Struggle over the Borderlands

The editors of Kritika deserve my thanks for organizing this roundtable discussion of my book, for inviting four distinguished scholars to comment, and for offering me the opportunity to respond. Although these four critics and I share a common interest in the comparative history of empires, we all (myself included) work out of a regional specialization: Chinese (Perdue), Russian (LeDonne), British (Farrell), and Ottoman (Islamoglu). Beyond their imperial gaze, therefore, the views of my critics also reflect the current concerns and historiographies of their intellectual base of operations. The same is true about my own Russian-centered comparative analysis. In my case, however, the result has been a reaction against the reigning orthodoxy on Russia’s imperial policies, which in turn has required a revision of the imperial policies of its rivals. In place of the traditional geopolitical perspective, I suggest an alternative called geocultural. In place of a uniquely expansionist Russia, I propose a rivalry among continental empires over the contested space of the Eurasian borderlands. Revisionist views in history shake up established verities and, for this reason often engender strong reactions, as in the case of my four critics.

The use of the term “geocultural” provokes skepticism from Brian Farrell and Huricihan Islamoglu and outright rejection from John LeDonne, while Peter Perdue expresses disappointment over the book’s “political framework” (926) and concludes that my “approach fails to break new ground” (927). Ever since Theda Skocpol brought the state “back in” and Jacques Le Goff, Charles Tilly, Jack Goldstone, and many others devised new ways to explore politics and state building, political history has enjoyed a renaissance.¹ My aim is to contribute to this rich literature by situating the rise and dissolution of the great multicultural continental empires in what I consider an innovative spatial setting encompassing three geocultural entities: Eurasia, complex frontiers, and borderlands. My approach is comparative over the longue dureé (five centuries) and, whenever appropriate to my main thesis, transimperial with an eye to the transfer of ideas, technologies, and models of reform. The book seeks to combine a history from above—the ideological and structural features of imperial rule and the course of imperial rivalries—with history from below through the actions and reactions of the conquered peoples of the borderlands. My use of the term “geocultural” was meant to challenge the implications or uncritical acceptance of the term “geopolitical.” I have two objections to geo politics as an analytical construct. First, it grants physical geography an overly determining—yes, even deterministic—role in explaining international conflicts. Second, its intellectual origins and subsequent evolution in both its German and Anglo-American versions have in my view led to dangerous real world outcomes. The geocultural, I submit, avoids both of these pitfalls.

How has the term “geocultural” as a reconceptualization of space been defined and employed as a guiding thread throughout the book? I define five major interactive themes linking physical geography, state power, and cultural practice: conquest, colonization, conversion, co-optation of elites, and cultural assimilation. These are instruments employed by the centers—I use that term in preference to “core”—of imperial power to guarantee external security and internal stability. Once incorporated into an imperial state system, the new subjects struggled to retain their cultural identity or regain their political independence by engaging in a broad range of practices from resistance to accommodation. Resistance has assumed many forms, from continuous and persistent adherence to religious and linguistic identification to flight or armed rebellion; accommodations are similarly varied, from serving in imperial armies and bureaucracies to embracing the faith and/or language of the dominant culture.

The interplay of these factors over time defines Eurasia as a series of historical processes rather than as a static physical entity. In a different mix they also define complex frontiers, although Farrell dismisses the term as “oxymoronic” (918). What is complex about them, as compared to simple frontiers or borders, as the current literature defines them?²

Complexity arises from two unique features of Eurasian frontiers. First, these frontiers are broad bands of territory or zones where large-scale movements of populations...