'bulwark' (p. 640) against the Ottomans, but a source of grain and salt which Italian businessmen were keen to exploit. With the loss of Shkoder in 1479 the Ottoman threat to the Adriatic became clearer than ever: a year later the Turkslaunched their attackagainst Otranto in southernItaly. Venice did not let go of its interestsin the southernAdriatic, but henceforth had to find new ways to expressthem. Gonville andCaiusCollege DAVID ABULAFIA Cambridge Liechtenhan, Francine-Dominique. Les trois christianismes et la Russie. Les voyageurs occidentaux face a'l'Egliseorthodoxe russe XVe-XVIIIesiecle.Mondes russes: Etats, Societes, Nations. Editions CNRS, Paris, 2002. 208 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?22.00 (paperback). FRANCINE-DOMINIQUE LIECHTENHAN dedicated her monograph to the image of Russia as seen throughthe eyes of westerntravellerswho visitedthe country over three hundred years from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.It is a commonplace that forthe population of Europein the middle ages and early modern period the notion of 'the other' was defined more in terms of religion or Christian denomination than nation or ethnicity. However, the subject of the interaction of cultures and their attempts at mutual categorization and interpretation is vast and enormously complex, and one that is likely to continue to provoke the interest of researchers.The 352 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 book under review belongs in the category of workselaboratingon that topic. This is an ambitiousproject,whose realizationgenerallydoes not fall shortof itspromise. The monograph consistsof fourparts,each dealing with aspectsof Russian religious and cultural life as represented in the memoirs, travelogues, and letters written by Italian, German, Swedish, English, Dutch, Danish, and French travellers,merchants and diplomats. The four parts are arranged in chronologicalorder.PartOne, entitled'Firstencounters(I 240- I584)', throws light on the period between the Mongol conquest of Rus'in the mid thirteenth centuryto the end of the turbulentreign of Ivan IV (hereand subsequentlyall translations from the original French are the reviewer's). Part Two: 'The Orthodox, the Catholics and the Protestants (I584-I689)', describes the uneasyrelationsbetween theMuscovitesandtheirforeignvisitors,representatives of the two majorbranchesof westernChristianity.The authormasterfully demonstrates how these relationswere tainted by bitter feelings between the Catholics and Protestants,who tended to add accusationsof fallingin with the 'schismatics',or the 'papists',respectively,to the usual stereotypicalcondemnations of the Orthodox Russiansforbeing ignorant,immoral, and 'pagan'in theirhabitsand customs. PartThree: 'The church of progress(I689-I725)' is dedicated to the epoch of Peter I, who made it his aim to subjectthe Church to the 'reason of the state', and succeeded in this endeavour famously if precipitously. Finally, Part Four:'Heiresses of Peter the Great (I725-I...