Continuité et innovation littéraire en Angleterre au XIIe siècle : la prédication de la militia Christ

International audienceEnglish literary historians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have for long sought evidence for the continuity of the Old English literary tradition in the texts known collectively as the Katherine Group and in related texts. They have further identified the south-west of the country as the hub of this persistent interest in vernacular activity. However, detailed consideration of one important but neglected mid-to-late twelfth-century text, the Ormulum, suggests that this picture is imbalanced. By comparing the verbal articulation of the Militia Christi, a topos central to the work of Orm and to abbot Ælfric, the most prolific of late Old English homilists and the one whose works were carefully preserved by successive generations after his death, I attempt to show that the estimate of the strength of the older vernacular tradition has been overstated. It is also part of my purpose to suggest that literary activity in the south-east of the country was as vigorous as that claimed for the south-west.De façon générale, la critique littéraire de l'Angleterre des XIIe et XIIIe s. tend à souligner la position clef qu'occupent les textes connus sous le nom de « Katherine Group » dans la discussion de la survie de la tradition littéraire vieil-anglaise. De plus, elle associe cette prédilection pour la composition en langue vernaculaire avec le sud-ouest du pays, aux dépens d'autres régions. Cependant, le témoignage de l'Ormulum, un texte quelque peu négligé de la deuxième moitié du XIIe s., laisse penser que cette prise de position manque d'équilibre. A partir d'une comparaison de la présentation d'un topos - celui de la Militia Christi - central à l'Ormulum et à l'œuvre de l'abbé Ælfric, le plus important des sermonnaires vieil-anglais, dont le programme d'instruction fut conservé par des générations successives après sa mort -, je m'efforce de démontrer que cette notion de « survie » est susceptible d'une interprétation différente. En même temps, je suggère que l'activité littéraire traditionnellement associée au sud-ouest du pays a fait également partie de la vie intellectuelle de la région du sud-est de l'Angleterre

The Inevitable Backlash To Globalization: Why Free Trade Has To Work For Everyone

Article published in the Michigan State International Law Review

‘Applied Orientalism’ in British India and Tsarist Turkestan

‘We cannot promise to those who may choose Oriental scholarship, that they shall find themselves abreast, in all the various high-roads of life which lead to profit and distinction, with the men who shall have devoted themselves to acquiring the knowledge which in these days is power, the intellectual treasures which make fifty years of Europe better than a cycle in Cathay, which are the sinews of peaceful empire as surely as money is the sinew of war.

Russia, Khoqand, and the search for a "Natural" Frontier, 1863–1865

Abstract Russian expansion into Central Asia in the nineteenth century is usually seen either as the product of lobbying by big capitalist interests in Moscow or as a wholly unplanned process driven by “men on the spot” who slipped beyond St. Petersburg’s control. This article is a microstudy of one of the campaigns that immediately preceded the fall of Tashkent in 1865, during which Russian forces under General M. G. Cherniaev united the Orenburg and Siberian “lines” of fortification to create what was meant to be a permanent new frontier on the steppe. It demonstrates that neither of these explanations is satisfactory – economic calculations played a minor role in Russian decision making, while there was an authorized plan for expansion in the region. However this plan rested on the premise that the Russians could identify a “natural” frontier in the region, marked by a river, watershed, or mountain range. The instructions given to Cherniaev and other “men on the spot” reflected this, but a lack of detailed geographical knowledge meant that these orders were often contradictory or impossible to fulfill. It was this that allowed Cherniaev to determine the timetable (though not the direction) of Russian expansion, and that would see the fall of Tashkent in June 1865

Challenges in teaching and curriculum development for 'History of Kazakhstan' at Nazarbayev University

This is the text on which I based a talk in Russian given at the plenary session of a conference held at the Eurasian National University on the 22nd November 2014. It was published in the conference proceedings: E.B. Sydykov (ed.) 'Actual Problems of Research and Teaching of National History Nowadays' (Astana: ENU, 2014) pp.6-8

Teaching the Islamic History of the Qazaqs in Kazakhstan

This paper was the basis for a talk I gave in Russian at a conference for the jubilee of Ashirbek Muminov at the Eurasian National University on the 20th November 2014. It was published in the conference proceedings: Yu. V. Shapoval, A. S. Kabylova & N. Robinson (ed.) Islamovedenie v Kazakhstane: sostoyanie, problemy, perspektivy (Astana: ENU, 2014), pp.24-30

How “Modern” was Russian Imperialism?

In this paper I explore the characteristics which historians normally attribute to 'modern' forms of Imperialism, and whether these make sense when applied to Russia. I conclude by making some tentative suggestions as to where the real distinctiveness of the Russian Empire lies

“Sowing the Seed of National Strife in This Alien Region”: The Pahlen Report and Pereselenie in Turkestan, 1908–1910

This article examines the institutional background to the decision to send Senator Count K. K. Pahlen's Commission of Inspection to Turkestan in 1908. It concentrates on the divisive issue of 'pereselenie', or peasant resettlement, which Pahlen was supposed to be facilitating but ended up opposing. The article also seeks to establish the value or otherwise to the historian of the Pahlen Commission's multi-volume report

Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk land in the Zarafshan Valley after the Russian Conquest

This paper is a revision and correction of Chapter 3 of my 2008 monograph ('Russian Rule in Samarkand') in which I made a number of errors and misjudgements. The most glaring of these was to confuse a Bukharan tax official (the amlakdar) with the owner of 'mulk' (a category of landed property which usually carried some form of tax exemption). I have disentangled these, added some further evidence, and reconsidered the evidence which I put forward in my book. I argue that Russian attempts to implement at what is sometimes called 'land reform' in the Zarafshan Valley in the 1860s and 1870s are better understood as a fiscal measure, rather than anything to do with property rights. The Russians found the Bukharan land tax system impossible to understand, and so proceeded to dismantle it, abolishing the annual assessment of the quantity and value of the harvest (which had been the responsibility of the amlakdar) and also refusing to recognise claims made by religious elites in the region that they were entitled to tax breaks on their mulk property. However, the system the Russians put in place instead placed enormous power in the hands of village oligarchies, ensuring that at the lower levels the Russians had little control over how the tax burden was allocated, and almost certainly collected far less than their Bukharan predecessors. The Russians also failed in their attempt to have the region's land declared the patrimony of the state. The paradoxical result was that, at least in the Zarafshan Valley (and quite possibly in other sedentary regions of Central Asia) the advent of the colonial regime meant a reduced tax burden, less state oversight, and security of property at least equal to what had existed before

‘Nechto Eroticheskoe’, 'Courir après l'ombre'? – logistical imperatives and the fall of Tashkent, 1859 – 1865

This article explores the debates that preceded the Russian conquest of Tashkent in 1865. It argues that none of the explanations usually given for this – the ‘men on the spot’, ‘cotton hunger’, or the Great Game with Britain – is satisfactory. Instead, it shows that the War Ministry and the governors of Orenburg had advocated the capture of Tashkent from the late 1850s, and that General Cherniaev's assault in 1865 was at least tacitly authorized. The motives for the Russian advance combined the need for better supply chains to the steppe fortresses, a desire to ‘anchor’ their new frontier in a region with a sedentary population, and concern for security from attacks by the Khoqand Khanate. Economic considerations and rivalry with Britain played very minor roles