2016 10/12 Alexander Semyonov

ALEXANDER SEMYONOV

Imperial & Global Histories: A Convergence?

Alexander M. Semyonov is Professor of History and Chair of History Department at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia. Before moving to HSE St. Petersburg in 2012 Semyonov had taught history and political science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University since 2003. He was a Visiting Scholar at the W. Averell Harriman Institute, Columbia University (USA), Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Rutgers University (USA), Research Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz, Germany). Among his most recent publications are: “Russian Liberalism in Imperial Context,” Matthew Fitzpatrick, ed., Liberal Imperialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); (coauthored with Ilya Gerasimov and Marina Mogilner) “Russian Sociology in Imperial Context,” George Steinmetz, ed., Sociology and Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); The Empire and Nationalism at War (Bloomington, 2014).

Summary

Big, entangled or connected, and not-uniform. One can easily put these qualifiers in front of the concept of global history as well as new imperial history. Following the threads of colonial and continental empires one can almost arrive at the planetary scope usually required from the global history perspective. The world constituted through relations and connections comes close to exploration of empire not as a structure of sovereignty and power, but as a relational space made of numerous internal and external boundaries. The requirement to go beyond Eurocentrism is well heeded in the growing field of comparative history of empire beyond the normative model of maritime and colonial empires of western European metropoles. Is it family resemblance or convergence of the fields? Is there a ground for mutually enriching rather than mirroring perspectives? The talk will argue that the middle ground is there and it concerns questions of nuanced historical understanding of subjectivity and politics of knowledge.