Imperial Rule

The Comparative Ecology of Complex Frontiers

The Comparative Ecology of Complex Frontiers ALFRED J. RIEBER The advance and defense of frontiers has always played a central role in the destiny of continental, Eurasian conquest empires. Frontier maintenance absorbed large resources, influenced the evolution of imperial ideologies and institutions and largely defined relations with the external world. Attempts to consolidate and incorporate frontiers into the imperial body politic left a tripartite legacy to both the peoples and the nation states that emerged following the retreat and collapse of the Eurasian Empires during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first legacy was a tradition of violence and instability that characterized the histories of the frontiers along the peripheries of both the old empires and the successor states. A second legacy was the “great nation” complex. Successor states particularly in Eastern Europe expressed vague aspirations occasionally embedded in concrete policies aimed at reestablishing historic boundaries irrespective of ethnic identities or else incorporating all members of their nationality however widely dispersed among other states. Either way they reproduced some of the same internal tensions of the defunct empires. A third legacy was the syndrome of the divided nation. The breakup of empires did not lead to redrawing their boundaries along national lines. The Ukrainian, Armenian, Kurdish, Azeri, Uighur and Mongol peoples, to name the most prominent, remained divided as they had been under imperial rule. In short the end of Eurasian Empires did not solve the problems of advancing, fixing and defending frontiers throughout the region. It is not surprising then that in the twentieth century both world wars and a number of smaller ones (RussoJapanese , two Balkan Wars,Yugoslav war) had their immediate origins in the competition over the geo-cultural space along the margin of the multicultural empires of Eurasia and the successor states that emerged from their dissolution. This chapter seeks to reassess the role of Eurasian frontiers in the rise and fall of empires as a means of reinterpreting two major interpretive schemes. The first is a clutch of myths about the unique expansionist and messianic character of certain imperial traditions. The second is the concept of “clash of civilizations.”1 IMPERIAL RULE It should be immediately clear that I am dealing with a number of contested terms: empire, Eurasia and frontiers. I cannot pretend let alone aspire to provide a universally acceptable definition of any of the three. But I can suggest what they mean within the small universe of this essay. This I propose to do by exploring changing contours of their inter-relatedness over the course of an entire historical epoch beginning in the fifteenth century. The following set of preliminary markers suggests openings in the definitional thicket. By Eurasia I mean that vast geo-cultural arena shaped by the encounter of nomadic, semi-nomadic and sedentary populations that stretches from the plains of central Europe and the mountains of southeastern Europe to the highlands of Manchuria.2 In this chapter Eurasian Empires include the Russian, Habsburg, Ottoman, Iranian and Chinese, that is multicultural, bureaucratic state systems ruled by an autocratic, quasi-divine figure that emerged from the geo-cultural encounters of nomadic and sedentary peoples.3 Frontier (as distinct from linear boundary) signifies space, process and symbol. In all three aspects it is a dynamic concept that changes under historical circumstances. Spatially it encompasses the contested lands between the rival empires; as process it constitutes the movement of peoples through colonization, resettlement, and deportation. In Eurasia frontiers symbolically represent the dividing line between civilization and barbarism, sites of religious or ideological mission, cradles of heroic myths.4 The central argument of this chapter suggests that the interplay of physical geography, warfare and cultural change shaped frontiers over a prolonged period into an ecological system that fully justifies the use of the term “complex.” The most salient features of this system may be summarized as follows, with the understanding that it will then be necessary to sketch their evolution over time and their relationship to one another in specific historical contexts. 1) Complex frontiers were military contest zones where at least three polities, although not always the same set, competed for political and economic domination. As a result state boundary lines were frequently unclear, unstable, and porous. 2) Endemic warfare on the frontiers swept over wide spaces but returned with remarkable regularity to center on a fortress, an oasis, a river valley that provided the strategic key to an entire region. 3) The complex frontiers long continued to be the arena of trading...