- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 Land, People, and Global Context
- 2 De Facto Empire
- 3 Assembling Empire
- 4 Eighteenth-Century Expansion
- 5 Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century
- 6 Broadcasting Legitimacy
- 7 The State Wields its Power
- 8 Trade, Tax, and Production
- 9 Co-optation
- 10 Rural Taxpayers
- 11 Towns and Townsmen
- 12 Varieties of Orthodoxy
- 13 Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center
- 14 Army and Administration
- 15 Fiscal Policy and Trade
- 16 Surveillance and Control in Imperial Expansion
- 17 <i>Soslovie</i>, Serfs, and Society on the Move
- 18 Towns, Townsmen, and Urban Reform
- 19 Confessionalization in a Multi-ethnic Empire
- 20 Maintaining Orthodoxy
- 21 Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life
- Conclusion
- Index
Introduction
Introduction
The Russian Empire 1450–1801
- Chapter:
- (p.1) Introduction
- Source:
- The Russian Empire 1450-1801
- Author(s):
Nancy Shields Kollmann
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
The introductory chapter develops the theory of the early modern Russian empire as an “empire of difference,” typical of large continental Eurasian empires. It explores strategies of governing such empires: coercion; broadcasting a supranational ideology by enacting and embodying ideology in ritual and the built environment; constructing the minimal elites, institutions, and practices (taxation and mobilization of resources, military presence and recruitment, criminal justice) needed to govern; tolerating local traditions, languages, and religions where they did not threaten those central goals. It also explores motivations for empire building, finding trade and resources the primary drivers of empire in both early modern Europe and Russia.
Keywords: empire, Eurasia, politics of difference, state building, ideology, Mongol empire, Silk Road, ritual, Kyiv Rus’, Ottoman empire
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 Land, People, and Global Context
- 2 De Facto Empire
- 3 Assembling Empire
- 4 Eighteenth-Century Expansion
- 5 Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century
- 6 Broadcasting Legitimacy
- 7 The State Wields its Power
- 8 Trade, Tax, and Production
- 9 Co-optation
- 10 Rural Taxpayers
- 11 Towns and Townsmen
- 12 Varieties of Orthodoxy
- 13 Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center
- 14 Army and Administration
- 15 Fiscal Policy and Trade
- 16 Surveillance and Control in Imperial Expansion
- 17 <i>Soslovie</i>, Serfs, and Society on the Move
- 18 Towns, Townsmen, and Urban Reform
- 19 Confessionalization in a Multi-ethnic Empire
- 20 Maintaining Orthodoxy
- 21 Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life
- Conclusion
- Index
