Thesiss

This thesis examines how the unbound world of the Don steppe frontier became a borderland of the Russian empire. It connects the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman states in the Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who evolved from an open, multiethnic, fra…

Unknown to most Western and many Ukrainian historians, the city of Kamianets-Podilsky was one of the larger and more important urban centers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the early modern period. The city's long history as an urban administrative, cultural and eco…

Russia's relationship with the Kazakhs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries evolved from that of a pre-modern Muscovite state with several Inner-Asian nomadic neighbors, to that of a more centralized bureaucratic Russian Empire influenced by the European Enlightenment. The…

Located in the north of Kazakhstan and extending the entire width of the country, the Kazakh Steppe is a temperate grassland ideal for the mobile pastoralism Kazakhs had practiced for thousands of years prior to the Russian Empire’s encroachment on the region. An occupation natu…

Rangelands are a globally abundant ecosystem type that provides key ecosystem services and supports the livelihoods of millions of people. In western North America, rangelands are widely used for livestock grazing; in some cases, livestock grazing is associated with conversion t…