Russian Scholars in the ‘Near East’: Archaeological Expeditions and Imperial Cultural Politics, 1856-1914

在19世纪，沙皇帝国向黑海和中亚的扩张强调了考古学在东方研究框架内的政治作用。这导致在各大学和外交部内设立了专门机构，以及科学协会和国际专家会议。俄罗斯帝国的研究人员因此获得了多种可能性来讨论他们在科学考察期间进行的研究中获得的论文。特别令人感兴趣的是被俄罗斯东方学家指定为“近东”的地区，包括阿拉伯语，奥斯曼，伊朗，库尔德和阿富汗研究。在这一领域，一个地区成为学术界关注的焦点，长期以来，在俄罗斯帝国、奥斯曼帝国和波斯之间的领土冲突中，该地区一直受到帝国利益的竞争性解释霸权。在此背景下，该项目旨在分析俄罗斯考古学家对巴尔干半岛，巴勒斯坦和波斯（分别）的科学考察的作用。在克里米亚战争结束（1856年）和第一次世界大战开始（1914年）之间的时期，考古发掘不仅服务于物质遗迹的科学研究目的，而且考古学还作为帝国文化政治的工具，面向近邻。首先，科学考察队对研究假定为共同遗产的跨国文化区域感兴趣。这些地区有时与现有的边界线直接冲突，从而助长了新的政治联盟的形成。在第二个星座中，与西欧国家的竞争是俄罗斯考古发掘的核心动机，这一点在该地区基督教遗产的占有中显而易见。第三，考古学为俄罗斯帝国提供了一种可能性，即通过占用文化独特空间的过去来扩大其影响范围。这三个星座将在一本专著的三个章节中进行分析，通过案例研究，俄罗斯考古研究所在君士坦丁堡，俄罗斯使命在巴勒斯坦和远征到伊朗组织的俄罗斯考古学会的东部部门。这项研究的成果将是出版一本专著和一本经过编辑的书。

In the course of the 19th century, the expansion of the Tsarist Empire towards the Black Sea and Central Asia stressed the political role of the scientific discipline of archaeology in the framework of Oriental Studies (vostokovedenie). This led to the establishment of specialised institutes at Universities and within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as scientific societies and international expert conferences. Researchers from the Russian Empire thus received multiple possibilities to discuss their theses that they obtained from research conducted during scientific expeditions. Of particular interest was the region designated by Russian orientalists as the “Near East” comprising of Arabic, Ottoman, Iranian, Kurdish, and Afghan studies. In this field, a region became the focus of scholarly attention that had been long exposed to competing interpretative hegemonies by imperial interests in territorial conflicts between the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Against this background, this project seeks to analyse the role of scientific expeditions of Russian archaeologists to the Balkans, to Palestine and to Persia (resp. Iran) for the Russian foreign cultural politics and the international circulation of knowledge.In the period between the end of the Crimean War (1856) and the beginning of World War I (1914), archaeological excavations not only served the purpose of scientific research on material remains, rather, archaeology functioned as an instrument of imperial cultural politics towards the near abroad. First, the scientific expeditions took an interest in the study of transnational cultural areas of assumed shared heritage. These areas at times stood in direct conflict with the existing lines of borders and thus fuelled the formation of new political alliances. In the second constellation, the competition with Western European states was the central motivation for Russian archaeological excavations as evident in the appropriation of the Christian heritage of the region. And third, archaeology provided the Russian Empire with the possibility to extend its sphere of influence by appropriating the past of culturally distinct spaces. These three constellations will be analysed in three chapters of a monograph by means of the case studies of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, the Russian Mission in Palestine and the expeditions into Iran organised by the Eastern departments of Russian archaeological societies. The research will result in the publication of a monograph and an edited volume.