Suchergebnisse

"Mirza Kazem-Bek and the Kazan School of Russian Orientology" examines the rise and fall of Kazan University's section of Oriental Letters (razriad vostochnoi slovesnosti), Imperial Russia's most important academic institution for the study of Asia in the early nineteenth century. Focusing on the university's prominent Persianist, Mirza Aleksandr Kasimovich Kazem-Bek, the article argues that in Russia scholars of the East did not always adhere to the Saidian schema of orientalism as inherently hostile to the subject of its study.

Towards the end of his lengthy study of the United States, De la démocratic en Amérique, the early nineteenth-century French liberal Alexis de Tocque-ville wrote:Il y a aujourd'hui sur la terre deux grands peuples qui […] semblent s'avancer vers le même but: ce sont les Russes et les Anglo-Américains. Leur point de départ est différent, leurs voies sont diverses; néamoins, chacun d'eux semble appelé pas un dessein secret de la Providence à tenir un jour dans ses mains les destinées de la moitié du monde.

It is already a cliché that the fall of the Soviet Union is providing an archival bonanza to historians. Naturally most attention is on sensational revelations from previously-inaccessible collections about Russia's own past. Yet those interested in other nations can also profit from the new openness of Moscow's and St. Petersburg's archives. This is particularly true for specialists in nineteenth-century Chinese history: Tsarist diplomats, officers and geographers actively studied their Asian neighbour, and their documents provide a fascinating perspective on the latter years of the Qing Dynasty. At the same time, the years before 1917 mark the golden age of Russian Sinology. While their accomplishments are largely ignored in the West, St. Petersburg's Orientalists produced much original and important work.