Negotiating Imperial Rule : Colonists and Marriage in the Nineteenth-century Black Sea Steppe

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, tsar Alexander I set new conditions for Russian immigration policy. Immigrants from troubled German lands were to be sent into the Northern Black Sea Steppe during a state-sponsored colonization. Categorized by officialdom as “German colonists,” the newcomers soon established colonies all over the region.

This book illuminates the ways in which marriage and household formation were instrumentalized by the imperial politics in the Northern Black Sea Steppe and conditioned by socioeconomic rationality of its colonization. The interplay of colonization as politics, and colonization as an imperial situation, with respect to the marriage of the German colonists, is explored by concentrating on both norms and practices. Intending to control colonist marriage and household formation through the marriage regime, the Russian government and its regional representatives lacked the actual means to exert this control at the local level.

A number of strategies and performances which challenged and negotiated the marriage regime in the region are examined for the first time.

Julia Malitska is a historian at Södertörn University (Sweden), with an affiliation to the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) and the School of Historical and Contemporary Studies. This is her Doctoral Disseration.