Although the Russian Empire has traditionally been viewed as a European borderland, most of its territory was actually situated in Asia. Imperial power was huge but often suffered from a lack of enough information and resources to rule its culturally diverse subjects, and asymmetric relations between state and society combined with flexible strategies of local actors sometimes produced unexpected results. In Asiatic Russia, an international team of scholars explores the interactions between power and people in Central Asia, Siberia, the Volga-Urals, and the Caucasus from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, drawing on a wealth of Russian archival materials and Turkic, Persian, and Tibetan sources. The variety of topics discussed in the book includes the Russian idea of a "civilizing mission," the system of governor-generalships, imperial geography and demography, roles of Muslim and Buddhist networks in imperial rule and foreign policy, social change in the Russian Protectorate of Bukhara, Muslim reformist and national movements. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of Russian, Central Eurasian, and comparative imperial history, as well as imperial and colonial studies and nationalism studies. It may also provide some hints for understanding today’s world, where "empire" has again become a key word in international and domestic power relations.

Interrelationship, manners and customs of peoples of north Asia.

Alexis Sidney Krausse (1859-1904) was a British journalist and author who wrote for many British periodicals and produced books about a wide range of subjects, including poverty in the city of London, China and the Far East, and the Russian Empire. Russia in Asia: A Record and a Study, 1558-1899 is a history of Russia's expansion in Asia, beginning in 1558, the year Grigorii Stroganov received a charter from Ivan the Terrible to colonize lands on the Kama River on the western edge of the Ural Mountains. The book covers the absorption of Siberia, Russia's conquest of the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara, its late-19th century expansion into Turkestan, its annexation of lands previously belonging to Persia and China, railroad construction, and Russian policy toward Afghanistan. In the preface, Krausse writes that his book "does not profess to be more than a history, complete yet concise, of Asiatic Russia. In criticising the rival policies of Russia and England, my endeavour has been to present the clear and impartial deduction that a careful study of these policies yields." In fact the book is heavily biased against Russia, which is portrayed as inexorably expansionist and the "natural enemy" of Great Britain. Russia in Asia appeared in several editions, in Britain and the United States. Presented here is the first edition, published in London in 1899. It contains 12 maps and three appendices: a chronology of "Landmarks in the History of Asiatic Russia"; a compendium of the most important treaties and conventions between Russia and China, Persia, Afghanistan, and other polities on the southern rim of the Russian Empire; and a bibliography of authorities on Asiatic Russia and neighboring countries.

A comprehensive diplomatic and military history of the Russian conquest of Central Asia, spanning the whole of the nineteenth century.

Europe’s boundaries have mainly been shaped by cultural, religious, and political conceptions rather than by geography. This volume of bilingual essays from renowned European scholars outlines the transformation of Europe’s boundaries from the fall of the ancient world to the age of decolonization, or the end of the explicit endeavor to “Europeanize” the world.From the decline of the Roman Empire to the polycentrism of today’s world, the essays span such aspects as the confrontation of Christian Europe with Islam and the changing role of the Mediterranean from “mare nostrum” to a frontier between nations. Scandinavia, eastern Europe and the Atlantic are also analyzed as boundaries in the context of exploration, migratory movements, cultural exchanges, and war. The Boundaries of Europe, edited by Pietro Rossi, is the first installment in the ALLEA book series Discourses on Intellectual Europe, which seeks to explore the question of an intrinsic or quintessential European identity in light of the rising skepticism towards Europe as an integrated cultural and intellectual region.

This is the first ethnohistory of Siberia to appear in English, tracing the history of the native peoples from the Russian conquest onwards. James Forsyth compares the Siberian experience with that of the Indians and Eskimos in North America and the book as a whole will provide readers with a vast corpus of ethnographic information previously inaccessible to Western scholars.