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A Sound of Silence in the Archives: On Eighteenth-Century Russian Diplomacy and the Historical Episteme of Central Asian Hostility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

Paolo Sartori
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Abstract

Cui bono information and record keeping? In his most recent work devoted to the study of British and French imperialism in the Levant in early modern history, Cornel Zwierlein has argued that “empires are built on ignorance.” It is, of course, true that during the old regime Western knowledge of things “Oriental” was patently defective, marked as it was by blind spots and glaring gaps; and if observed in the broader context of European colonialism in Asia, the British and French cases are hardly exceptional. Sanjay Subrahmanyam's Europe's India has shown compellingly that the Portuguese, too, blindly forged ahead in their imperial expansion into South Asia, with a good dose of improvisation. By focusing on a mission to Khiva, Bukhara, and Balkh in 1732, I set out to show that the Russian venture in Asia too was premised upon ignorance, among other things. More specifically, I argue that diplomatic and commercial relations between Russia and Central Asia developed in parallel with the neglect of intelligence gathered and made available in imperial archives. Reflecting on the fact that the Russian enterprise in Asia was minimally dependent on information allows us to complicate the reductive equation of knowledge to power, which originates from the “archival turn.” Many today regard archives as reflective of projects of documentation, which granted epistemological virtue to the texts stored, ordered, and preserved therein. The archives generated truth claims, we are told, about hierarchies of knowledge produced by states and, by doing so, they effectively operated as a technological apparatus bolstering the state. However, not all the texts which we find in archives always retained their pristine epistemic force. To historicise the uses, misuses, and, more importantly, the practices of purposeful neglect of records invites us to revisit the quality of transregional connectivity across systems of signification in the early modern period.

Keywords

archivesknowledgeKhivaMuscovydocumentationtruth claimsepistemic force
Type
Article
Information
Itinerario , Volume 44 , Special Issue 3: Beyond the Islamicate Chancery: Archives, Paperwork, and Textual Encounters Across Eurasia , December 2020 , pp. 552 - 571
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University

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Footnotes

*

Paolo Sartori is Senior Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He specialises in the history of the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. His latest book is Visions of Justice: Sharīʿa and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

References

Bibliography

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Ancient Documents Section of the Russian State Archive [RGADA]Google Scholar
f. 134: Snosheniia Rossii s KhivoiGoogle Scholar
f. 397: Komissiia o kommertsii i poshlinakhGoogle Scholar
f. 276: Kommercheskaia kollegiiaGoogle Scholar
Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan [TsGARUz]Google Scholar
f. I-715: Serebrennikov, A.G.Google Scholar
State Archive of the Astrakhan Province [GAAO]Google Scholar
f. 394: Astrakhanskaia gubernskaia kantseliariiaGoogle Scholar
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Dery, David. “‘Papereality’ and Learning in Bureaucratic Organizations.” Administration and Society 29:6 (1998): 677–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Etkind, A. Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.Google Scholar
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Khodarkovsky, Michael. Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Knight, Nathaniel. “Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire.” Slavic Review 59:1 (2000): 74–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozintsev, Mark A. “Gramota Khivinskogo khana Shir-gazi tsariu Petru I. Predislovie, publikatsiia, primechaniia.” Pismennye pamiatniki Vostoka 15:2 (2018): 5–24.Google Scholar
Longworth, Philip. The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anna and Elizabeth of Russia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.Google Scholar
Lunin, Boris V. Istoriografiia obshchestvennykh nauk v Uzbekistane: bio-bibliograficheskie ocherki. Tashkent: FAN, 1974.Google Scholar
Martin, Virginia. Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 2001.Google Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. “Introduction: Killing the Cotton Canard and Getting Rid of the Great Game: Rewriting the Russian Conquest of Central Asia, 1814–1895.” Central Asian Survey 33:2 (2014): 131–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. “Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasions of Khiva and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Official Mind.” Modern Asian Studies 48:1 (2014): 253–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poujol, Catherine. “Les voyageurs Russes et l'Asie Centrale: Naissance et déclin de deux mythes, les réserves d'or et la voie vers l'Inde.” Central Asian Survey 4:3 (1985): 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poullada, Peter. Russian-Turkmen Encounters: The Caspian Frontier before the Great Game. Trans. Styron, Claora E.. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Paolo. “Seeing Like a Khanate: On Archives, Cultures of Documentation, and 19th Century Khorezm.” Journal of Persianate Studies 8:2 (2016): 228–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Paolo, and Abdurasulov, U.. “Imperial Strategic Uncertainty: The Promises and Perils of a Russian Protectorate in Central Asia.” In Aus den Tiefenschichten der Texte: Beiträge zur turko-iranischen Welt von der Islamisierung bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Purnaqcheband, Nader and Saalfeld, Florian, 233–64. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2019.Google Scholar
Sartori, Paolo, and Shabley, Pavel. “Tinkering with Codification in the Kazakh Steppe: ʿĀdat and Sharīʿa in the Work of Efim Osmolovskii.” In Sharīʿa in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1550–1917, ed. Ross, D. and Sartori, P., 209–38. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Sela, Ron. “Prescribing the Boundaries of Knowledge: Seventeenth-Century Russian Diplomatic Missions to Central Asia.” In Writing Travel in Central Asian History, ed. Green, Nile, 69–88. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2 (2002): 87–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subrahmanyam, S. Europe's India: Words, People, Empire, 1500–1800. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwierlein, Cornel. Imperial Unknowns: The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archive of the Foreign Relations of the Russian Empire [AVPRI]Google Scholar
f. 125: Khivinskie gramotyGoogle Scholar
Ancient Documents Section of the Russian State Archive [RGADA]Google Scholar
f. 134: Snosheniia Rossii s KhivoiGoogle Scholar
f. 397: Komissiia o kommertsii i poshlinakhGoogle Scholar
f. 276: Kommercheskaia kollegiiaGoogle Scholar
Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan [TsGARUz]Google Scholar
f. I-715: Serebrennikov, A.G.Google Scholar
State Archive of the Astrakhan Province [GAAO]Google Scholar
f. 394: Astrakhanskaia gubernskaia kantseliariiaGoogle Scholar
Chulkov, M. Istoricheskoe opisanie rossiiskoi kommertsii pri vsekh portakh i granitsakh ot drevnykh vremen po nyne nastoiashchevo. Tom II, kniga 2. Мoscow: Smirnov, 1785.Google Scholar
[Garber, J. G.] Journal von der Reise aus Astrachan nach Chiwa und Bucharen, 1732. Saint Petersburg: Buchdruckerei der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902.Google Scholar
[Graber(sic), J. G.] Nachrichten von denen an der westlichen Seite der Caspischen See zwischen Astrachan und dem Flusse Mur befindlichen Völkern und Landschaften, und von derselben Zustande in dem Jahre 1728. Von dem Schriften der Artillerie Johann Gustav Graber, in Sammlung Russischer Geschichte des vierten Bandes: Erstes u. zweites Stück. Saint Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1760.Google Scholar
Khanykov, Iakov. “Poiasnitel'naia zapiska k karte Aral'skogo Moria i Khivinskogo Khanstva, s ikh okrestnostiami.” Zapiski imperatorskogo Russkago Geograficheskago Obshchestva, knizhka 5 (1851): 268–358.Google Scholar
[Khilkov], Sbornik kniazia Khilkova. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia brat. Pantelevykh, 1879.Google Scholar
Lerch, Pëtr I. “Voprosy, predlagaemye Imperatorskim Russkim geograficheskim obshchestvom pri issledovanii Khivinskogo khanstva i sopredel'nykh s nim stepei v geograficheskom étnograficheskom, i kul'turno-istorichesskom otonoshcheniiakh.” Izvestiia Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva 9:2 (1873): 43–73.Google Scholar
Lerch, Pëtr. Khiva oder Kharezm. Seine historischen und geographischen Verhältnisse. Saint Petersburg: Verlag der Kaiserlichen Hofbuchandlung, 1873.Google Scholar
Munis, Muhammad Mirab and Mirab Agahi, Muhammad Riza. Firdaws al-iqbāl: History of Khorezm. Trans. from Chaghatay and annotated by Bregel, Yuri. Leiden: Brill, 1999.Google Scholar
Shevelev, A. Materialy dlia istorii Khivinskogo pokhoda 1873 goda: Ocherk voennykh i diplomaticheskikh snoshenii Rossii s Sredneiu Azieiu. Tashkent: Tipografiia voenno-narodnogo upravleniia, 1879.Google Scholar
Veselovskii, I. N. Ocherk istoriko-geograficheskikh svedenii o Khivinskom khanstve s drevneishikh vremen do nastoiashchego. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia brat. Panteleevykh, 1877.Google Scholar
Veselovskii, I. N. “Priem v Rossii i otpusk sredne-aziatskikh poslov v XVII i XVIII stoletiiakh. Po dokumentam Moskovskogo glavnogo arkhiva ministerstva inostrannykh del.” Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 234:7 (1884): 68–105.Google Scholar
“Zhurnal zasedaniia Otdeleniia Étnografii.—23 oktiabria 1869 goda.” Izvestiia imperatorskogo Russkago geograficheskago obshcehstva 6 (1870): 46–8.Google Scholar
Allen, W. E. D. “The Sources for G. Delisle's ‘Carte des Pays Voisins de la Mer Caspiene’ of 1723.” Imago Mundi 13 (1956): 137–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barthold, Wasily. “K̲h̲wārizm.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition ed. M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann. Leiden: Brill, 1913–1936. Consulted online on 20 November 2020 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-871X_ei1_SIM_4123>CrossRef>Google Scholar
Belkovets, L. P. Rossiia v nemetskoi istoricheskoi zhurnalistike XVIII v. G.F. Miller i A.F. Biushing, pod red. Moginl'nitskogo, B. G.. Tomsk: Izdatel'stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1988.Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories.” In Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton, A., 1–24. London: Duke University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Buskovitch, P. “Princes Cherkasskii or Circassian Murzas: The Kabardians in the Russian Boyar Elite 1560–1700.” Cahiers du Monde russe 45:1–2 (2004): 9–30.Google Scholar
Dery, David. “‘Papereality’ and Learning in Bureaucratic Organizations.” Administration and Society 29:6 (1998): 677–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas B. “Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History.” In Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar's Passage to India, ed. Dirks, N., 29–69. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Etkind, A. Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Flores, J. Unwanted Neighbours: The Mughals, the Portuguese, and Their Frontier Zones. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Iukht, A. I. Torgovlia s vostochnymi stranami i vnutrennyi rynok Rossii (20—60-e gody XVIII veka). Moscow: Logod, 1994.Google Scholar
Khodarkovsky, Michael. Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Knight, Nathaniel. “Grigor'ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian Orientalism in the Service of Empire.” Slavic Review 59:1 (2000): 74–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozintsev, Mark A. “Gramota Khivinskogo khana Shir-gazi tsariu Petru I. Predislovie, publikatsiia, primechaniia.” Pismennye pamiatniki Vostoka 15:2 (2018): 5–24.Google Scholar
Longworth, Philip. The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anna and Elizabeth of Russia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.Google Scholar
Lunin, Boris V. Istoriografiia obshchestvennykh nauk v Uzbekistane: bio-bibliograficheskie ocherki. Tashkent: FAN, 1974.Google Scholar
Martin, Virginia. Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 2001.Google Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. “Introduction: Killing the Cotton Canard and Getting Rid of the Great Game: Rewriting the Russian Conquest of Central Asia, 1814–1895.” Central Asian Survey 33:2 (2014): 131–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Alexander S. “Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasions of Khiva and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Official Mind.” Modern Asian Studies 48:1 (2014): 253–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poujol, Catherine. “Les voyageurs Russes et l'Asie Centrale: Naissance et déclin de deux mythes, les réserves d'or et la voie vers l'Inde.” Central Asian Survey 4:3 (1985): 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poullada, Peter. Russian-Turkmen Encounters: The Caspian Frontier before the Great Game. Trans. Styron, Claora E.. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Paolo. “Seeing Like a Khanate: On Archives, Cultures of Documentation, and 19th Century Khorezm.” Journal of Persianate Studies 8:2 (2016): 228–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Paolo, and Abdurasulov, U.. “Imperial Strategic Uncertainty: The Promises and Perils of a Russian Protectorate in Central Asia.” In Aus den Tiefenschichten der Texte: Beiträge zur turko-iranischen Welt von der Islamisierung bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Purnaqcheband, Nader and Saalfeld, Florian, 233–64. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2019.Google Scholar
Sartori, Paolo, and Shabley, Pavel. “Tinkering with Codification in the Kazakh Steppe: ʿĀdat and Sharīʿa in the Work of Efim Osmolovskii.” In Sharīʿa in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1550–1917, ed. Ross, D. and Sartori, P., 209–38. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Sela, Ron. “Prescribing the Boundaries of Knowledge: Seventeenth-Century Russian Diplomatic Missions to Central Asia.” In Writing Travel in Central Asian History, ed. Green, Nile, 69–88. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2 (2002): 87–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Subrahmanyam, S. Europe's India: Words, People, Empire, 1500–1800. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwierlein, Cornel. Imperial Unknowns: The French and British in the Mediterranean, 1650–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar