Russian Imperial Rule and Citizenship in the South Caucasus (1878-1914)

《柏林条约》结束了俄罗斯-奥斯曼战争（1877- 1878年），并在安纳托利亚东北部和高加索南部的交界处划定了俄罗斯和奥斯曼帝国之间的新边界。奥斯曼帝国的三个桑贾克、卡尔斯、艾尔德尔（包括阿尔达汉地区）和巴图姆被割让给俄罗斯;此后不久，俄罗斯当局建立了两个独立的行政区划，卡尔斯省和巴图姆省。我提出的项目旨在研究俄罗斯的公民身份政策在这些省份（1878年至1914年）与并发奥斯曼公民身份政策，这是相当纠结于两个帝国的边界政治。通过对卡尔斯和巴图姆的案例研究，并将其与其他奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯的地缘政治背景（如巴尔干半岛和中亚）进行比较，我将以帝国公民身份作为一个透镜来考虑以下广泛的问题：帝国公民身份如何促进更大的中央集权，从而促进改革，作为控制和治理帝国边境的一种手段？这些政策是由在这些有争议的边境地区有利害关系的相邻国家的政治决定的吗？公民身份政策如何影响不同种族和宗教群体的政治冲突、跨境流动和帝国边境地区的居住？最后，应该采取什么策略来避免可能出现的跨文化困难？我希望通过比以往更密切地关注俄罗斯-奥斯曼边境地区各参与方的竞争性要求，为沙皇俄国和奥斯曼帝国之间帝国转移的比较研究做出原创性贡献。从研究的意义上讲，这可能是一块处女地，因此，它有望为更广泛地讨论奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯帝国的经验做出重要的、原创的贡献。目前，“帝国研究”不仅是一个不断发展的领域，而且对帝国间的互动和转移特别感兴趣，这也是我目前研究的主题。 我的短期出版计划包括一篇学术期刊文章，这篇文章将研究横跨俄罗斯和奥斯曼帝国的亚美尼亚人的情况，以及帝国权力在1878年至1914年间监控他们的生活和行动的限制。我的长期计划是把我的博士论文（题为“1878年至1914年俄罗斯-奥斯曼边境的矛盾忠诚和帝国公民身份：奥斯曼视角的分析”）对奥斯曼帝国和目前的研究沙皇俄罗斯成为一个成功的专著。这本专著的暂定标题可能是：奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯帝国的帝国公民政策：从东安纳托利亚和俄罗斯高加索的视角。

The Treaty of Berlin brought the Russo-Ottoman War (1877-78) to an end, and delineated a new border between the Russian and Ottoman Empires at the juncture of north-eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus. The three Ottoman sanjaks, Kars, Çıldır (including the Ardahan district) and Batum were ceded to Russia; soon thereafter Russian authorities established two separate administrative divisions, the provinces (oblasts) of Kars and Batum. My proposed project aims at examining Russia’s citizenship policies in these provinces (1878 – 1914) vis-à-vis concurrent Ottoman citizenship policies, which were rather entangled with border politics of both empires. Using case studies of Kars and Batum, and comparing these to other Ottoman and Russian geopolitical contexts, such as the Balkans and Central Asia, I will use imperial citizenship as a lens to consider the following, broad questions: How does imperial citizenship facilitate greater centralization and thus reform as a means of control and governance of imperial borderlands? Are these policies shaped by the politics of contiguous states, which have a stake in such contested border regions? How do citizenship policies affect political allegiances, cross-border movements, and the habitation of imperial borderlands by divergent ethnic and religious groups? And, finally, what strategies ought to be employed to avoid any cross-cultural difficulties that may arise?My hope is an original contribution to the comparative study of imperial transfers between Tsarist Russia and the Ottomans, by looking more closely than before at the competitive claims of the various actors on the Russo-Ottoman borderlands. This might well constitute a kind of virgin soil in the research sense, and, as such, promises to make a significant and original contribution to the broader discussion of the Ottoman and Russian imperial experience. Currently, “Empire Studies” is not only a growing field, but particularly interested in inter-imperial interactions and transfers, the topic of my current research. My short-term publication plan consists of an academic journal article, which will examine the case of Armenians who straddled the Russian and Ottoman Empires, and the limits of imperial power to monitor their lives and movement between 1878 and 1914. My long-term plan is to turn my PhD Dissertation (entitled ‘Ambivalent Loyalties and Imperial Citizenship on the Russo-Ottoman Border between 1878 and 1914: An Analysis of the Ottoman Perspective’ ) on the Ottoman Empire and current research on Tsarist Russia into a successful monograph. The working title for the monograph might be: Policies of Imperial Citizenship in the Ottoman and Russian Empires: A Perspective from Eastern Anatolia and the Russian Caucasus.