Part 4: Empires and Encounters 1450 - 1750 pages 417 - 430

The Russian expansion into the Siberian steppes of Eurasia was a very rapid development. According to Strayer, the Russians didn’t force the people they subjugated onto reservations, but there were certainly efforts to “Russify them,” i.e., get them to adopt Russian language and culture. By the 18^th Century, 700,000 Russians had settled eastward within its expanded borders. Ukrainians and other Slavic speakers shared some of the demographic to outpace the population growth of indigenous peoples in Siberia, who were down to 30% by that time. The Russians encountered little resistance in their conquest in Eurasia. Although, there were times that it was a challenge to tax the populations of indigenous peoples. Siberia was sort of a frontier or wild west for some on the fringes of Russian society. Especially, the Cossacks, who were a culture of roving bands of outlaws that had escaped serfdom, who were permitted some autonomy in Siberia. They even built wooden buildings that the textbook showed some examples of. Part of the impetus for the Russians empire-building was the acquisition of raw materials., especially the fur trade in Siberia, which was nearly as valuable as commodity as gold.  Russians of course, had numerous invasions by the Mongols, who’d established kingdoms on their borders. So, one could speculate that some of their motivations for expanding the Russian empire was to create “buffer states,” so that in the future other civilizations with imperialistic ambitions couldn’t so easily threaten the stability of the empire. What set the Russian empire-building stage apart from other western powers was that unlike Spain, England, France, and Portugal for example, there was no need for the Russians to go overseas to acquire new land.  But, it seemed as if the Russians felt as if they needed to somehow catch up with the other European powers in terms of economic growth. So, annexing Siberian commodities seemed to be the most logical course of action.

China on the other hand, was closed off and looked inward on itself until the early modern period.  But, instead of expanding eastward, the Chinese expanded their empire into western realms such as the Gobi Desert, Tibet, Mongolia et cetera. It took 8 years for the Qing dynasty to militarily pacify these areas so that they could be governed by the Chinese expansionism.  The Chinese like the Russians were also empire-building partially because of security concerns, and like the Russians, had felt the brunt of the Mongol invaders in the past. The Chinese didn’t rule their newly conquered areas with ethnic Chinese aristocrats from the imperial court. Rather, the Chinese created a special department charged with managing the modus operandi of Mongol aristocrats and Muslim officials in these areas. The Chinese didn’t at this time try to change the ethnic demographics of these areas; because they feared the Chinese civility would impact the fierce warrior ethic of the Mongolian warriors they were trying to recruit into their armed forces, for example. One has to realize that the Chinese dynasties have always been very pragmatic, and administered government with an emphasis upon harmony, by allowing a certain degree of coexistence between varying religious and ethnic groups, so long as they didn’t threaten the absolute authority of the Chinese state.