Catherine the Great’s Influence on Muslims in Eurasia
Hi! My professor mentioned that there were some “serious issues” with my last paper, unfortunately…this paper MUST have correct citations with PAGE NUMBERS for each quote or paraphrased section (you may put this in parentheses) and it must have a CLEAR argument; convey to the reader why you think your subject is important/worth knowing about and take a position that NEEDS to be defended (an easy example of this is: “There were many factors contributing to the victory of the Martians, but X was the most important” or “Although the Venusians were very different from the Martians, the Martians were able to adopt several clever strategies to prevent resistance to Martian rule in their colony on Venus. This essay will discuss two of these strategies: X and Y [in order to…]”.)
I will attach the information I have sent to you for the past work you’ve done that will help complete this assignment, too. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!
Notes from my professor:
I think it makes sense to start with the eighteenth century and see where that takes you. If it doesn’t seem like enough, you could always expand, but I think you could do quite a bit with Catherine the Great, putting tolerance towards Muslims in the context of her efforts to portray herself as a European ruler. For Catherine the Great, her Nakaz, or Instructions to the Legislative Commission which was to come up with a new code of laws for the Russian Empire, displays a lot of enlightenment influence (she was one of the “enlightened” absolute monarchs of Europe), as well as some of her thoughts about religion: http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Catherine_the_Great%27s_Instructions_to_the_Legislative_Commission%2C_1767
You should see if you can find a copy of her Toleration of All Faiths Edict from 1773. Kelly O’Neill’s “Claiming Crimea,” deals quite a bit with Catherine and Muslims, in the context of the Crimean Tatars. And Mustafa Tuna has done work on Tatars in this period in the Volga region, though unfortunately I don’t think we have access to his recent book online (but there might be a related article). I’m trying to think about who has written about how she sent Muslims to proselytize among the Kazakhs of the Kazakh steppe – that’s another interesting piece of the story (certainly you can find references to this in many histories of Islam in the Russian Empire). If you want to go back to the 17th century (or even 16th century), Matthew Romaniello’s book Elusive Empire talks about the incorporation of the first Muslim communities around Kazan into the Russian state (it wasn’t officially an “empire” until Peter the Great in 1721, but it certainly functioned like one, and the incorporation of Kazan and Astrakhan was the beginning of concerted imperial expansion). I hope that’s helpful – Yemelianova’s article might give some good background, and the Khodarkovsky piece looks interesting for the Caucasus. Please let me know if you need help finding additional sources or want feedback on additional aspects of your topic.
