After Oriental Despotism: Eurasian Growth in a Global Perspective

193 Pages·2014·2.232 MB·English

by  Alessandro Stanziani

After Oriental Despotism

After Oriental Despotism
Eurasian Growth in a Global Perspective
Alessandro Stanziani
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published 2014
© Alessandro Stanziani, 2014
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-2353-2
PB: 978-1-4725-2678-6
ePDF: 978-1-4725-2265-8
ePub: 978-1-4725-3339-5
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: The Scope and Aim 1
1 The Historical Dimension of Economic Backwardness 7
Culture and economics 11
Dependence, subaltern groups and the world economy 13
The question of continuity in history 15
2 Beyond Asiatic Despotism: Territorial Power and State
Construction in Eurasia 17
Military, mercenary and peasant 22
War and economic dynamics 24
War and technological innovation 26
Frontiers, territories and nomadic empires 29
3 The Power of the Steppe: The Mongol Heritage and the
Expansion of Muscovy 35
Steppe dynamics: The warrior states 36
Military organization 39
Administration, finances and the army 43
Provisions in kind and wheat markets 46
Mobilization and colonization: The frontier as a social
and political experiment 50
Military service and social order 52
The power of the steppe 57
4 Slavery and Trade in Central Asia and Russia 61
Introduction 61
Kholopy: Slaves, serfs, or indentured servants? 65
War captives at a crossroads of empires 73
Slavery in Central Eurasia: Its estimation and overall interpretation 86
vi Contents
5 Neither Feudalism nor Capitalism: Agrarian Markets
under Coercion 91
The institutions of Russian serfdom 91
Labour on Russian estates 94
Proto-industry, trade and growth under serfdom 95
Towards a reassessment of second serfdom in Eastern Europe 101
6 Beyond Economic Backwardness: Labour and Growth in
Eurasia in the Long Nineteenth Century 107
Growth and labour in Europe and Asia 111
Conclusion: Russia in a Globalizing World 117
Notes 124
References 157
Index 179
Acknowledgements
French CNRS (Centre National de la Rechecher Scientifique) and the French
ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) provided funds and grants to
successfully complete this research.
This book has benefited from the support of many friends and colleagues.
Jeremy Black immediately supported this book; in Paris, at the EHESS, Maurice
Aymard, Gilles Postel-Vinay and Christian Lamouroux discussed at length
several chapters; I also benefited from discussions with my students.
Jane Burbank (NYU) and Fred Cooper (NYU) discussed over years parts,
papers and seminars linked to this book. Marcel van der Linden (IISG) always
encouraged my work.
Prabhu Mohapatra (Delhi University) and Madhavan Palat – as well as the
participants in the biannual meeting of Indian Labour Historians – commented
on earlier drafts.
Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (Pomona University) made comments on earlier
drafts, seminars and, finally, on the whole manuscript. I fully acknowledge my
debt to her valuable suggestions and comments.
Marina Mogilner and Ilia Guerasimov – friends of Ab Imperio, in Kazan,
and who have just recently moved to the University of Illinois – made valuable
comments at the workshop they organized in Kazan.
In Japan, I had the opportunity to present and discuss chapters of this
book with Kimitaka Matsusato (Sapporo University), Kaoru Sugihara (Tokyo
University) and Masashi Haneda (Tokyo University). Professor Takeo
Suzuki discussed with me and organized several lectures and seminars at the
Waseda University. Faculty and students helped me with extremely valuable
comments.
Other friends in the USA also helped me with comments and suggestions:
Brian Davis (UTSA), R. Bin Wong (UCLA), David W. Sabean (UCLA), and
Kenneth Pomeranz (University of Chicago). Richard Roberts and the Stanford
University provided me with a one-month invitation. Lectures at Stanford
largely contributed to complete this book.
In Berlin, the Wissenschafts Kolleg provided a wonderful intellectual
environment and the opportunity to discuss my work in several German
viii Acknowledgements
universities. Andreas Eckert and Jurgen Kocka, at Re-Work (Humboldt
University), debated my work at length.
In Russia, Boris Ananich and the archive personnel in both Moscow and
Petersburg helped with the files, permissions and research. I strongly regret that
my former mentor and friend in Russia, Viktor Petrovich Danilov, one of the
greatest historians of his generation, left us before I could achieve this book.
Introduction: The Scope and Aim
Russia maintained its power, with ups and downs, for centuries, despite repeated
European forecasts of its imminent fall. During the reign of Peter the Great
and after the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the
putsch in 1989 and the financial crisis in 1997, the West always believed it could
see signs of Russia’s impending collapse, but it never occurred.1 What accounts
for this and how can we possibly explain such a discrepancy between Western
expectations and Russian performance?
From the eighteenth century to the present, comparisons between Russia
and the major European countries have formed part of a wider debate about
‘backwardness’. The goal has been to create a comparative scale to account for both
economic growth and so-called ‘blockages’. Montesquieu’s ‘Asiatic Despotism’,
Voltaire’s and Diderot’s perceptions of Russia and Asia, and the so-called Asiatic
mode of production described by liberal, radical and Marxist historiography in
the nineteenth century are well-known examples. Then, in the twentieth century,
the comparative and global analysis of Eurasia found its way into discussions of
backwardness and underdevelopment, decolonization, the fate of communism
and the Cold War as well as arguments such as Oriental despotism and Hayek’s
Road to Serfdom. Authors as different as Kula, Wallerstein and North agree
on this: in early modern times, Russia and Eastern Europe responded to the
commercial, agrarian and then industrial expansion of the West by binding the
peasantries to the land and its lords.2 It is interesting that even new approaches
to world history such as Pomeranz’s ‘great divergence’, while contesting Chinese
backwardness and European ethnocentrism, still consider Russia the paradigm
of unfree labour and lack of markets and, as such, opposed to both the Lower
Yangtzee and Britain.3 The connections between Europe and Asia exclude
Central Eurasia. What if we were to abandon both classical oppositions and
the more recent ranking of ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ and question regional and global
history through the lens of Central Eurasia?
In this book I will focus on the ‘Russian case’ not to confirm our preconceptions
but to disclose historical possibilities, bifurcations and ultimately a new vision