Oleksandr Polianichev

A British colonial official in India, one month before the 1857 uprising:

“The manner in which India is governed by a few thousand English is very wonderful, but our impunity entirely depends on the want of combination among the natives. If they were to combine we all must come to a crash.”

It's from the India Office Records at the British Library.

A British colonial official in India, one month before the 1857 uprising:

“The manner in which India is governed by a few thousand English is very wonderful, but our impunity entirely depends on the want of combination among the natives. If they were to combine we all must come to a crash.”

Move over, Assam. British tea is blooming thanks to this couple For centuries, Britain has been the world’s most devoted importer of tea. Now it is producing its own — Jo and Kathryn Harper in Dartmoor are among the pioneers

Amazing — Britain now has tea plantations in Devon. Even more fascinating: one cultivar comes from Georgia. I’ve written about how British tea in India influenced Caucasus plantations in the 19th century. Now the flow goes the other way.

Comparing Ukraine to Ireland was common throughout the 19th century among both the Ukrainian intelligentsia and government officials. The former stressed the struggle for emancipation from the core imperial identity (British or all-Russian), the latter – the perceived inevitability of assimilation.

The point, I think, is to stress that its status under EIC rule — before the British Raj — was slightly more complex than that.

The sale of Alaska only a few years later was a clear admission of the government’s colonial overstretch. By setting foot there, Vladimir Putin stands before a monument to both the reach of Russian overseas colonialism and the scale of its failure. end/

If anything, Alaska was a laboratory for Russia’s legal colonial vocabulary — the only place in the empire where Russian settlers and their descendants were officially classified as “Creoles” or “colonial citizens” inhabiting in a “colonial territory.” 5/

The plan was to place Alaska under the Chief Ruler of the Colonies, appointed by the emperor, and to create a Colonial Council composed of both government officials and RAC representatives. 4/

After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, as company rule came under fire and Britain imposed direct crown administration, similar debates were unfolding in the tsar’s halls of power. By 1865, the RAC’s inefficiency prompted the government to take control of the colony. 3/

Administered by the joint-stock chartered Russian-American Company, which created its own system of governance, exploitation, and resource extraction, Russian America emulated the practices of St. Petersburg’s Western colonial rivals, with British India as the prime example. 2/

Saying Alaska was “part of Russia” is like saying India under the East India Company was “part of Britain.” A textbook overseas colony of the empire that, according to Putin, “never colonized anyone,” Alaska was the Russian imperial state’s most peculiar possession. 🧵

Happy to share that over the next six months I’ll be researching and teaching on Ukraine and the Russian Empire at the University of Basel as the new URIS Fellow. Excited for the semester ahead!

PK Porthcurno. The most breathtaking location for an archive one could imagine.

Just back from UK archives with mind-blowing finds linking James Watt, Jeremy Bentham, Prince Potemkin, West Indies sugar plantations, and Russia’s first bid to acclimatize exotic plants in its colonial south. Couldn’t imagine a better starting point for my book manuscript.

Russia bans Yale University as ‘undesirable organization,’ citing Navalny’s attendance — Meduza The Russian authorities have declared Yale University an “undesirable organization,” banning its activities on Russian territory

Russia just labeled Yale an "undesirable organization." Under the Russian law, even attending one of its conferences could now land you in prison.
meduza.io/en/news/2025...

Iranian dissidents—including former political prisoners—almost unanimously oppose military intervention, notwithstanding their deep animus toward the Islamic Republic. An in-depth report on this from 10 years ago is suddenly more relevant than ever. My 2015 piece 👇

inthesetimes.com/article/iran...

My first article for the @erc.europa.eu funded COLVET
project has been published Open Access in @conteurohistory.bsky.social. It explores how the Greater War concept might facilitate better engagement with colonial experiences of conflict in the early 20th century www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The History of Aggression in Asia That Moscow Wants to Erase Today, Tehran, Pyongyang and Beijing support the Kremlin’s war effort while it poses as anti-imperialist — but Iran, China, and Korea were once the prey of tsarist Russia

A fascinating essay on Ru colonialism in Asia and the Middle East with this important wrap-up: "The fundamental difference between Western European and Russian imperial histories lies in Russia’s systematic silencing and emphatic denial of its own colonial record."
newlinesmag.com/essays/the-h...

From now on, anyone taking part in the ASEEES
@aseees.bsky.social conference is subject to criminal punishment in Russia. As I understand it, since participants pay a membership fee, they could face up to 5 years in prison for “funding an undesirable organization” (Article 284.1 of the Penal Code).

A fascinating one: Slavophile Ivan Aksakov, trying to prove that Ukrainians had no historical continuity with medieval Rus', supported his claim by arguing that the imperial term "Little Russia" wasn’t used by the people—who called their country "Ukraine."

In the late 1830s—some 80 years before the Bolsheviks allegedly "invented" Ukraine—Russian intelligentsia described Odessa as an imperial trade hub built to allow Ukraine to "sell off the surplus of its riches."

From Pavel Svin'in's Kartiny Rossii (1839).

In the late 1830s—some 80 years before the Bolsheviks allegedly "invented" Ukraine—Russian intelligentsia described Odessa as an imperial trade hub built to allow Ukraine to "sell off the surplus of its riches."

Why did so many men enjoy picking up a rifle and practising shooting in the German Empire between 1871 and 1914?
📖 Presentation of the book by @camilleriana.bsky.social: Una cultura delle armi (Carocci, 2024)
🗓 29.05. at 17.30
Casa della #Memoria e della Storia
#Siscalt #bookrecommendations

The History of Aggression in Asia That Moscow Wants to Erase Today, Tehran, Pyongyang and Beijing support the Kremlin’s war effort while it poses as anti-imperialist — but Iran, China, and Korea were once the prey of tsarist Russia

Not since the final years of the Cold War has the Kremlin wielded the concept of colonialism as a tool of its foreign policy as aggressively as it does today.

@opolianichev.bsky.social challenges this growing political mythology, for @newlinesmag.bsky.social

Thanks, Fabian!

In 1891, Nicholas II ended his trip to Japan with two lasting marks: a 9-cm scar on his head from an assassination attempt, and a dragon tattoo on his arm. It was with these traces on his body that he set his sights on expanding Russia’s colonial empire in East Asia:
newlinesmag.com/essays/the-h...

The History of Aggression in Asia That Moscow Wants to Erase Today, Tehran, Pyongyang and Beijing support the Kremlin’s war effort while it poses as anti-imperialist — but Iran, China, and Korea were once the prey of tsarist Russia

Really great piece on the history between Russia and their "new" allies in the Global South, and the through-lines of colonialism in their past and present relationships newlinesmag.com/essays/the-h...

Today, Tehran, Pyongyang, and Beijing are key backers of Russia’s war of expansion. But they share a deeper history: under the last tsar, Iran, China, and Korea themselves fell prey to its colonial appetite. My latest for @newlinesmag.bsky.social on Russia’s imperial record in the Global South.