Jane Burbank | New York University (original) (raw)
Papers by Jane Burbank
Routledge eBooks, May 25, 2023
The American Historical Review, 2002
The American Historical Review, 1991
... bread And learn how hard it is wearing down The steps of a staircase not your own ... The fin... more ... bread And learn how hard it is wearing down The steps of a staircase not your own ... The final blow to Russia Abroad was dealt by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and ... had settled.3 While retaining their Russian language and culture, many behaved as regular citizens of their ...
The Oxford World History of Empire, 2021
Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were t... more Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were the Mongols, who treated cultural difference as an ordinary fact, and possibly a useful one. At the other pole were Roman-style empires that insisted on the superiority of their civilization. Empires combined strategies and shifted among them. A polity could move through an imperial phase to more homogeneous composition, but empire-building was also a temptation for relatively uniform polities. Differential incorporation into the social fabric of empire or radical exclusion of certain categories from acceptance and political participation were variants on the politics of difference. This chapter explores issues of race, religion, differential rights, gender, ethnicity, and class as they played out across the vast spaces shaped by empires. Opponents of imperial rulers, coming from different social categories, also acted within and across imperial spaces.
This article puts into the same analytic frame “continental” empires, such as those of the Ottoma... more This article puts into the same analytic frame “continental” empires, such as those of the Ottomans, the Romanovs, the Habsburgs, and the Kaisers and “overseas” empires, notably the British and French. If we avoid the trap of conventional distinctions (land/sea, modern/traditional, nation-state/empire), the imperial world of 1900 becomes more intelligible and appears less like a new phenomenon. The article presents the multiple repertoires of empires, resulting from strategies intended to incorporate heterogeneous populations in a single political entity while maintaining distinctions and hierarchies, in the face of competing empires.
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2008
In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was deb... more In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was debating articles relating to a new constitution for the overseas empire, a deputy cited a precedent: in the year 212 CE, the Roman Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all male, non-slave subjects of the empire. The example, it was argued, showed that people could be citizens of an empire without renouncing their “local civilizations.” This paper explores various meanings of citizenship and rights in empires based on two different models – the Roman model and a Eurasian model – and on the contrasting examples of imperial Russia, the USSR, and 20th-century France. The discussion moves beyond the common association of citizenship with the nation-state and rights with democracy. Building and sustaining an empire, we argue, entailed the integration of diverse groups of people into a single political unit, while at the same time maintaining distinctions and hierarchies. That a 20th-c...
International Affairs, 2019
Le Monde Diplomatique En Espanol, 2012
En un momento en que los Estados-nacion ceden ante las fuerzas del mercado y en que se tambalea l... more En un momento en que los Estados-nacion ceden ante las fuerzas del mercado y en que se tambalea la configuracion geopolitica heredada de la posguerra, los dirigentes suenan con la estabilidad. A pesar de ello, las formas de gobierno implementadas por los imperios resultan fascinantes por su resistencia a los sobresaltos de la historia, su flexibilidad y su capacidad de unir a diferentes pueblos. ?Que podemos aprender de ellas?
About: Sabine Dullin, La frontiere epaisse. Aux origines des politiques sovietiques (1920-1940). ... more About: Sabine Dullin, La frontiere epaisse. Aux origines des politiques sovietiques (1920-1940). Paris, Editions de l'EHESS, 2014.
Cahiers d'études africaines, 2004
Cahiers d'études africaines 173-174 | 2004 Réparations, restitutions, réconciliations Ferro, Marc... more Cahiers d'études africaines 173-174 | 2004 Réparations, restitutions, réconciliations Ferro, Marc (dir.).-Le livre noir du colonialisme. XVI e-XXI e siècle : de l'extermination à la repentance
Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, 2013
The Limits of Universal Rule
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2018
Our question for today’s lively field of Russian law is, could we substitute the word “Russian” f... more Our question for today’s lively field of Russian law is, could we substitute the word “Russian” for “Western” and proceed to describe the dynamics and characteristics of a Russian legal tradition? To do so, we must first have the confidence, as Harold Berman did, to challenge commonly held notions of what law is. The proposal to study a legal tradition recognizes both the plurality of understandings of law and the historical construction of all legal systems. What people regard as law in different times and places depends on particular, but often intersecting, cultural trajectories and particular, often intersecting, conjunctures of power.
Routledge eBooks, May 25, 2023
The American Historical Review, 2002
The American Historical Review, 1991
... bread And learn how hard it is wearing down The steps of a staircase not your own ... The fin... more ... bread And learn how hard it is wearing down The steps of a staircase not your own ... The final blow to Russia Abroad was dealt by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and ... had settled.3 While retaining their Russian language and culture, many behaved as regular citizens of their ...
The Oxford World History of Empire, 2021
Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were t... more Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were the Mongols, who treated cultural difference as an ordinary fact, and possibly a useful one. At the other pole were Roman-style empires that insisted on the superiority of their civilization. Empires combined strategies and shifted among them. A polity could move through an imperial phase to more homogeneous composition, but empire-building was also a temptation for relatively uniform polities. Differential incorporation into the social fabric of empire or radical exclusion of certain categories from acceptance and political participation were variants on the politics of difference. This chapter explores issues of race, religion, differential rights, gender, ethnicity, and class as they played out across the vast spaces shaped by empires. Opponents of imperial rulers, coming from different social categories, also acted within and across imperial spaces.
This article puts into the same analytic frame “continental” empires, such as those of the Ottoma... more This article puts into the same analytic frame “continental” empires, such as those of the Ottomans, the Romanovs, the Habsburgs, and the Kaisers and “overseas” empires, notably the British and French. If we avoid the trap of conventional distinctions (land/sea, modern/traditional, nation-state/empire), the imperial world of 1900 becomes more intelligible and appears less like a new phenomenon. The article presents the multiple repertoires of empires, resulting from strategies intended to incorporate heterogeneous populations in a single political entity while maintaining distinctions and hierarchies, in the face of competing empires.
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2008
In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was deb... more In 1946, when France’s National Constituent Assembly (l’Assemblee nationale constituante) was debating articles relating to a new constitution for the overseas empire, a deputy cited a precedent: in the year 212 CE, the Roman Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all male, non-slave subjects of the empire. The example, it was argued, showed that people could be citizens of an empire without renouncing their “local civilizations.” This paper explores various meanings of citizenship and rights in empires based on two different models – the Roman model and a Eurasian model – and on the contrasting examples of imperial Russia, the USSR, and 20th-century France. The discussion moves beyond the common association of citizenship with the nation-state and rights with democracy. Building and sustaining an empire, we argue, entailed the integration of diverse groups of people into a single political unit, while at the same time maintaining distinctions and hierarchies. That a 20th-c...
International Affairs, 2019
Le Monde Diplomatique En Espanol, 2012
En un momento en que los Estados-nacion ceden ante las fuerzas del mercado y en que se tambalea l... more En un momento en que los Estados-nacion ceden ante las fuerzas del mercado y en que se tambalea la configuracion geopolitica heredada de la posguerra, los dirigentes suenan con la estabilidad. A pesar de ello, las formas de gobierno implementadas por los imperios resultan fascinantes por su resistencia a los sobresaltos de la historia, su flexibilidad y su capacidad de unir a diferentes pueblos. ?Que podemos aprender de ellas?
About: Sabine Dullin, La frontiere epaisse. Aux origines des politiques sovietiques (1920-1940). ... more About: Sabine Dullin, La frontiere epaisse. Aux origines des politiques sovietiques (1920-1940). Paris, Editions de l'EHESS, 2014.
Cahiers d'études africaines, 2004
Cahiers d'études africaines 173-174 | 2004 Réparations, restitutions, réconciliations Ferro, Marc... more Cahiers d'études africaines 173-174 | 2004 Réparations, restitutions, réconciliations Ferro, Marc (dir.).-Le livre noir du colonialisme. XVI e-XXI e siècle : de l'extermination à la repentance
Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, 2013
The Limits of Universal Rule
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2018
Our question for today’s lively field of Russian law is, could we substitute the word “Russian” f... more Our question for today’s lively field of Russian law is, could we substitute the word “Russian” for “Western” and proceed to describe the dynamics and characteristics of a Russian legal tradition? To do so, we must first have the confidence, as Harold Berman did, to challenge commonly held notions of what law is. The proposal to study a legal tradition recognizes both the plurality of understandings of law and the historical construction of all legal systems. What people regard as law in different times and places depends on particular, but often intersecting, cultural trajectories and particular, often intersecting, conjunctures of power.