Railways and Gold: Chinese Labor and State Capitalism in the Russian Empire in the 1890s-1910s

• In Event: Chinese-Russian Encounters in the Late 19th - Early 20th Century: People, Goods, Ideas

Abstract

The paper will explore the reliance and dependence of the Russian Empire’s nascent “state
capitalism” on the flow of Chinese labor and how the practices and discourses surrounding it
shaped the parameters of government population politics during the First World War. The paper
argues that the Russian Empire’s experience aligned with the experience of other empires, such
as the British Empire, exemplifying a part of the general trend toward biopolitical control over
laborers’ bodies in the years immediately preceding the First World War.

Author

• Aleksei Epishev, U of Illinois at Chicago