Mironov, Boris Nikolaevich. The cost of Empire’ unity in Late Imperial Russia

This research was supported by Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 15-18-00119 “The History of Managing Ethnic Diversity and Ethno-confessional conflicts in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia: An Interdisciplinary Study”.This research was supported by Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 15-18-00119 “The History of Managing Ethnic Diversity and Ethno-confessional conflicts in Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia: An Interdisciplinary Study”.

The government constantly fretted over the “cost of empire”, which it understood as the expense of possessing any borderlands as part of the state. The Ministry of Finance calculated the cost as the difference between state outlays for the maintenance of its administration and armed forces, the construction of borders and towns, and the installation of railways, as well as other expenses from the treasury, on the one hand, and budget revenue from all taxes and income the treasury received, on the other.The problem of the cost of empire and the empire’s unity, however, is not confined to economic gains and losses. From the empire’s point of view, the issues that played a huge role were the empire’s security, its military, economic, and geopolitical power, messianism, cultural and religious predominance, the resolution of internal political problems, the legitimization of the emperor’s rule, the prestige of the supreme authority and the state, and other matters. For their part, the borderlands assessed the cost of empire and also took non-material factors into account: the degree of security, the extent of the center’s civilizing mission, the danger of assimilation and of the loss of ethnic identity, the desire for ethno-cultural autonomy, and others. Appraising the intangible factors is much more difficult and, above all, more problematic, because the perspectives of the center and the peripheral regions differ and it is often impossible to find consensus.The relationship between the сenter and the borderlands of the Russian empire was so varied, multifaceted, and dynamic that to express it through a single formula or scenario is impossible. The field of ethnopolitics offers three several such schemes to describe the nature of relations between the center and the periphery: the concept of hegemony, of internal colonization, and of diffusionism. Analysis of the center’s relations with the borderlands in the imperial period shows that at various times and in various regions all three scenarios have been realized, but most often the government followed the concepts of hegemony and diffusion. Occasionally, one encounters elements of colonialism in the early stages of the acquisition of the borderlands. Close administrative, legal, and economic integration on the basis of mutual advantages continuously lies at the center of the government’s attention. But the main purpose of the supreme authority and its government consisted of preserving the integrity of the empire. For this reason, they were prepared to make any sacrifices on the part of the Russians. In extreme cases, however, they required that other peoples of the empire also sacrifice their own interests for a time. 

• Abashidze, Aslan Khuseinovich; Ilyashevich, Marianna Viktorovna. Kontseptsiya “gegemonii” v sovremennom mezhdunarodnom prave, in Vestnik Diplomaticheskoy akademii MID Rossii «Mezhdunarodnoye pravo». Moscow: Diplomaticheskaya akademiya MID Rossii Press, 2013. Pp. 166–179. (in Russian).

  Anderson, B. L.; Richardson, David. Market Structures and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Rejoinder Rebutted, in Journal of Economic History. 1985. Vol. 45. No. 3 (September). Pp. 705–707.

  Anstey, Roger T. Capitalism and Slavery: a Critique, in Economic History Review. 1968. Vol. 1. No. 2 (August). Pp. 307–320.

  Anstey, Roger T. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810. London: Humanities Press, 1975. 456 p.

  Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publ.,  2014. 615 p.

  Beloglazov, Al’bert Vladislavovich. Federalizm v “tyur’me narodov”: Velikoe knyazhestvo Finliandskoye, in Federalizm: problemy formirovaniya: materialy postoyannodeystvuyushchego seminara. Eds Iu. R. Khairullina, A. G. Bol’shakov. Kazan’: Kazan State Technological University Press, 1994. Pp. 41–47. (in Russian).

  Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London; New York: Verso Publ., 2010. 602 p.

  Blinkhorn, Martin. Spain: the ‘Spanish Problem’ and the Imperial Myth, in Journal of Contemporary History. 1980. Vol. 15. No. 1 (January). Pp. 5–25.

  Bobovich, Irina Mikhailovna. Russko-finlyandskiye ekonomicheskiye otnosheniya na kanune Velikoy Oktyabr’skoy sotsialisticheskoy revolyutsii: (Epokha imperializma). Leningrad: Leningrad State University Press, 1968. 192 p. (in Russian).

  Bokarev, Uriy Pavlovich. Ekonomicheskiye posledstviya raspada rossiyskoy imperii v rezul’tate Pervoy mirovoy voyny. Ekaterinburg; Moscow: UMTs UPI Publ., 2009. 87 p. (in Russian).

  Brubejker, Rodzhers. Etnichnost’ bez grupp. Moscow: The Higher School of Economics Publishing House, 2012. 408 p. (in Russian).

  Brunschwig, Henri. French Colonialism, 1871–1914. Myths and Realities. London: Pall Mall Press, 1966. 228 p.

  Clarence-Smith, W. G. The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975: A Study in economic imperialism. Manchester, U.K.; Dover, N.H.: Manchester University Press, 1985. 246 p.

  Davis, Lance E.; Huttenback, Robert A. Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Economics of British Imperialism. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 1988. 308 p.

  Diakin, Valentin Semenovich. Natsional’niy vopros vo vnutrenney politike tsarizma (XIX — nachalo XX v.). St. Peterburg: LISS Publ., 1998. 1039 p. (in Russian).

  Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution. Ed. by. Paul Bairoch, M. Lévy-Leboyer. London: Macmillan Publ., 1981. 428 p.

  Edelstein, Michael. Imperialism: Cost and Benefit, in The Economic History of Britain since 1700. Ed. by Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald. 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Vol. 2. Pp. 197–216.

  Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. Center-periphery Relations in Soviet Empire, in Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR. Ed. by A. J. Motyl’. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Pp. 205–221.

  Eltis, David and Engerman, Stanley. The Importance of Slavery and Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain, in  Journal of Economic History. 2000. Vol. 60. No. 1. Pp. 123–144.

  Engerman, Stanley E. The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on Williams Thesis, in Business History Review. 1972. Vol. 46. No. 4 (Winter). Pp. 430–443.

  Good, David F. The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984. 309 p.

  Grokh, Miroslav. Konsensusnoe ob’yasneniye formirovaniya natsii, in Voprosy filosofii. 2011. No. 1. S. 27–36. (in Russian).

  Hopkins, Antony G. Accounting for the British Empire, in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 1988. Vol. 16. No. 2. Pp. 234–247.

  Hopkins, Antony G. The Burdens of Empire-Building, in African Affairs. 1978. No. 11. Pp. 108–120.

  Howe, Stephen. Empire: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 255 p.

  Imperialism and Underdevelopment: A Reader. Ed. by Robert I. Rhodes. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. 416 p.

  Inikori, Joseph E. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 576 p.

  Inikori, Joseph E. Market Structures and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century. A Rejoinder, in Journal of Economic History. 1981. Vol. 41. No. 4. Pp. 745–776.

  Inikori, Joseph E. Slavery and the Rise of Capitalism. Mona, Jamaica: Dept. of History, the University of the West Indies Press, 1993. 33 p.

  Kappeler, Andreas. Rossiya – mnogonatsional’naya imperiya. Moscow: Progress-Traditsya Publ., 2000. 342 s. (in Russian).

  Kesner, Richard M. Economic Control and Colonial Development: Crown Colony Financial Management in the Age of Joseph Chamberlain. Westport. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. 305 p.

  Kindleberger, Charles Poor. Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy: Exploitation, Public Goods and Free Riders, in International Studies Quarterly. 1981. Vol. 25. No. 2 (June). Pp. 242–254.

  Kornilov, Genrikh Dmitrievich. Russko-finlyandskiye tamozhennye otnosheniya v kontse XIX – nachale XX v. Leningrad: Nauka Publ., 1971. 219 p. (in Russian).

  Lundestad, Geir. The Fall of Empires: Peace, Stability and Legitimacy, in The Fall of Great Powers: Peace, Stability, and Legitimacy. Ed by Geir Lundestad. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. 383–402.

  Maddison, Angus. World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1–2008 AD, in Groningen Growth and Development Centre (Access mode: http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/users/Broadberry/EuroGDP2.pdf 27 October 2011 File: EuroGDP2 (last visited — 23 August 2017).

  Matis, Herbert. Guidelines of Austrian Economic Policy, 1848–1918, in The Economic Development of Austria since 1870. Ed. by Herbert Matis. Aldershot. England: Brookfield, Vt., USA: E. Elgar Publ., 1994. 597 p.

  Misra, Maria. Lessons of Empire: Britain and India, in SAIS Review: A Journal of International Affairs. 2003. Vol. XXIII. No. 2 (Summer-Fall). Pp. 133­-153.

  Motyl’, Aleksandr. Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires. Moscow: Moskovskaya shkola politicheskikh issledovaniy Press, 2004. 241 p. (in Russian).

  Natsional’naya politika v imperatorskoy Rossii: in 2 vols. Vol. 1: Tsivilizovannye okrainy (Finliandiya, Pol’sha, Pribaltika, Bessarabiya, Ukraina, Zakavkazye, Srednyaya Aziya). Ed. by Iu. I. Semenov. Moscow: Staryi sad Publ., 1997. 413 p. (in Russian).

  O’Brien, Patrick and Engerman, Stanley. Exports and the Growth of the British Economy from the Glorious revolution to the Peace of Amiens, in Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. Ed. by Barbara Solow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. 177–209.

  Offer, Avner. Costs and Benefits, Peace and War, in The Oxford History of the British Empire.  Ed. by  A. Porter. Oxford:  The Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 690–711,

  Offer, Avner. The British Empire 1870–1914 – a Waste of Money?, in The Economic History Review. 1993. Vol. 45, No. 3. Pp. 215–238.

  Pagden, Anthony. The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 288 p.

  Pamuk, Şevket. A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 276 p.

  Panin, Evgeniy Nikolaevich. Osobennosti opyta istoricheskogo razvitiya Latvii (1917–1940 gg.): istoriografiya i istochnikovaya baza problemy. Dis. … kand. ist. nauk. Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities Press, 2014. 209 p. (in Russian).

  Penati, Beatrice. The Cotton Boom and the Land Tax in Russian Turkestan (1880s–1915), in Kritika. 2013. Vol. 14. No. 4. Pp. 741–774.

  Porter, Andrew. The Balance Sheet of Empire, 1850–1914, in The Historical Journal. 1988. Vol. 31. No. 3 (September). Pp. 685–699.

  Pravilova, Ekaterina Anatolyevna. Finansy imperii: Den’gi i vlast’ v politike Rossii na natsional’nykh okrainakh, 1801–1917. Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo Publ., 2006. 453, [2] p. (in Russian).

  Pribaltika i Sredniaya Aziya v sostave rossiyskoy imperii i SSSR: mify sovremennykh uchebnikov postsovetskikh stran i real’nost’ sotsial’no-ekonomicheskikh podschetov. Eds. A. A. Danilov, A. V. Filippov. Moscow: Tsentr obshchestvennykh tekhnologiy Press, 2009. 199 p. (in Russian).

  Ránki, György. On the Economic Development of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution. Ed. by. Paul Bairoch and Maurice Lévy-Leboyer. London: Macmillan Publ., 1981. Pp. 165–174.

  Rasila, Vilyo. Istoriya Finlyandii. Petrozavodsk: Petrozavodsk State University Press, 1996. 294 p. (in Russian).

  Riber, Al’fred. Sravnivaya kontinental’nye imperii, in Rossiyskaya imperiya v sravnitel’noy perspektive. Ed. by A. I. Miller. Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo Publ., 2004. Pp. 33–71. (in Russian).

  Richardson, David. Accounting for Profits in the British Trade in Slaves: Reply to William Darity, in Explorations in Economic History. 1989. Vol. 26. No. 4. Pp. 492–499.

  Richardson, David. Market Structures and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Comment, in Journal of Economic History. 1983. Vol. 43. No. 3 (September). Pp. 713–721.

  Richardson, David. The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748–1776, in Explorations in Economic History. 1987. Vol. 17. No. 4. Pp. 739–769.

  Sanborn, Joshua. Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 287 p.

  Sanborn, Joshua. War of Decolonization: The Russian Empire in the Great War, in The Empire and Nationalism at War. Eds Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, Mark von Hagen. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2014. Pp. 49–72.

  Sheridan, Richard B. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775. Kingston, Jamaica, W. I.: Canoe Press, 1994. 529 p.

  Shils, Edward Albert. Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. 516 p.

  Shilz, Eduard. Obshchestvo i obshchestva: makrosotsiologicheskiy podkhod, in Amerikanskaya sotsiologiya: perspektivy, problemy, metody. Ed. by G. V. Osipov. Moscow: Progress Publ., 1972. Pp. 341–359. (in Russian).

  Sked, Alan. The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918. London: New York: Longman Publ., 1989. 295 p.

  Smith, Anthony. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford, UK; New York, NY, USA: B. Blackwell Publ., 1987. 312 p.

  Solow, Barbara L. Caribbean Slavery and British Growth: The Eric Williams Hypothesis, in Journal of Development Economics. 1985. Vol. 17. No. 1–2. Pp. 99–115.

  Spechler, Martin C. Development of the Ukrainian Economy, 1854–1917: The Imperial View, in Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays. Ed. by I. S. Koropeckyj. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1991. Pp. 261–276.

  Spechler, Martin С. The Economic Advantages of Being Peripheral: Subordinate Nations in Multinational Empires, in Eastern European Politics and Societies. 1989. Vol. 3. No. 3. Pp. 448–464.

  Suni, Ronald Grigor. Imperiya kak takovaya: Imperskaya Rossiya, «natsional’naya» identichnost’ i teorii imperii, in Gosudarstvo natsii: imperiya i natsional’noye stroitel’stvo v epokhu Lenina i Stalina. Eds R. G. Suni, T. Martin. Moscow: ROSSPEN Press, 2011. Pp. 7–20. (in Russian).

  Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities: History and Comparison in the Study of the USSR. Ed. by A. J. Motyl’. New York, 1992. Pp. 205–221.

  Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. 238 p.

  Valge, Jaak. Lahtirakendamine: Eesti Vabariigi majanduse stabiliseerimine 1918–1924. Tallinn: Rahvusarhiiv Publ., 2003. 440 p. (in Estonian).

  Williams, Eric E. Capitalism and Slavery. Kingston; Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2005. 285 p.

  Williams, Eric E. The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publ., 2014. 253 p.