Civilizing Strategies and the Beginning of Colonial Policy in the Eighteenth-Century Russian Empire

Abstract

By investigating how Russian governments developed civilizing policies and gave them a colonial nature in the eighteenth century, this chapter challenges previous positions that underlined that Peter the Great and his successors only aimed at civilizing the empire’s population indistinguishably. After exploring Peter’s missionary efforts that can be seen as the beginning of a political shift towards colonial policies, Vulpius focuses on the policy of Elisabeth and Catherine II aiming at suppressing nomadic ways of life, creating settlements and introducing agriculture. She claims that the Russian reception of Enlightenment thought was the driving force behind this shift towards colonial policy and suggests that Russia’s imperial concepts and practices in the eighteenth century provided for the foundations of the “civilizing mission” proclaimed in the following centuries.