The Russian Empire 1450-1801

Начало книги

This book is dedicated to my graduate mentor, Edward L. Keenan (1935-2015). This book hardly approaches what he could have done with this material—few could match his originality, insight and depth of knowledge about the early modern past. He was always able to look afresh at familiar things, going against the grain to suggest an interpretation that fit the real grain of the historical times (rather than received opinion). I cannot aspire to his erudition, but I know this book takes the tack that he would have. He and another great mentor at Harvard in the 1970s, Omeljan Pritsak, taught us to be Eurasianists—to take Russian history out of a narrow, and ultimately ahistorical, national context and set it in its international setting. While everyone had been comparing Russian history to Europe since the nineteenth century (usually to Russia's detriment), Keenan and Pritsak urged us to look east and south—to Russia's connections with Asia as well as Europe; they introduced us to the great rhythms of forest and steppe and the Silk Roads connecting peoples, cultures, and trade.

Читать дальше →