Imperial Boundaries Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great

Imperial Boundaries is a study of imperial expansion and local transformation on Russia's Don Steppe frontier during the age of Peter the Great. Brian Boeck connects the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman empires in the northern Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who were transformed from an open, democratic, multiethnic, male fraternity dedicated to frontier raiding into a closed, ethnic community devoted to defending and advancing the boundaries of the Russian state. He shows how by promoting border patrol, migration control, bureaucratic regulation of cross-border contacts and deportation of dissidents, Peter I destroyed the world of the old steppe and created a new imperial Cossack order in its place. In examining this transformation, Imperial Boundaries addresses key historical issues of imperial expansion, the delegitimization of non-state violence, the construction of borders, and the encroaching boundaries of state authority in the lives of local communities.

Introduction; 1. Beyond borders, between worlds: Russian Empire and the making of the Don Steppe Frontier; 2. People and power on the frontier: liberty, diversity, and de-centralization in the Don region to 1700; 3. A middle ground between autonomy and dependence: the raiding economy of the Don Steppe Frontier to 1700; 4. Boundaries of integration or exclusion? Migration, mobility, and state sovereignty on the southern Frontier to 1700; 5. Testing the boundaries of imperial alliance: co-operation, negotiation and resistance in the era of Razin (1667–81); 6. Between Rus' and Rossiia: realigning the boundaries of Cossack communities in a time of migration and transition (1681–95); 7. The era of Raskol: religion and rebellion (1681–95); 8. Incorporation without integration: the Azov Interlude (1695–1711); 9. From frontier to borderland: the demarcation of the Steppe and the delegitimation of raiding (1696–1710); 10. Boundaries of land, liberty, and identity: making the Don region legible to imperial officials (1696–1706); 11. The Bulavin uprising: the last stand of the old Steppe (1706–9); 12. Reshaping the Don in the imperial image: power, privilege, and patronage in the post-Bulavin era (1708–39); 13. Closing the Cossack community: recording and policing the boundaries of group identity (1708–39); 14. A borderline state of mind: the closing of the Don Steppe frontier (1708–39); Afterword.

Brian J. Boeck is Assistant Professor in the History Department at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.