A People Born to Slavery

by Poe, Marshall T.

• ISBN13: 9780801437984
• ISBN10: 0801437989
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Many Americans and Europeans have for centuries viewed Russia as a despotic country in which people are inclined to accept suffering and oppression. What are the origins of this stereotype of Russia as a society fundamentally apart from nations in the West, and how accurate is it? In the first book devoted to answering these questions, Marshall T. Poe traces the roots of today's perception of Russia and its people to the eyewitness descriptions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European travelers. His fascinating account-the most complete review of early modern European writings about Russia ever undertaken-explores how the image of "Russian tyranny" took hold in the popular imagination and eventually became the basis for the notion of "Oriental Despotism" first set forth by Montesquieu. Poe, the preeminent scholar of these valuable primary sources, carefully assesses their reliability. He argues convincingly that although the foreigners exaggerated the degree of Russian "slavery," they accurately described their encounters and correctly concluded that the political culture of Muscovite autocracy was unlike that of European kingship. With his findings, Poe challenges the notion that all Europeans projected their own fantasies onto Russia. Instead, his evidence suggests that many early travelers produced, in essence, reliable ethnographies, not works of exotic "Orientalism."

Author Biography

Marshall T. Poe is a Visiting Professor in the Department of History, Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
A Note on Abbreviations	xi
Introduction
The History of ``Russian Tyranny''	1	(10)
Terra Incognita
The Earliest European Descriptions of Muscovy	11	(28)
Legatus Ad Moscoviam
European Ambassadors and the Origin of ``Russian Tyranny''	39	(43)
Necessarium Malum
European Residents and the Origin of ``Russian Tyranny''	82	(35)
Rerum Moscoviticarum
Herberstein and the Origin of ``Russian Tyranny''	117	(28)
Tyrannis Sine Tyranno
Political Categories and the Origin of ``Russian Tyranny''	145	(23)
Simplex Dominatus
Russian Government in European Political Science	168	(28)
Was Muscovy a Despotism?	196	(87)
APPENDIX
Folkloric Stories about Ivan IV in European Ethnographies, 1555-1700	227	(12)
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Primary Sources: Foreign Accounts of Russia, 1476-1700	239	(12)
Other Primary Sources	251	(4)
Secondary Sources	255	(10)
Secondary Sources on European Authors	265	(18)
Index	283