Social Science Research Council

"Imperial Confrontation or Frontier Cooperation?: Population Movements and Ottoman and Russian Migration Management Policies in the Black Sea Region, 1768-1829"

My project, a study of the nexus between empire, migration and disease, will focus on the migration management policies and disease control measures introduced by the Ottoman and Russian Empires in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries. Through a comparison of Russian and Ottoman responses to “transnational” issues (population movements and the spread of disease), my project will address the following questions: Did Ottoman and Russian officials, at either the imperial or local levels, communicate about or even coordinate their response to population movements and the spread of disease? If so, how did the response to these issues (i.e., the erection of quarantines and the issuance of passports) contribute to the construction of fixed borders and notions of sovereignty in the Black Sea region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? As an example of a structural migration pattern in the Black Sea region, Muslim pilgrimage (Hajj) traffic from the Russian Empire to the Ottoman Empire will also be addressed in my research project.

My project will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach and will draw on demography and migration theory. While located in a specific region in a specific historical period, my project will, through an analysis of regional cooperation and the introduction of imperial migration regimes and disease control measures, contribute to our understanding of the nexus between empire, migration and disease from an historical and twenty-first century perspective. In order to fulfill my proposed research agenda, over the course of sixteen months starting in January 2007, I will be conducting archival research in Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), İstanbul, Turkey and Bulgaria (Sofia, Ruse and Dobrich).