Muscovy and the Mongols

Muscovy and the Mongols PDF

Author: Donald Ostrowski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-06-20

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780521894104

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A 1998 study of the impact of the Mongols on the Rus lands using a broad and extensive source base.

Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Russian History: A Very Short Introduction PDF

Author: Geoffrey Hosking

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0199580987

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A leading international authority discusses all aspects of Russian history, from the struggle by the state to control society to the transformation of the nation into a multi-ethnic empire, Russia's relations with the West and the post-Soviet era. Original.

Orthodox Russia in Crisis

Orthodox Russia in Crisis PDF

Author: Isaiah Gruber

Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1501757385

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A pivotal period in Russian history, the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century has taken on new resonance in the country's post-Soviet search for new national narratives. The historical role of the Orthodox Church has emerged as a key theme in contemporary remembrances of this time—but what precisely was that role? The first comprehensive study of the Church during the Troubles, Orthodox Russia in Crisis reconstructs this tumultuous time, offering new interpretations of familiar episodes while delving deep into the archives to uncover a much fuller picture of the era. Analyzing these sources, Isaiah Gruber argues that the business activity of monasteries played a significant role in the origins and course of the Troubles and that frequent changes in power forced Church ideologues to innovate politically, for example inventing new justifications for power to be granted to the people and to royal women. These new ideas, Gruber contends, ultimately helped bring about a new age in Russian spiritual life and a crystallization of the national mentality.

Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change

Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change PDF

Author: Reuven Amitai

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2014-12-31

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 082484789X

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Since the first millennium BCE, nomads of the Eurasian steppe have played a key role in world history and the development of adjacent sedentary regions, especially China, India, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe. Although their more settled neighbors often saw them as an ongoing threat and imminent danger—“barbarians,” in fact—their impact on sedentary cultures was far more complex than the raiding, pillaging, and devastation with which they have long been associated in the popular imagination. The nomads were also facilitators and catalysts of social, demographic, economic, and cultural change, and nomadic culture had a significant influence on that of sedentary Eurasian civilizations, especially in cases when the nomads conquered and ruled over them. Not simply passive conveyors of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and physical artifacts, nomads were frequently active contributors to the process of cultural exchange and change. Their active choices and initiatives helped set the cultural and intellectual agenda of the lands they ruled and beyond. This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars from different disciplines and cultural specializations to explore how nomads played the role of “agents of cultural change.” The beginning chapters examine this phenomenon in both east and west Asia in ancient and early medieval times, while the bulk of the book is devoted to the far flung Mongol empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This comparative approach, encompassing both a lengthy time span and a vast region, enables a clearer understanding of the key role that Eurasian pastoral nomads played in the history of the Old World. It conveys a sense of the complex and engaging cultural dynamic that existed between nomads and their agricultural and urban neighbors, and highlights the non-military impact of nomadic culture on Eurasian history. Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change illuminates and complicates nomadic roles as active promoters of cultural exchange within a vast and varied region. It makes available important original scholarship on the new turn in the study of the Mongol empire and on relations between the nomadic and sedentary worlds.

Modernizing Muscovy

Modernizing Muscovy PDF

Author: Jarmo Kotilaine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-08-02

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 1134397437

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First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the Shadow of the Mongol Empire

In the Shadow of the Mongol Empire PDF

Author: David M. Robinson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1108482449

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Memories of the Mongol Empire loomed large in fourteenth-century Eurasia. Robinson explores how Ming China exploited these memories for its own purposes.

Russia and the Golden Horde

Russia and the Golden Horde PDF

Author: Charles J. Halperin

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1987-07-22

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0253013666

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This revelatory study of Russian medieval history and the age of Mongolian conquest “infuses the subject with fresh insights and interpretations” (History). In the 13th century, a Mongolian confederation known as The Golden Horde dominated a vast region including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Caucuses. Though it would hold power into the 15th century, the influence of the Mongolian Empire on Russian history and culture has been all but ignored. Only in recent years have historians, archeologists, and philologists started to shed much needed light on this significant period of Mongol rule. In this enlightening new study, historian Charles Halperin assesses these recent findings to provide a comprehensive view of this chapter in Russian medieval history, offering a new interpretation of what role the Mongols played in the story of Russia. A Selection of the History Book Club “Combining rigorous analysis of the major scholarly findings with his own research, Halperin has produced both a much-needed synthesis and an important original work." –Library Journal

Russia in the Early Modern World

Russia in the Early Modern World PDF

Author: Donald Ostrowski

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 1793634211

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A fundamental problem in studying early modern Russian history is determining Russia’s historical development in relationship to the rest of the world. The focus throughout this book is on the continuity of Russian policies during the early modern period (1450–1800) and that those policies coincided with those of other successful contemporary Eurasian polities. The continuities occurred in the midst of constant change, but neither one nor the other, continuities or changes alone, can account for Russia’s success. Instead, Russian rulers from Ivan III to Catherine II with their hub advisors managed to sustain a balance between the two. During the early modern period, these Russian rulers invited into the country foreign experts to facilitate the transfer of technology and know-how, mostly from Europe but also from Asia. In this respect, they were willing to look abroad for solutions to domestic problems. Russia looked westward for military weaponry and techniques at the same time it was expanding eastward into the Eurasian heartland. The ruling elite and by extension the entire ruling class worked in cooperation with the ruler to implement policies. The Church played an active role in supporting the government and in seeking to eliminate opposition to the government.

The Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire PDF

Author: Michael Prawdin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1351479288

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In his prologue to The Mongol Empire, Michael Prawdin sets the stage for the last and mightiest onslaught of the nomads upon the civilized world. He tells of the many rejoicings in Europe over the successes of the Crusaders in A.D. 1221. But little did Europe know that two decades later, the Mongol hordes organized by Genghis Khan would turn the Middle East into a heap of ruins and spread terror throughout the West. A work of enduring scholarship and literary excellence, The Mongol Empire is a classic on the rise and fall of the world's largest empire. It describes the incredible ascent of the Mongol people, which, through the political and military genius of Genghis Khan, overwhelmed and subdued the nations of most of the world. It demonstrates the transformation of barbarous nomads into the most efficient rulers of their time and describes the crumbling of their vast empire and the assumption of its legacy by the formerly subjugated China and Russia. Maurice Collis in Time and Tide said of The Mongol Empire: "It has the rare merit of being both scholarly and exciting...The entire world comes on to his canvas, romantic and fantastical persons pass in our view, and at the conclusion we realize that we have seen the whole of what Marco Polo saw only in part. " while The Observer commented, "it is a fine book, full of dramatic occasion well used, clear in proportions."