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

《柏林条约》结束了俄乌战争(1877-1878年)，并在安纳托利亚东北部和高加索南部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，圣ıldır(包括阿尔达罕区)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(州)。我提议的项目旨在对照当时的奥斯曼帝国公民政策，来考察俄罗斯在这些省份(1878-1914)的公民身份政策，后者与两个帝国的边境政治相当纠缠在一起。利用对卡尔斯和巴图姆的案例研究，并将这些与奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯的其他地缘政治背景(如巴尔干和中亚)进行比较，我将以帝国公民身份作为镜头来思考以下广泛的问题：帝国公民身份如何促进更大的中央集权，从而将改革作为控制和治理帝国边境地区的一种手段？这些政策是由毗邻国家的政治决定的吗？这些国家在这些有争议的边境地区有利害关系。公民身份政策如何影响政治效忠、跨境流动，以及不同种族和宗教团体对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任何跨文化困难？我希望通过比以往更仔细地研究俄罗斯和奥斯曼帝国边界上不同参与者的竞争性主张，为沙皇统治下的俄罗斯和奥斯曼帝国之间的帝国转移的比较研究做出原创性的贡献。这很可能构成了研究意义上的一种处女地，并因此有望对奥斯曼帝国和俄罗斯帝国经历的更广泛讨论做出重大而原创的贡献。目前，帝国研究不仅是一个不断发展的领域，而且对帝国之间的互动和转移特别感兴趣，这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案件，以及帝国在1878年至1914年期间监控他们的生活和行动的权力的局限性。我的长期计划是将我的博士论文(题为《1878年至1914年间俄奥边界上的矛盾忠诚和帝国公民身份：奥斯曼帝国视角分析》)转化为一本成功的专著，内容涉及奥斯曼帝国和目前对沙皇俄国的研究。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：来自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.