Jane Burbank
New York University, History, Emeritus
- Jane Burbank is Professor Emerita, New York University. She was a member of both History and Russian and Slavic Studi... moreJane Burbank is Professor Emerita, New York University. She was a member of both History and Russian and Slavic Studies Departments. She is a historian of Russia and, more generally, of law and empire. She is the author of Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917-1922; Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905-1917; and, with Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference.edit
Research Interests: Law, Jurisprudence, Political Science, Ideology, Legal Culture, and 3 moreCitizenship, Peasant, and Routledge
the Orthodox mission in Alaska, whose role Black views as the "light of the spirit" (223) that advanced Alaskan aboriginal populations. It is worth noting that several scholars in North America and Russia have a different vision... more
the Orthodox mission in Alaska, whose role Black views as the "light of the spirit" (223) that advanced Alaskan aboriginal populations. It is worth noting that several scholars in North America and Russia have a different vision of Russian America's history. For example, anthropologist Sergei Kan, in his Memory Eternal (1999), shows that Alaskan indigenous people, instead of embracing the Orthodox as "the light of the spirit," heavily blended Orthodoxy with their shamanic beliefs. Also, in a drastic contrast to Black, historian Andrei Grinev {The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741-1867, 2005) writes about the RAC's ruthless exploitation of the indigenous population. He also adds that the company was a rigid bureaucracy unable to compete with vigorous American and British interests; Sonja Luehrmann recently elaborated on the socioeconomic development of Russian America in her "Russian Colonialism and the Asiatic Mode of Production" (Slavic Review, vol. 64, no. 4 [Winter 2005]). In a special chapter that is, in my view, the most interesting part of her book, Black explores the rise of the Creole (not to be confused with Latin American Creoles) class in Alaska. For obvious reasons, it was hard to recruit workers in Russia, so the Alaskan offspring of marriages between Russians and natives who were then educated in Russian schools formed a special estate-like category and were used to run the colony. Black's important observation is that despite their mixed-blood origins the Creoles were never thought of in racial or ethnic categories. Earlier Russian and western historians have not discussed the role of this segment of the Alaskan population in detail. Not only is Black's book a tribute to the Russian legacy in Alaska, it is also the product of her lifelong career as an anthropologist and a public historian. With her retirement and the retirement of historian Richard Pierce, another enthusiast of Russian America, the University of Alaska currently has no expert on this period of Alaskan history.
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... The other Bolsheviks: Lenin and his critics, 1904-1914. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Williams, Robert C. (b. 1938, d. ----. PUBLISHER: Indiana University Press (Bloomington). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1986. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN... more
... The other Bolsheviks: Lenin and his critics, 1904-1914. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Williams, Robert C. (b. 1938, d. ----. PUBLISHER: Indiana University Press (Bloomington). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1986. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0253342694 ). VOLUME/EDITION ...
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In her contribution in memory of Anatoly Remnev, Jane Burbank recalls meeting Remnev for the first time in 1996 during a summer school for social scientists near Vladimir in Russia. At the time, Remnev, with Petr Savel'ev, produced a... more
In her contribution in memory of Anatoly Remnev, Jane Burbank recalls meeting Remnev for the first time in 1996 during a summer school for social scientists near Vladimir in Russia. At the time, Remnev, with Petr Savel'ev, produced a draft of the research project on region and empire that has shaped much of Burbank's own research. Remnev then suggested using the region rather than the nationality or confession for framing analyses of imperial history. Although now a highly discussed theoretical problem, the regional approach for Remnev was grounded in the understanding that it would allow historians to avoid privileging a specific form of groupness (ethnic, confessional, linguistic, etc.). Burbank notes that Remnev's many works became standard references for historians of the Russian empire all over the world. For Burbank, Anatoly Remnev was utterly reliable, upright, fair, and understanding in every part of his life – a true comrade and a responsible leader.Свои воспоминания о дружбе с Анатолием Ремневым Джейн Бурбанк начинает с их первой встречи, состоявшейся на летней школе во Владимире в 1996 году. Исследовательница рассказывает историю одного из первых международных проектов по изучению Российской империи, который вырос из этого опыта и в основу которого легла идея Ремнева о региональном подходе. Эссе сочетает личные воспоминания с анализом региональной парадигмы и оценкой значения работ Ремнева для мировой историографии Российской империи.
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Insulte et châtiment devant les tribunaux locaux : la construction de la civilité en Russie impériale tardive - Le présent article examine les litiges pour insultes portés devant les tribunaux locaux en Russie impériale tardive. Les... more
Insulte et châtiment devant les tribunaux locaux : la construction de la civilité en Russie impériale tardive - Le présent article examine les litiges pour insultes portés devant les tribunaux locaux en Russie impériale tardive. Les paysans, considérés comme extérieurs au domaine du droit, eurent de fait largement recours aux tribunaux locaux pour résoudre les controverses issues de comportements publics insultants. Les paysans firent appel au droit écrit (statute law, par opposition au droit cou- tumier) et à la procédure des tribunaux locaux pour se défendre contre les abus verbaux et physiques et pour élaborer des normes de civilité. La participation de paysans aux débats devant les tribunaux de volost' établit un lien entre la population rurale et les autorités nationales, constituant un forum utile à la défense de la dignité individuelle, à la confrontation publique d'opinions contradictoires et à l'évaluation officielle d'actes perturbateurs.
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From 1917 through the present, sovereignty has been repeatedly recovered and reconfigured in Kazan and its hinterlands as the area was transferred from one complex polity to another. It is the frequent renegotiation of authority over... more
From 1917 through the present, sovereignty has been repeatedly recovered and reconfigured in Kazan and its hinterlands as the area was transferred from one complex polity to another. It is the frequent renegotiation of authority over multiple and redefinable units of political and economic control, rather than stability of institutions, that keeps the political class engaged in the reproduction of both the state and the Eurasian sovereignty regime.
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The arrogation of the right to self-discipline by professionals in imperial Russia was part of a conscious quest for corporate emancipation and individual dignity. By the late nineteenth century, professional organizations overtly... more
The arrogation of the right to self-discipline by professionals in imperial Russia was part of a conscious quest for corporate emancipation and individual dignity. By the late nineteenth century, professional organizations overtly challenged the autoc- racy's claim over the ...
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One positive and, from an intellectual standpoint, exhilarating con-sequence of the disintegration and collapse of Soviet power has been a new attentiveness to the history of the Russian Empire before 1917. On the territories of the... more
One positive and, from an intellectual standpoint, exhilarating con-sequence of the disintegration and collapse of Soviet power has been a new attentiveness to the history of the Russian Empire before 1917. On the territories of the erstwhile empire, this revisionism has taken many ...
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Les comptes rendus d'audience des tribunaux ruraux russes au debut du XX e siecle revelent le large usage que les paysans faisaient des tribunaux locaux afin de resoudre des disputes concernant le travail, les ressources, les produits... more
Les comptes rendus d'audience des tribunaux ruraux russes au debut du XX e siecle revelent le large usage que les paysans faisaient des tribunaux locaux afin de resoudre des disputes concernant le travail, les ressources, les produits et les obligations familiales. Contrairement a l'image qu'en donnaient les elites russes, les paysans n'adheraient pas a des pratiques arrierees et coutumieres, mais ils avaient recours a ces niveaux inferieurs des cours de justice pour defendre les principes du marche de maniere legale. Les juges paysans et les plaidants accordaient de la valeur a la documentation ecrite, defendaient les arrangements ecrits et executaient les valeurs d'une productivite responsable. Une societe civile fondee sur des familles se croisant via le marche existait donc bien dans les campagnes russes et etait renforcee par le large reseau des tribunaux de district
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1. The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Soviet Regime.- 2. The Announcement of the Trial and the International Socialist Movement.- 3. Preparations for the Trial.- 4. The Treatment of the Accused, Defenders and Witnesses During the... more
1. The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Soviet Regime.- 2. The Announcement of the Trial and the International Socialist Movement.- 3. Preparations for the Trial.- 4. The Treatment of the Accused, Defenders and Witnesses During the Trial.- 5. The Judicial Investigation.- 6. The Socialist Revolutionaries Versus the Bolsheviks.- 7. The Verdict and How It Was Brought About.- 8. The Propaganda Campaign.- 9. The Reactions.- 10. The End.- Conclusion.- List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes.- Notes.
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Coming into the Territory: Uncertainty and Empire. Jane Burbank and Mark von Hagen. ... O=Rourke argues that it was not state institutions, but a group=s own preservation of particular practices and ideologies that created a distinctive... more
Coming into the Territory: Uncertainty and Empire. Jane Burbank and Mark von Hagen. ... O=Rourke argues that it was not state institutions, but a group=s own preservation of particular practices and ideologies that created a distinctive Cossack community. ...
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Home Browse Authors Browse Titles My Account Title: Russian Peasants Go to Court. Author(s): Burbank, Jane. A print version is also available by visiting IUP books. Share. | More. Shopping Cart Alphabetical Listing of All Titles.... more
Home Browse Authors Browse Titles My Account Title: Russian Peasants Go to Court. Author(s): Burbank, Jane. A print version is also available by visiting IUP books. Share. | More. Shopping Cart Alphabetical Listing of All Titles. Collections. ...
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... head who merged with the Bolsheviks in 1917 (or just before) and contributed some of the more interesting leaders of the early Soviet years (Karl Radek, Khristian Ra-kovsky, Alexandra Kollontai, MS Uritsky, Adolf Ioffe, Yuri Larin,... more
... head who merged with the Bolsheviks in 1917 (or just before) and contributed some of the more interesting leaders of the early Soviet years (Karl Radek, Khristian Ra-kovsky, Alexandra Kollontai, MS Uritsky, Adolf Ioffe, Yuri Larin, and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, to mention a ...
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Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were the Mongols, who treated cultural difference as an ordinary fact, and possibly a useful one. At the other pole were Roman-style empires that... more
Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were the Mongols, who treated cultural difference as an ordinary fact, and possibly a useful one. At the other pole were Roman-style empires that insisted on the superiority of their civilization. Empires combined strategies and shifted among them. A polity could move through an imperial phase to more homogeneous composition, but empire-building was also a temptation for relatively uniform polities. Differential incorporation into the social fabric of empire or radical exclusion of certain categories from acceptance and political participation were variants on the politics of difference. This chapter explores issues of race, religion, differential rights, gender, ethnicity, and class as they played out across the vast spaces shaped by empires. Opponents of imperial rulers, coming from different social categories, also acted within and across imperial spaces.
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In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was debating articles relating to a new constitution for the overseas empire, a deputy cited a precedent: in the year 212 CE, the Roman Emperor... more
In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was debating articles relating to a new constitution for the overseas empire, a deputy cited a precedent: in the year 212 CE, the Roman Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all male, non-slave subjects of the empire. The example, it was argued, showed that people could be citizens of an empire without renouncing their “local civilizations.” This paper explores various meanings of citizenship and rights in empires based on two different models – the Roman model and a Eurasian model – and on the contrasting examples of imperial Russia, the USSR, and 20th-century France. The discussion moves beyond the common association of citizenship with the nation-state and rights with democracy. Building and sustaining an empire, we argue, entailed the integration of diverse groups of people into a single political unit, while at the same time maintaining distinctions and hierarchies. That a 20th-century republic could look to a classical precedent demonstrates the extent to which the imaginary and structures of the imperial system retained their importance. This paper calls for recognition of the wide range of ways in which political belonging, cultural difference, and rights can be analyzed, envisioned, and understood.
Research Interests: History, Law, Political Science, Politics, Democracy, and 4 moreEmpire, Citizenship, Constitution, and Emperor
Research Interests: Philosophy and Art
Методологическую рубрику номера открывает интервью, которое редакторы Ab Imperio взяли у историка Российской империи Джейн Бурбанк и историка французской колониальной империи и колониаль- ной и постколониальной Африки Фредерика Купера –... more
Методологическую рубрику номера открывает интервью, которое редакторы Ab Imperio взяли у историка Российской империи Джейн Бурбанк и историка французской колониальной империи и колониаль- ной и постколониальной Африки Фредерика Купера – авторов недавно вышедшей фундаментальной работы “Империи в мировой истории: власть и политика разнообразия”. Взятое в июле 2010 года, интервью продолжает серию Ab Imperio “Беседы с авторами”, представляющую читателям журнала значимые публикации в области истории империи и методологии истории и социальных наук. Интервью посвящено “Им- периям в мировой истории” как попытке новаторского переосмысления опыта всемирной истории через категорию империи. При этом истори- ческий опыт евразийских и Российской империй представлен в книге в общем ряду с более конвенциональными в подобных обобщающих трудах западными колониальными империями, что делает книгу еще интереснее для специалистов по истории России/СССР. Бурбанк и Купер рассказывают о том, как зародился замысел книги в процессе преподавания в университете Мичигана и Нью-Йоркском университете. Своим главным достижением они считают попытку 44  Ab Imperio, 2/2010 осмыслить империю как политическую формацию, основанную на политике разнообразия. В книге описаны имперский политический репертуар и роль разнообразных имперских “посредников”, пред- ложен новый взгляд на мировую историю, основанный на том, что большинство населения мира в различные периоды истории проживало в империях и находилось под влиянием обстоятельств империи и/или культуры империи. Соответственно, Бурбанк и Купер стремились по- колебать устойчивые представления о естественности и неизбывности нации и национального государства, а также принятые в историогра- фии деления на домодерные (архаические; классические) и модерные империи. Авторы новой книги подчеркивают, что особую ценность в их работе представляет не сама по себе теоретическая модель, но созданный на основе инновационной структуры нарратив, в котором опыт отдельных имперских политических формаций перемежается с изучением наследия архетипических (для отдельных исторических регионов) империй и взаимодействия двух или более империй между собой. Бурбанк и Купер отвечают на целый ряд вопросов редакторов AI, касающихся подходов и оценок, высказанных в книге.
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By focusing on spaces “in-between” empires - their connectivity, cooperation, and competition - this workshop aims at establishing a trans-imperial approach to the history of empires. Imperial history has been booming for quite a while.... more
By focusing on spaces “in-between” empires - their connectivity, cooperation, and competition - this workshop aims at establishing a trans-imperial approach to the history of empires.
Imperial history has been booming for quite a while. Along the way, innovative approaches such as post-colonial history, global history, or new imperial history have provided us with thrilling insights into the omnipresence and the everydayness of the human experience of empires. Amidst all this diversity, many studies have focussed on entanglements between colonies and metropoles, but much less is known about trans-imperial dimensions of the game. On an empirical basis, inter-imperial perspectives, which compare several empires or consider competition between them, have become more important lately. Yet, such studies are scattered and this kind of research remains in its infancy. We still lack an overarching theoretical-methodological framework with which to address the spaces in-between empires. In other words: whereas national history has been transnationalized in the past decades, the same does not hold true for the history of empires. Thus, we would like to address the current state of research and at the same time ask how a future trans-imperial history could look.
In this sense, we seek to decentralize the history of empires both on the level of empirical research and historiographical narratives. Our questions are as follows: do narratives for each empire change with such an approach? Do they appear less unique? To illustrate this: does the thesis about continuity in German colonialism from the late 19th century to the Nazi regime appear in another light if we discuss German expansion in trans-imperial contexts? Does the notion of the uniqueness of Japanese imperialism, which is often seen as a reaction to or even a mimicry of Western imperialism, still hold true? And, to add a final question: was the British empire the all-defining model for all the others or are the imperial processes of the various nations examples of mutual learning?
By discussing such concrete questions we also seek to address more overarching questions. How can we systemize such an approach in methodological and theoretical terms? Are recent concepts dealing with dissemination and practices of knowledge helpful? How can we integrate studies on anti-imperial agency or violence into the approach? And who were the brokers of trans-imperial interactions?
Research has shown that transnational approaches do not make the nation disappear. We would like to take the same stance in relation to empire. Therefore, in this workshop we will focus on specific cases. The workshop, to be held in Berlin in September 2017, will bring together an international group of scholars who have focused on one or more imperial dimensions of one of the following empires: British, French, Russian, Austria-Hungary, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Ottoman, Chinese, as well as the US-American empire. Their contributions should discuss how transcending perspectives can change the perception of the empires they are specialized in, but also discuss possibilities and limits of a trans-imperial approach for the historiography per se. The focus will be on the years between 1850 and 1945.
Imperial history has been booming for quite a while. Along the way, innovative approaches such as post-colonial history, global history, or new imperial history have provided us with thrilling insights into the omnipresence and the everydayness of the human experience of empires. Amidst all this diversity, many studies have focussed on entanglements between colonies and metropoles, but much less is known about trans-imperial dimensions of the game. On an empirical basis, inter-imperial perspectives, which compare several empires or consider competition between them, have become more important lately. Yet, such studies are scattered and this kind of research remains in its infancy. We still lack an overarching theoretical-methodological framework with which to address the spaces in-between empires. In other words: whereas national history has been transnationalized in the past decades, the same does not hold true for the history of empires. Thus, we would like to address the current state of research and at the same time ask how a future trans-imperial history could look.
In this sense, we seek to decentralize the history of empires both on the level of empirical research and historiographical narratives. Our questions are as follows: do narratives for each empire change with such an approach? Do they appear less unique? To illustrate this: does the thesis about continuity in German colonialism from the late 19th century to the Nazi regime appear in another light if we discuss German expansion in trans-imperial contexts? Does the notion of the uniqueness of Japanese imperialism, which is often seen as a reaction to or even a mimicry of Western imperialism, still hold true? And, to add a final question: was the British empire the all-defining model for all the others or are the imperial processes of the various nations examples of mutual learning?
By discussing such concrete questions we also seek to address more overarching questions. How can we systemize such an approach in methodological and theoretical terms? Are recent concepts dealing with dissemination and practices of knowledge helpful? How can we integrate studies on anti-imperial agency or violence into the approach? And who were the brokers of trans-imperial interactions?
Research has shown that transnational approaches do not make the nation disappear. We would like to take the same stance in relation to empire. Therefore, in this workshop we will focus on specific cases. The workshop, to be held in Berlin in September 2017, will bring together an international group of scholars who have focused on one or more imperial dimensions of one of the following empires: British, French, Russian, Austria-Hungary, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, Ottoman, Chinese, as well as the US-American empire. Their contributions should discuss how transcending perspectives can change the perception of the empires they are specialized in, but also discuss possibilities and limits of a trans-imperial approach for the historiography per se. The focus will be on the years between 1850 and 1945.