While the borders of Imperial Russia seem solid to modern viewers, they were in reality quite “porous”, to borrow a phrase from historian Eileen Kane. Tsarist officials saw their borders as “fuzzy and temporary,” both because they hoped they would expand further and because they recognized that state influence could be uncertain within borders and extend beyond them. Hoping to solidifying their control over the diverse ethnic and religious groups on the edges of their empire, Imperial Russian leaders employed various subtle methods of expanding their influence into Russian borderlands through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Sometimes, Russia employed quieter methods of imperialism before attempting to co-opt new territory. An example is Russia’s intelligence network on the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, as outlined by Gregory Afinogenov in Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power. As the balance of power between China and Europe began to shift, Russian leaders collected intelligence on the Qing in order to expand their own empire and keep other colonizers out.
Under Catherine the Great, Russian bureaucrats built this intelligence network as part of a “cold war” between Russia and the Qing, hoping that their spies would alert them to opportunities to annex the vulnerable borderlands between the two nations. As Russia established an empire to rival Great Britain and France’s, it began to collect unprecedented amounts of intelligence on Qing movements and motivations, establishing a network of secret agents that included state officers, gardeners, and traveling lamas.
After the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, Russia focused their intelligence networks on foiling European attempts to colonize the Pacific through trade alliances with the Qing. On this Pacific front, Russia sponsored Jesuit missionaries stationed in Beijing, offering them financial support in exchange for inside information about European agents’ communications with the Qing emperor. Europeans relied upon the Jesuits to translate when they appealed to the court in Beijing, but little did they know that the Catholic monks would report on their interactions to Russian officials. These Jesuit spies allowed Russia to stay abreast of their European competitors’ goals and informed Russians attempts to preemptively block British, French, and Dutch expansion in the Pacific.
On other borders, Russia used covert strategies to court the loyalties of their latest conquests. In Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Eileen Kane documents the Imperial benefits Russian officials hoped to receive by institutionalizing hajj infrastructure and supporting the thousands of pilgrims who traveled from Russia to Mecca each year.
Tsarist Russian officials hoped that sponsoring the hajj would make Russian citizenship appeal to the Muslims in Russia’s newly-acquired Caucasus region. Russia annexed the Muslim-majority Caucasus in the early 1800s, but had dealt with repeated uprisings there ever since. Local Russian officials believed that making the hajj easier, safer, and more affordable for Caucasus Muslims would ease their opposition to Russian rule. Their hope was that pilgrims with a state-sponsored train ticket would see Russia as a beneficent country who protected its citizens of all religions, offering safety and stability that nearby Muslim nations could not match.
Russia also sought to use the hajj as a subtle means of establishing Russian influence within the weakening Ottoman empire. Russia chose to build consulates in major Ottoman cities such as Jeddah in the 1890’s after witnessing the Ottomans’ failure to protect pilgrims in previous years. These consulates allowed Russian officials to monitor Russian Muslim pilgrims while establishing spheres of Russian influence far beyond their borders. While these efforts did not technically expand the Russian Empire, they did stretch Russian imperial influence far into a neighboring nation.
Building and maintain the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries required a variety of subtle methods of attempted expansion, customized to each people and region Russia hoped to consolidate into its empire. From surveillance networks on the Mongolian border and Pacific coast to offering discounted train tickets during hajj season and consulate services throughout the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia quietly courted greater control over the peoples on the edges of its empire before and after expanding its borders.
Anna Rohl is a first year MA/MLIS student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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