This dissertation examines the emergence of the Qājār monarchy of Iran (1786 – 1925) from the vantage point of the Caspian Sea. It examines the ways in which eighteenth-century autonomous rulers of northern Iran harnessed the resources and wealth of the Caspian littoral to conso…
This dissertation explores the issue of fugitive peasants by focusing primarily on the Volga-Urals region of Russia and situating it within the broader imperial population policy between 1649 and 1796. In the Law Code of 1649, Russia definitively bound peasants of all ranks to t…
This dissertation examines the religious transformation of the Volga-Ural Muslim community during the long nineteenth century with a special focus on the ulama and shari'a . It argues that these Islamic institutions as well as the Muslim population have experienced important cha…
This dissertation considers the foundation of discourses of Orientalism and Postcolonialism in representations of the Caucasus in the literature of Russians and Muslims of the empire from 1828 through 1920. From the mid-nineteenth century through World War I, the Russian empire …
This dissertation examines the relationship between leadership politics and the public articulation of collective identity. It explores the ways in which discussions about identity related to power, authority, and politics at the community level. Focusing primarily upon the Musl…
This dissertation is a study of imperial epistemology—the Russian Empire's attempts to produce useful knowledge about the Kazakh steppe, and the complex interrelationships between geographic, ethnographic, and statistical accounts of the region and imperial power. The dissertati…
This dissertation introduces the concept of Russophonia, which refers to the widespread and variegated uses of the Russian language outside of the customary boundaries of ethnicity and nation. Using the designations of Anglophone, Francophone, and Sinophone literature as a model…
During the First World War, the Russian Caucasian Army had occupied a territory comprising the Ottoman provinces of Trabzon, Erzurum, Van, and, for a shorter period, Bitlis. The region that the Russian forces occupied was depopulated to a great extent due to the deportation and …
This study examines the process of incorporation into the Russian Empire of the Western Georgian principality of Guria from early contacts to actual annexation. It uses Cyril Toumanoff's concept of dynasticism as the framework for explaining the earlier emergence of Guria as an …
This dissertation contrasts the emergence of Jewish newspaper cultures in the Russian and Ottoman empires in the last decades of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century. To do so, it explores the first daily newspapers to be published in Yiddish and Judeo-Spanis…
In the early twentieth century the Ottoman Empire experienced vibrant intellectual debates on Islam and nationalism. A significant contribution to these debates came from Turkish Muslim intellectuals from Russia who immigrated to Istanbul in this period. This dissertation is on …
On 8 April 1783 Catherine II annexed the Crimean khanate, introducing a predominantly Muslim population into Russia for the first time in over two hundred years. The new territory brought roughly 300,000 new subjects into the imperial fold, and Catherine endowed them with a set …
This thesis examines Russian rule in Turkestan in the Tsarist period, with a particular focus on the city and province of Samarkand. Throughout, comparisons are made with the methods used by the British in India when confronted with similar colonial dilemmas. The thesis is based…
This dissertation analyzes the ideology and activities of the Black Hundred movement at the end of the Imperial period in Russia (1905-1917). It seeks to explain the reasons for the sudden, rapid expansion of Black Hundred organizations in 1905, as well as the causes of their de…
This dissertation examines the transformation of the Bashkir society from a nomadic and semi-nomadic society to a sedentary society under the Russian empire's control from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. In particular, it analyzes inter-ethnic relations and the …
This study examines the transformation of undergone by `ulama or Muslim religious scholars of the Russian Empire's Volga-Ural region from the 1860s and to the eve of the Russian Civil War. Previous studies of Volga-Ural Muslims in this period have examined the activities of indi…
"1917 was a year of calamitous events, and one of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution, leading historian of World War I David Stevenson examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. …