5 The Discourse of EmpireMamkheg, Makhosh, and Beslenei.^8 In sum, the region presented to
the Russians a series of “barely comprehensible incongruities and
contradictions” in every imaginable way, as G.V. Sollogub wrote.^9
orientalism
The dilemmas posed for the makers of empire by the remarkable geo-
graphic, ethnic, and religious diversity of the North Caucasus and the
long opposition of the mountaineers to Russian rule make the region
an excellent borderland setting for the study of the formation of the
empire. Just as the North Caucasus complicates the work of the
makers of the federation today, so the region posed special challenges
to Russians intent upon imagining a workable empire in the nine-
teenth century. Difference and opposition stimulated the imperial
imagination and provoked a plethora of plans, projects, and visions
concerning the future of the empire. This study explores this concep-
tualization of empire by considering the work and ideas of Russian
and non-Russian administrators and state-builders, colonial officials,
travellers, literary figures and thinkers, and ethnographers and geog-
raphers as they administered and thought about the North Caucasus
from the 1840s to 1917. Imperial visions of the region and its moun-
tain inhabitants were a response to the tragic and extended war, and
they serve as examples of the search for imperial cohesion, integra-
tion, and identity during and after the Great Reforms. Multi-ethnic
educated society visualized empire in order to justify the conquest
and offer some greater purpose or civilizing mission in the wake of
the military expansion.
Edward Said’s imaginative application of diverse currents within
French post-structuralist thought to colonial history has inspired nu-
merous rereadings of the history of Europe’s textual reproduction of
foreign lands and cultures.^10 Colonialism throughout the globe was
often violent and coercive, but it was also importantly a set of discur-
sive practices that represented Europe’s effort to confirm in a global
context the truths of the hierarchy of peoples established by the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Scholars from a variety of disci-
plines have explored the manner in which colonial writers were de-
termined to impose or create some form of order and meaning out of
the confusing chaos they perceived in other lands, and thereby affirm
some greater truth about themselves and their historical role in the
world.^11 One scholar has even extended this discussion to Western
Europe’s “invention” of Eastern Europe.^12 The exploration of knowl-
edge and rule has included fascinating histories of disciplines such as
geography and anthropology.^13 Numerous scholars have recognized