A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600-1700: From Russian to Global History

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A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600-1700 proposes a new language for studying and conceptualizing the spaces, societies, and institutions that existed on the territory of todays Northern Eurasia. This is not the story of a certain present-day state or people evolving through consecutive historical stages. Rather, the book is a modern analytical approach to the problem of human diversity as a fundamental social condition. Through cooperation and confrontation, various attempts to manage diversity fostered processes of societal self-organization, as new ideas, practices, and institutions were developed virtually from scratch or radically altered. Essentially, this is the story of individuals and societies creatively responding to their natural and social environments in unique historical circumstances. This volume explores how the mutual interactions of several local socio-political arrangements, and attempts to integrate with one of the universal cultures of the time, caused a string of unintended consequences. As a result, the enormous landmass from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, from the Polar Circle in the north to the steppe belt in the south was divided among several regional powers. Ultimately unable to overtake each other by military force, they were locked in a zero-sum game until the uneven development of modern state institutions tilted the balance in favor of one of them Russia.

Author Bio

Ilya Gerasimov is co-founder and the executive editor of Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space. He has published several books and edited volumes in Russia and the US, most recently Plebeian Modernity: Social Practices, Illegality, and the Urban Poor in Russia, 19051917 (2018) Sergey Glebov is Professor of Russian history at Smith College and Amherst College, USA. He is the author of From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s 1930s (2017). Marina B. Mogilner is Edward and Marianna Thaden Chair in Russian and East European Intellectual History and Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. She is the author of Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire (2023); A Race for the Future: Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness (2022); and Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia (2013). All three, along with Alexander Semyonov, are founding editors of Ab Imperio Quarterly.