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

在19世纪期间，沙皇帝国向黑海和中亚的扩张强调了考古学科学学科在东方学(Vostokovedenie)框架内的政治作用。这导致在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。因此，来自俄罗斯帝国的研究人员获得了多种可能性，可以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包括阿拉伯语、奥斯曼语、伊朗语、库尔德语和阿富汗研究的“近东”地区。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，帝国利益一直面临相互竞争的解释性霸权。在此背景下，本项目试图分析俄罗斯考古学家前往巴尔干、巴勒斯坦和波斯进行科学考察的作用。在克里米亚战争(1856年)结束到第一次世界大战(1914年)开始期间，考古发掘不仅服务于对物质遗迹的科学研究，相反，考古学作为帝国文化政治的工具在国外发挥了作用。首先，科学考察队对假定共有遗产的跨国文化区的研究很感兴趣。这些地区有时与现有的边界线发生直接冲突，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，这一点从该地区基督教遗产的侵占中可见一斑。第三，考古学为俄罗斯帝国提供了通过侵占过去的文化差异空间来扩大其影响范围的可能性。这三个星座将通过君士坦丁堡俄罗斯考古研究所、俄罗斯驻巴勒斯坦使团和俄罗斯考古学会东部部门组织的伊朗探险队的案例研究，在专著的三章中进行分析。这项研究将出版一本专著和一本编辑过的卷。

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.