Imperial Pain: Suffering, Whining, Pining, and Dying in the Russian Empire

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The Russian Empire was a major geopolitical force that colonized much of Eastern Europe and Northern and Central Asia across the early modern period. It was also a collection of individuals whose lives were shaped by, and shaped, the Empire. The Russian Empire fought with many groups to expand its territory, but it was individual soldiers whose bodies experienced those battles; the empire set imperial policies, but it was individual administrators who made the colonies serve the empire; the empire was invested in promoting a positive image of itself, but it was individual thinkers who formed the ideas supporting or opposing that empire. This panel looks at the everyday lives of those different figures, and in particular their emotional experience of empire. Seventeenth-century medico-military documents show a striking lack of discussion of pain for the grim wounds they describe. In stark contrast, bored colonial administrators and romantic writers of the nineteenth century both used more vivid language of suffering and pain to describe their ideas about and experiences of empire. This panel demonstrates how the varied lives of colonial actors led to concepts of pain and suffering appearing and failing to appear in unexpected places.

Sub Unit

• History: 1800-1900

Chair

• Sarah Cameron, U of Maryland, College Park

Papers

• Pain or Suffering: Soldiers’ Bodies in Early Modern Russian Military Medical Documents - Clare Griffin, Indiana U Bloomington

• Homesick Imperialists: Boredom and Nostalgia at the Edge of the Russian Empire - Oleksandr Polianichev, Södertörn U (Sweden)

Discussant

• Paula Michaels, Monash U (Australia)