The Human Journey, Volumes 1 - 2

by Kevin Reilly

  Siberia and Beyond . The Russian Empire was a military and bureaucratic project of the Russian state, but it was undertaken by a variety of private interests. A wealthy merchant family, the Stroganovs, led the way into Kazan and Siberia. Their shock troops were hired Cossacks made up of former peasants, criminals, and vagabonds who had escaped the bonds of serfdom. They were fiercely independent, egalitarian, and ready to turn bandit or sell their formidable military skills to the highest bidder. Like the small groups of conquistadores who pioneered Spanish conquests in the Americas, Cossack troops with firearms overwhelmed, often brutally, the far more numerous Siberians armed only with bows and arrows. Trappers and hunters followed in the wake of conquest, as did a growing number of Russian peasants who could escape the bonds of serfdom by migrating to Siberia. Priests and missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church likewise accompanied the advance of empire. Siberia became as well a place to dump Russia’s undesirables—convicted criminals, political prisoners, and religious dissidents. Thus, the Russian population of Siberia grew rapidly over the centuries: in 1700, they numbered about 300,000; by 1800, 900,000; and by 1900, more than 5 million. In 1911, the indigenous people of Siberia, overwhelmed by the newcomers, represented little more than 10 percent of its total population.20

  Nor was Siberia the end of Russian ambitions to the east. Tsar Peter I (known to history as Peter the Great) set in motion plans for extending Russian power and colonization to another continent across the Bering Sea to the northwestern corner of the Americas. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, Russian explorers and merchants established a Russian presence in Alaska, pushed down the west coast of Canada to northern California, and penetrated the Pacific Ocean as far as Hawaii, where they briefly established a fort and dreamed of a Russian West Indies. But a permanent Russian presence in the New World proved untenable, the victim of enormously long supply lines, American and British opposition, and more attractive opportunities in China and central Asia. The end of the American venture came in 1867 when Russia finally sold Alaska to the United States.

  The Impact of Empire . Siberia, however, remained a permanent and fully integrated part of Russia and exercised a profound impact on the emerging Russian state. It was a source of great wealth, initially in the form of animal furs—sables, black foxes, sea otters, and others. Europe’s growing wealth in early modern times, derived in part from the profits of its own empires, created a huge market for these furs and rendered them extremely valuable. China too became a market for Russian furs. The quest for furs—often called “soft gold”—pulled the Russians across Siberia and onto the North American continent in a fashion similar to the French fur-trading empire in Canada. Russian hunters and trappers rapaciously reaped this natural harvest to the point of exhaustion and then moved on to fresh territory. The native peoples of Siberia suffered tremendously from this Russian “fur fever” as they were forced to hand over large quantities of pelts as tribute and had to endure bitter punishment if they failed to do so. Russians also brought new diseases that substantially reduced their numbers, new goods that rendered them dependent on Russians, and alcohol and tobacco, to which many became addicted. As in the Americas, the cost of incorporation into the network of agrarian empires was high indeed.

  What was a grievous loss to native Siberians was a great gain for the Russian state, which by 1700 acquired about 10 percent of its revenue from taxes on the fur trade. In addition to fur, western Siberia provided high-quality iron ore for its industries and armies and turned Russia by the mid-eighteenth century into a major exporter of that metal. Siberian copper, gold, and silver likewise enriched the empire. In short, the resources of Siberia played a major role in transforming Russia into one of the great powers of Europe during the eighteenth century. Its oil, gas, timber, and mineral resources did the same for the Soviet Union in the twentieth.

  Siberia also turned Russia into an Asian power as it came to dominate the northern region of that continent. Its subsequent expansion into central Asia during the nineteenth century only enhanced its Asian presence. In the process, Russia came into contact—both military and commercial—with China, with ancient Muslim societies of central Asia, and with the Ottoman Empire. As it incorporated large numbers of Muslims, Buddhists, and other non-Christian people into its empire, Russia also developed something of an identity problem, felt most acutely by its intellectuals in the nineteenth century and after. With an empire that stretched from Poland to the Pacific, was Russia really a European society shaped by its Christian heritage and developing along western lines, or was it an Asian power shaped by its Siberian empire and its Mongol heritage with a different, distinctly Russian pattern of development? The famous Russian writer Dostoyevsky had one answer to the question: “In Europe,” he wrote, “we were hangers-on and slaves, whereas in Asia we shall go as masters.”21

  Russia and Europe

  Dostoyevsky’s statement highlights the difference between Russian empire building in Asia and its less extensive but equally important expansion to the west in Europe. Russians generally approached Asia with a sense of superiority and confidence, believing that they were bringing Christianity to the heathen, agriculture to backward peoples, and European culture to barbarians. But in relationship to Europe, Russian elites were aware of their marginal status and often felt insecure and inferior. Far removed from major trade routes and only recently emerged from two centuries of Mongol domination, early modern Russia was weaker than many European states and clearly less developed both economically and politically. That weakness had been demonstrated on the field of battle with Russian defeats at the hands of both Poland and Sweden, then major regional powers. Thus, unlike its expansion in Siberia, where Russia faced no major competitors, its movement to the west occurred in the context of great power rivalries and military threat.

  Looking Westward . Between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, Russia absorbed Ukraine, much of Poland, the Baltic coast, and Finland. It also pushed southward into the Caucasus to offer protection to the Christian societies of Georgia and Armenia, then under Muslim control. Some of these regions, such as Ukraine, were extensively integrated into the Russian Empire both administratively and culturally, while others, such as Poland with its large Jewish community and Finland, retained more of their separate identities.

  Russia’s engagement with the West also stimulated a major effort to overcome its weakness by imitating certain aspects of European life. Thus, Russia was among the first of the world’s major societies to perceive itself as backward in comparison to the West. How to catch up with Europe, enhance Russian power, and yet protect the position of its ruling elite—these issues posed the central dilemma of modern Russian history. How much of Western culture should be absorbed, and what aspects of Russian culture should be discarded? In the nineteenth century and later, similar questions assumed great prominence in the affairs of China, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and many other societies on the receiving end of European aggression.

  Peter the Great . The first major effort to cope with the dilemma is associated with Tsar Peter the Great, who reigned from 1689 to 1725. An extended trip to western Europe early in his reign convinced Peter of the backwardness and barbarity of almost everything Russian and of its need for European institutions, experts, and practices. A huge energetic man, Peter determined to haul Russia into the modern world by creating a state based on the European model, one that could mobilize the country’s energies and resources.

  Even a short list of Peter’s reforms conveys something of their enormous scope. Much of this effort was aimed at increasing Russia’s military strength. He created a huge professional standing army for the first time, complete with uniforms, modern muskets and artillery, and imported European officers. A new and more efficient administrative system, based on written documents, required more serious educational preparation. Thus, Peter established a variety of new, largely technical schools and tried to require at least five years of education for the sons
of nobles. A decree of 1714 forbade noblemen to marry until they could demonstrate competence in arithmetic and geometry. To staff the new bureaucracy and the army, Peter bound every nobleman to life service to the state and actively recruited commoners as well. State power and compulsion were also applied to the economy. Aware of the backwardness of Russia’s merchants and entrepreneurs, Peter established 200 or more manufacturing enterprises, particularly in metallurgy, mining, and textiles, with the government providing overall direction, some of the capital, and serf labor.

  In cultural matters, Peter and his successors, especially Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), tried vigorously to foster Western manners, dress, and social customs. A decree of 1701 required upper-class men to wear French or Saxon clothing on the top and German clothing below the waist. Women were to wear Western dresses and underwear. Finally, he built a wholly new capital, St. Petersburg, in the far north of the country on the Gulf of Finland. European in its architecture, the city was to serve as Peter’s “window on the West,” the place where Europe’s culture would penetrate the darkness of Russian backwardness.

  The Cost of Reform . During Peter’s reign, Russia became one of the major military powers of Europe, though it remained economically and socially far behind Western Europe. But the price of this transformation was high. Growing government revenues placed an enormous burden on an already impoverished peasantry. Later tsars required the landlords to collect the taxes, thus increasing their control over the serfs, who were little more than slaves. By promoting Western education and culture so vigorously, Peter fostered an elite class largely cut off from its own people. The educated nobility spoke French, were familiar with European literature and philosophy, and often held Russian culture in contempt. Under the influence of Western liberal ideas, some of this group came also to oppose the regime itself, giving rise to a revolutionary movement that ultimately brought the tsarist system to an end.

  Others opposed Peter’s reforms from a conservative point of view. One critic, an eighteenth-century aristocrat Mikhail Shcherbatov, pointed to what he saw as the many negative outcomes of Peter’s policies:

  We have hastened to corrupt our morals. . . . [F]aith and God’s laws have been extinguished from our hearts. . . . Children have no respect for parents and are not ashamed to flout their will openly. . . . There is no genuine love between husbands and wives, who are often coolly indifferent to each other’s adulteries. . . . [E]ach lives for himself. . . . [W]omen, previously unaware of their own beauty, began to realize its power; they began to try to enhance it with suitable clothes, and used far more luxury in their adornments than their ancestors.22

  Despite the sometimes violent opposition, Peter imposed his reforms ruthlessly. Forcing members of the nobility to shave their beards became a hated symbol of this effort at westernization. Punishments for resistance to Peter’s regime included dismemberment, beheading, mutilation, flogging, banishment, and hard labor. Whereas Europe’s economic development was largely a matter of private initiative percolating up from below, in Russia only the state had the capacity and the motivation to undertake the apparently necessary but painful work of social and economic transformation. This pattern of state-directed modernization continued under later tsars and under communist officials in the twentieth century.

  But Peter’s efforts at “westernization” were highly selective. He had little interest in promoting free or wage labor on a large scale, preferring to tighten the obligations of serfs to their masters. A harsh Russian serfdom in fact lasted until 1861. Representative government also held little appeal for tsars committed to autocracy. And there was little effort to encourage a large private merchant class or to foster westernization beyond a small elite.

  Russia and the World

  The Russian Empire encountered many of the other centers of early modern expansion. It sparred repeatedly with the Ottoman Empire over territorial claims in the Balkans and the Caucasus and incorporated many Muslims within the Russian domain. It ran up against Chinese expansion in the Amur River valley and retreated in the face of Chinese power while trading its furs and skins for Chinese cotton cloth, silk, tea, and rhubarb root during the eighteenth century. It was deflected from a New World presence by European and American power and was stimulated to great internal change by the threat of that growing power.

  While Russia’s empire shared much with these other imperial societies, it was also distinctive. Unlike European empires in which the mother country and colonies were quite separate, in Russia that distinction hardly existed as newly conquered areas generally became integrated politically and, at least for the elites, culturally as well into the larger Russian state. Nonetheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, relentless Russian expansion had made Russians a minority in their own empire. That empire also had a distinct psychology. The enormous scope of the empire testified to its aggressive features, and its subject peoples, such as native Siberians, had painful evidence of Russian brutality. Yet many Russians perceived themselves as victims of other peoples’ aggression, remembering the devastating Mongol invasion, the threat of nomadic raids from the steppe, and the growing danger from powerful European countries. Russians were warriors, but they often felt like victims. Finally, Russia’s empire had a unique duration. While Europe’s American empires dissolved in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and its subsequent Afro-Asian empires collapsed after World War II, the Russian Empire, under Soviet communist auspices since the revolution of 1917, continued intact until 1991, and the greater part of it (namely, Siberia) remains still under Russian control.

  Parallel Worlds

  By the beginning of the early modern era, around 1450, four quite separate “worlds,” or big interacting regions, had taken shape on the planet. By far, the largest was the world of Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa. With perhaps 75 to 80 percent of the earth’s population, various Afro-Eurasian societies had long interacted with one another and in doing so had generated the largest and most expansive civilizations, the most productive agricultures, the most highly developed technologies, and all the world’s literary traditions. Islamic, Chinese, and Russian expansion in the early modern era took place within this Afro-Eurasian world and continued its long-established connections while deepening the web of relationships that bound its peoples together. But beyond this vast region lay three other smaller “worlds” that had developed independently before their brutal incorporation into the “one world” born of Europe’s global expansion.

  The World of Inner Africa

  Much of the northern third of the African continent participated in the religious and commercial networks of Afro-Eurasia. So too did much of eastern Africa, home to the ancient Christian kingdom of Ethiopia and, farther south, to the Islamic Swahili civilization along the coast of East Africa, where dozens of commercially oriented city-states had for centuries shared actively in the world of Indian Ocean trade. However, the rest of the continent—inner Africa—was only marginally connected to this larger system.

  By 1450, most of inner Africa was organized in small-scale, iron-using agricultural or pastoral societies. In many places, these societies had evolved into states or kingdoms. One cluster of complex states had emerged in the area surrounding Lake Victoria by the sixteenth century. The largest of them was Bunyoro, the king of which controlled large herds of cattle that he redistributed to his followers. In the grasslands south of the Congo River basin, a series of loosely connected states emerged about the same time and created a zone of interaction from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean across southern Africa. In southeastern Africa, the kingdom of Zimbabwe generated a substantial urban center of 15,000 to 18,000 people at its height in the fourteenth century, erected intricate huge stone enclosures, and channeled its ivory and gold to Swahili traders on the coast. Here the world of inner Africa and the larger world of Indian Ocean commerce had a modest meeting. Yet another cluster of states, towns, and cities emerged in what is now Nigeria, including the king
doms of Igala, Nupe, and Benin and the city-states of the Yoruba people. Trade in kola nuts, food products, horses, copper, and manufactured goods linked these areas to one another and to the larger savanna kingdoms farther north.

  Elsewhere, African peoples structured their societies on the basis of kinship or lineage principles without state organizations. These societies too had long absorbed people, borrowed ideas and techniques, shared artistic styles, and exchanged goods with neighboring peoples. When the pastoral Masaai came into contact with the agricultural Kikuyu in the highlands of central Kenya around 1750, they engaged in frequent military conflict that the Masaai most often won. As a result, the Kikuyu adopted from the Masaai age-based military regiments and related customs, such as the use of ostrich-feather headdresses for warriors and the drinking of cow’s milk before battle.

  Some institutions or practices spread quite widely. Bananas, first domesticated in Southeast Asia, found their way to Africa, where they spread widely in the eastern region of the continent. The position of a medicine man specializing in war magic was found in the northern savanna, the forest areas of equatorial Africa, and also in the southern savanna among peoples who are otherwise culturally very different. “They all apparently wanted more effective war magic,” writes historian Jan Vansina, “and so borrowed their neighbors’ way of getting it.”23 Inner Africa, an interacting world of its own before 1450, would soon be rudely integrated into the larger world system via the Atlantic slave trade, a subject explored in greater detail in the next chapter.