Horizontal Threads: An Entangled History of the Romanov Empire as Seen from the Baltic Provinces

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Catherine Gibson, Lecturer in East European and Eurasian Studies, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu

Speaker: Catherine Gibson, Lecturer in East European and Eurasian Studies, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu

Discussant: Christina Douglas, Associate Professor in History, Södertörn University and Swedish Defence University, Stockholm

Chair: Julia Malitska, Project Researcher and Senior Lecturer, School of History and Contemporary Studies, and Research Coordinator at CBEES, Södertörn University

Abstract: This presentation outlines an emerging new spatial approach for the history of the Romanov Empire. Traditionally, nineteenth-century empires have been understood as “radial power structures” (Osterhammel 2014, 614), whose vertical axes of power and lines of communication flowed outwards from the metropolitan core to the peripheries. The Romanov Empire is no exception, and has conventionally been conceptualised as a series of concentric circles connecting individual provinces in degrees of their proximity to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and led by consecutive rulers intent on forging a centralised and unitary state (Gorizontov 2007; LeDonne 2020). In this co-authored article, we trace an emerging scholarship that moves beyond this well-worn image of the empire as a vertical structure of centre-periphery relations and instead considers the heuristic potential of studying horizontal threads connecting this state, not necessarily through the metropole. Drawing inspiration from studies of the Habsburg Empire as a “cooperative empire” (Osterkamp 2016), which focus on cross-regional economic cooperation between provincial institutions, we examine how retracing connections between the hitherto disconnected Romanov ruled regions might generate new critical perspectives on nineteenth-century empires. The argument is illustrated through a discussion of several case studies from the Baltic provinces of Estland and Livland based on source materials from the National Archives of Estonia, which reveal various forms of horizontal entanglements across different scales of analysis: lateral knowledge-sharing between provincial administrations, communication between city administrations, and intra-imperial grassroots charitable initiatives.

Catherine Gibson is a Lecturer in East European and Eurasian Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu (Estonia). She is author of Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic (Oxford University Press, 2022 – Winner of the 2023 University of Cambridge Baltic Geopolitics Publication Prize) and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities, and Borders (Palgrave, 2016). She has also published articles on various aspects of the history of the Romanov Empire in the long nineteenth century in Past & Present, Journal of Social History, Journal of Modern European History, Journal of Historical Geography, and Nationalities Papers. She is one of the editors of the collaborative digital history project Peripheral Histories Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster.?, which provides a space to share emerging research on regions and peoples of Eastern Europe and Eurasia by early career scholars. In addition, she is technical editor at the Journal of Baltic Studies and book series editor of “Politics and Society in the Baltic Sea Region,” published by Tartu University Press.