Empire of solidarities: a connected history of private charity across a decentred Romanov Empire, 1855–1914

Introduction

By the late nineteenth century, the Romanov Empire stretched halfway across the globe, turning inhabitants of the territory stretching from today's Tallinn to Vladivostok into subjects of one and the same empire. Yet, we know little about whether the population felt any impulse to help one another in times of need.

Questions of Compassion

Under what circumstances did people feel compassion towards distant others and how far-ranging did their sympathies extend? What did these solidarities mean, how were they enacted and expressed through ideas, emotions, and lived experiences? If solidarities could reach across such a multiconfessionally and multiethnically heterogeneous empire, how does the Romanov experience enrich our understanding of empire and solidarity as seemingly irreconcilable notions?

Project Overview

EMPSOLID applies an unconventional lens to answer these questions. It pioneers a new history of affective practices that, for the first time, focuses on private charity as a method to make solidarities visible and allow us to study them in action.

Objectives

The project's objectives are to:

1. Trace the conceptual history of solidarity in the empire.
2. Gather and analyze examples of grassroots private charitable initiatives (benevolent and charitable associations, fundraising campaigns, and private donations) across four regionally distinct Romanov imperial border regions (Baltic provinces, Southwestern provinces, South Caucasus, Turkestan) from 1855-1914 on behalf of beneficiaries outside of the givers' vicinities.
3. Digitally map flows and networks of donations to generate insights into larger trends and spatial patterns in charitable practices.

Perspective

The project's ambitious, decentering perspective aspires to envision a long-overdue new spatial history of the Romanov Empire in the long nineteenth century founded on horizontal threads of solidarity linking regions and postulates that these charitable entanglements formed a crucial part of the social fabric holding together nineteenth-century empires.