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The Siberian Frontier between “White Mission” and “Yellow Peril,” 1890s–1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Eva-Maria Stolberg
Eva-Maria Stolberg*
Affiliation:
Institute of Russian History, University of Bonn, Germany, [email protected]
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Extract

The Russian conquest of Siberia was not only a remarkable event in world history like the conquest of the New World by the Western European nations, but also a decisive step in Russia's empire-building. Through territorial enlargement the empire became multiethnic. This process resembled the expansion of the white settlers in North America. Like North America, Siberia represented an “open frontier.” Harsh nature and the encounter between the white settlers and the “savages” formed the identity of the frontier. From the perspective of modern cultural anthropology the frontier also shaped reflections on the self and the other. There existed, however, a decisive difference to the American frontier: Siberia became a meeting ground for Russian and Asian cultures. Whereas the American frontier—except in the encounter with Mexico—remained isolated, Russians early came in contact with Asian nations. From the early emergence of a modern state in Russia during the era of Enlightenment, Russia came into manifold contacts with “civilized” Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) and with “uncivilized” Asians, i.e. the tribes of Siberia. At the junction between Europe and Asia, Russia as a Eurasian empire was the sole country in Europe which was so near to Asia. It was therefore logical that Russia felt a kind of mission toward Asia and required the role of a mediator between Europe and Asia.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 165 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. The term “frontier” was first projected onto North America by the scholar Frederick Jackson Turner in The Frontier in American History (New York, 1931). Long before Turner, in the mid nineteenth century the Siberian regionalist A. P. Shchapov, a professor at the then sole university in Asiatic Russia, namely that of Kazan', moulded in his lectures the “Russian frontier thesis” for Siberia, comparing it to North America.Google Scholar

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