Empire by Entrepreneur
Merchants in Russia at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
Matthew P. Romaniello
WHEN
Wednesday | 7 Feb, 12:00 PM
WHERE
238 HRCB
Wednesday | 7 Feb, 12:00 PM
WHERE
238 HRCB
Peter Dobell was an Irish-born, American merchant who became Russia’s first consul to the Spanish Philippines. While Dobell’s Russian career would end in scandal, he reflects a large group of transnational merchants operating in Eurasia and the Pacific, whose pursuit of fame, success, or simply profit overcame loyalty to any one state. Rather than suggest these men were working for or against Russia’s imperial interests, this talk will argue that the process of living between borders was as much a generator of imperial authority as it was a challenge to it.
Matthew P. Romaniello is an associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Romaniello is the author of the Elusive Empire: Kazan and the Creation of Russia, 1552–1672 (2012) and the editor of four volumes, including Russian History through the Senses (2016).