Hybrid Workshop, 1-2 February 2024
Central Asia, Siberia, and the Far East still hold a subordinate role in the economic history of the Russian Empire. This scarce attention paid to the economy of these regions is, however, striking. An examination of the Asiatic peripheries reveals complex dynamics deriving from the variability of economic practices. Consequently, the study of peripheries as areas of economic interdependence and competition in a comparative perspective serves as a point of departure for our workshop.
Borderland Capitalisms Reconsidered: Economic Practices and Contested Resources in (Post-)Imperial Siberia and Central Asia (1822–1929)
The Workshop is organized by the Institute for East European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the Junior Research Group "Peripheral Liberalism" of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script".
Programm
Thursday, 1 February 2024
13.30 – 14.00 Welcome and Introduction
Robert Kindler, Ruslana Bovhyria, Aleksandr Korobeinikov
14.00 – 15.00 Keynote
Beatrice Penati (University of Liverpool): Peripheral or Global? Turkestan’s Place in Old and New Histories of Capitalism
15.30 – 17.00 Panel I Borderland Encounters and Spatial Visions
Chair: Stephan Rindlisbacher
Niccolò Pianciola (University of Padua): States of Economic Exception: Entangled Sovereignties and Cross-border Trade in the Russian Far East-Manchuria Borderlands, 1906–1929
Aleksandr Korobeinikov (CEU Budapest/Vienna and FU Berlin): Natural Resources and Border Making in the Postimperial Yakut Region
Ruslana Bovhyria (FU Berlin): Perilous Waters: The Caspian Sea and the Maritime Dimension of Central Asian Frontier Economies
17.00 – 18.30 Panel II Colonial Actors and Economic Practices
Chair: Emre Tegin
Lilija Wedel (University of Bielefeld): Russian-German Entrepreneurs in Turkestan: Marketing Strategies and Contributions, 1870s–1914
Thomas Loy (HU Berlin): Haim Abraham Borderland Encounters and Economic Practices of a Jewish Merchant between Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia
Aleksandr Turbin (University of Illinois at Chicago): “European Consumption” in the Chinese Shop: Consumption, Consumers, and Competing Visions of “Proper” Commerce in the Far East of the Russian Empire in the 1880s–1890s
Friday, 2 February 2024
9.00 – 10.30 Panel III Knowledge and Power in Central Asia
Chair: Natasha Klimenko
Ian Campbell (University of California-Davis): Envisioning Settler and Local Economies: Knowledge Production and Resettlement in the Late Imperial Era
Alisher Khaliyarov (American University of Sharjah): Borderland Transformation: The Process of Currency Change in Khiva (online)
Jörn Happel (University of Hamburg): The Aral Sea as an Economic Space in the 19th Century
11.00 – 12.30 Panel IV Imperial Dynamics and Contested Resources in Siberia
Chair: Aleksandr Korobeinikov
Sergei Glebov (Smith College and Amherst College): Goods and Bodies: Race and the Invention of Chinese Commerce in Late Imperial Far East
David Darrow (University of Dayton): The Spread of Empire: Towards a Comparative History of Siberia’s Cooperative Creameries
13.30 – 15.00 Panel V: Empire and Human-Animal Relations
Chair: Robert Kindler
Takahiro Yamamoto (Singapore University of Technology and Design): A Japan Ground Redux? Marine Animal Hunting Around the Kuril Islands in the Late Nineteenth Century
Chechesh Kudachinova (Bonn University): The Production of Velvet Antler: Frontier Industry and Resource Knowledge in South Siberia (1880s–1920s)
Timm Schönfelder (GWZO Leipzig): Tracing the Fur Trade. On the Globalization of Resource Exploitation across the 1917-Divide
15.00 – 16.00 Final Discussion and Outlook (Roundtable)
Chair: Martin Wagner
Alun Thomas, Stephan Rindlisbacher, Robert Kindler, Ruslana Bovhyria, and Aleksandr Korobeinikov: Borderland Capitalisms Revisited