Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865

by Mark Bassin

• ISBN13: 9780521391740
• ISBN10: 0521391741
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian empire made a dramatic advance on the Pacific by annexing the vast regions of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. Although this remote realm was a virtual terra incognita for the Russian educated public, the acquisition of an 'Asian Mississippi' attracted great attention nonetheless, even stirring the dreams of Russia's most outstanding visionaries. Within a decade of its acquisition, however, the dreams were gone and the Amur region largely abandoned and forgotten. In an innovative examination of Russia's perceptions of the new territories in the Far East, Mark Bassin sets the Amur enigma squarely in the context of the Zeitgeist in Russia at the time. Imperial Visions demonstrates the fundamental importance of geographical imagination in the mentalit_ of imperial Russia. The work offers a truly novel perspective on the complex and ambivalent ideological relationship between Russian nationalism, geographical identity and imperial expansion.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi	(2)
Nicholas V. Riasanovsky
Acknowledgments	xiii	(3)
Map of the Russian Far East (c. 1860)	xvi
Introduction	1	(18)
Part I	19	(120)
1 Early visions and divinations	19	(18)
2 National identity and world mission	37	(32)
3 The rediscovery of the Amur	69	(33)
4 The push to the Pacific	102	(37)
Part II	139	(135)
Introduction	139	(4)
5 Dreams of a Siberian Mississippi	143	(31)
6 Civilizing a savage realm	174	(32)
7 Poised on the Manchurian frontier	206	(27)
8 The Amur and its discontents	233	(41)
Conclusion	274	(9)
Bibliography	283	(39)
Index	322