The Russian Empire 1450-1801 / Nancy Shields Kollmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kollmann, Nancy Shields, 1950- author.

Series:

Oxford history of early modern Europe

Oxford History of Early Modern Europe

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russia--History.

Russia.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 497 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system.

Contents:

Part I Assembling the Empire

1 Land, People, and Global Context 21

2 De Facto Empire: The Rise of Moscow 41

3 Assembling Empire: The First Centuries 55

4 Eighteenth-Century Expansion: Siberia and Steppe 84

5 Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century 103

Part II The Muscovite Empire Through the Seventeenth Century

6 Broadcasting Legitimacy 129

7 The State Wields its Power 160

8 Trade, Tax, and Production 187

9 Co-optation: Creating an Elite 207

10 Rural Taxpayers: Peasants and Beyond 222

11 Towns and Townsmen 235

12 Varieties of Orthodoxy 244

Part III The Century of Empire: Russia in the Eighteenth Century

13 Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center 267

14 Army and Administration 296

15 Fiscal Policy and Trade 316

16 Surveillance and Control in Imperial Expansion 335

17 Soslovie, Serfs, and Society on the Move 355

18 Towns, Townsmen, and Urban Reform 375

19 Confessionalization in a Multi-ethnic Empire 396

20 Maintaining Orthodoxy 410

21 Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life 427.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199280513

0199280517

OCLC:

969962873