From Peter the Great to Nicholas II, Russian rulers always understood the need to maintain an army and navy capable of preserving the empire's great power status. This volume examines how Imperial Russia's armed forces sought to adapt to the challenges of modern warfare. The tsars inevitably faced the dilemma of importing European military and technological innovations while censoring political beliefs that could challenge the autocracy's monopoly on power. Within the context of a constant race to avoid oblivion, the impulse for military renewal emerges from this volume as a fundamental and...
From Peter the Great to Nicholas II, Russian rulers always understood the need to maintain an army and navy capable of preserving the empire's great p...
What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? Was it corruption at the highest levels, ignorance of Japan's naval capabilities, or overconfidence in Russia's own military power? In this highly original study, Schimmelpenninck argues that the conflict came about because of St. Petersburg's erratic and confused diplomacy. The key to understanding tsarist involvement in East Asia, he explains, is to examine the ideas of those who competed to impose their visions of destiny on the Pacific. Drawing from previously inaccessible archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Schimmelpenninck...
What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? Was it corruption at the highest levels, ignorance of Japan's naval capabilities, or overc...
What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? This book attempts to find the answer in Russia's erratic and confused diplomacy. It explains how the key to understanding tsarist involvement in East Asia lies in the ideologies of the Russians who competed to impose their visions of imperial destiny on the East.
What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? This book attempts to find the answer in Russia's erratic and confused diplomacy. It expla...
The West has been accused of seeing the East in a hostile and deprecatory light, as the legacy of nineteenth-century European imperialism. In this highly original and controversial book, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye examines Russian thinking about the Orient before the Revolution of 1917. Exploring the writings, poetry, and art of representative individuals including Catherine the Great, Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Borodin, and leading orientologists, Schimmelpenninck argues that the Russian Empire's bi-continental geography, its ambivalent relationship with the rest of Europe, and...
The West has been accused of seeing the East in a hostile and deprecatory light, as the legacy of nineteenth-century European imperialism. In this ...