Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1854 - cover image

Copyright

Simon Franklin; Katherine Bowers; Copyright of each chapter is maintained by the author.

Published On

2017-11-27

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-373-5
Hardback978-1-78374-374-2
PDF978-1-78374-375-9
HTML978-1-80064-541-7
XML978-1-78374-452-7
EPUB978-1-78374-376-6
MOBI978-1-78374-377-3

Language

  • English

Print Length

440 pages (vi + 436)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 23 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.9" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 25 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1365g (48.15oz)
Hardback1757g (61.98oz)

Media

Illustrations48
Tables2

OCLC Number

1167489297

LCCN

2017433308

BIC

  • HBTB
  • JFC

BISAC

  • HIS032000

LCC

  • P92.R8
  • I54

Keywords

  • Russian Empire
  • communication
  • information
  • postal service
  • news circulation
  • maps and atlases
  • signs and monuments
  • history of communication

Information and Empire

Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1854

From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Russia was transformed from a moderate-sized, land-locked principality into the largest empire on earth. How did systems of information and communication shape and reflect this extraordinary change?

Information and Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850 brings together a range of contributions to shed some light on this complex question. Communication networks such as the postal service and the gathering and circulation of news are examined alongside the growth of a bureaucratic apparatus that informed the government about its country and its people. The inscription of space is considered from the point of view of mapping and the changing public ‘graphosphere’ of signs and monuments. More than a series of institutional histories, this book is concerned with the way Russia discovered itself, envisioned itself and represented itself to its people.

Innovative and scholarly, this collection breaks new ground in its approach to communication and information as a field of study in Russia. More broadly, it is an accessible contribution to pre-modern information studies, taking as its basis a country whose history often serves to challenge habitual Western models of development. It is important reading not only for specialists in Russian Studies, but also for students and non-Russianists who are interested in the history of information and communications.

Reviews

A short review cannot do justice to the many felicitous discoveries that can be made in this volume.[..] I think the most interesting memory the volume will leave with its readers is of how seventeenth-century Russia operated as a society. We may vaguely imagine that before Peter the Great all was backwardness, chaos, inefficiency and sloth. Here we see, by contrast, a rather well-organized realm, able to meet big challenges; even its famously numerous chanceries did not function badly. This is an unusual work, often demanding but we can be grateful to Open Book Publishers for it.

Prof. Robin Milner-Gulland

"Book Review: Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers (eds): Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia 1600–1850". Journal of European Studies (1740-2379), vol. 48, no. 2, 2018. doi:10.1177/0047244118773894i

Full Review

Contributors

Simon Franklin

(editor)
Professor of Slavonic Studies at University of Cambridge
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0514-7314

Simon Franklin is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He has written widely on the history and culture of early Rus, Muscovy and Russia. Books include The Emergence of Rus 700–1200 (1996, with Jonathan Shepard), Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300 (2002), and National Identity in Russian Culture: an Introduction (2004, ed., with Emma Widdis). His recent research has focussed on the social and cultural history of technologies of the word in Russia in the late medieval and early modern periods (ca.1450–1850).

Katherine Bowers

(editor)
Assistant Professor of Slavic Studies at University of British Columbia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3747-5160

Katherine Bowers is an Assistant Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research interest is nineteenth-century Russian literature and cultural history, and she is currently working on a book about the influence of gothic fiction on Russian realism. Other publications include Russian Writers at the Fin de Siècle: The Twilight of Realism (2015, ed., with A. Kokobobo) and A Dostoevskii Companion: Texts and Contexts (forthcoming 2018, eds., with C. Doak and K. Holland). From 2012–14 she was Research Associate on the project, "Information Technologies in Russia, 1450–1850", led by Simon Franklin, and a Research Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.