Sören Urbansky
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691181684
- eISBN:
- 9780691195445
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691181684.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
The Sino-Russian border, once the world's longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. This book rectifies this by exploring the demarcation's ...
More
The Sino-Russian border, once the world's longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. This book rectifies this by exploring the demarcation's remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. The book explores the daily life of communities and their entanglements with transnational and global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. It challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, and undermining, border making. Because Russian, Chinese, and native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping and mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. The book demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, and religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, and propaganda. It sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery and expands our understanding of how borders are determined.Less
The Sino-Russian border, once the world's longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. This book rectifies this by exploring the demarcation's remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. The book explores the daily life of communities and their entanglements with transnational and global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. It challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, and undermining, border making. Because Russian, Chinese, and native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping and mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. The book demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, and religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, and propaganda. It sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery and expands our understanding of how borders are determined.
Sören Urbansky
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691181684
- eISBN:
- 9780691195445
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691181684.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This introductory chapter focuses on the overlapping and mingling of distinct nomadic and sedentary cultures and European and Asian civilizations along the Argun. It shows that the study of the ...
More
This introductory chapter focuses on the overlapping and mingling of distinct nomadic and sedentary cultures and European and Asian civilizations along the Argun. It shows that the study of the multiple ways in which the Sino-Russian border was negotiated on the ground remains a lacuna in the scholarship. Such neglect is all the more striking in light of the landmark's geopolitical significance and pivotal role in world history, its unique and radical changes over time, and the growth of general academic interest in borders. Here, the chapter provides a new focus for research before turning to how the Argun Basin was populated over the course of centuries. It illustrates the changing patterns of population in such an inhospitable area.Less
This introductory chapter focuses on the overlapping and mingling of distinct nomadic and sedentary cultures and European and Asian civilizations along the Argun. It shows that the study of the multiple ways in which the Sino-Russian border was negotiated on the ground remains a lacuna in the scholarship. Such neglect is all the more striking in light of the landmark's geopolitical significance and pivotal role in world history, its unique and radical changes over time, and the growth of general academic interest in borders. Here, the chapter provides a new focus for research before turning to how the Argun Basin was populated over the course of centuries. It illustrates the changing patterns of population in such an inhospitable area.
