economic system. In the midst of a rapid development of capitalism during the
second half of the nineteenth century, Russia’s imperialistic aspirations were
fulWlled. On the one hand, Russia increased its political ascendancy in Eastern
Europe. On the other, it expanded four-fold towards the east, colonizing the
remaining areas of Siberia, and towards the south, menacing Persia, Afghani-
stan, and China. As a result, the northern third of the Asian continent, an area
mainly populated by non-state societies, came under Tsarist rule (Geyer 1987).
The area conquered for Russia was then invaded by scholars, who already
by the mid 1850s were sending multiple reports and scientiWc articles to be
published in European Russia (Bassin 1994: 125). The explorer Mikhail
Veniukov, then a topographical surveyor in the Far East, believed that native
populations were on the brink of extinction. In an article published in 1859
on the Amur region he stated that:
Here is manifested in all its force that unalterable law which determines that the
successes of humanity even in the propagation of race are in direct correspondence
with the mass of blessings that are supplied by civilisation. The hunters and gatherers
who inhabit all East Asia are limited in their demands by their ignorance, wander in
the vast forests among the wild mountains, exposed to all the destructive inXuences of
Nature. Finally, unable to withstand the cruel contact with organised tribes, these
peoples will forever be unable to grow and multiply... Entire Goldi families die out
under the inXuences of the more powerful Manchurians.
(Veniukov in Bassin 1994: 126).In the case of North America, the territories of the US and Canada grew
considerably throughout the nineteenth century (map 1). As regards the
US, the expansion southwards, by appropriating almost half of Mexican
territory in 1848, and westwards, by reaching the PaciWc coast, made it the
largest country in America after Brazil. The belief in the inferiority of the
natives justiWed the dispossession of their lands by white settlers which led to
the destruction of their way of life. The occupation of Indian territories was
encapsulated under the formula of Manifest Destiny. Composed in the 1850s,
this was a political ideology which portrayed expansion as the realization of a
divine mission by a racially superior, chosen people—white, Anglo-Saxon
Christians who had been selected to conquer nature and bring civilization to
the Indian tribes (Patterson 1995b: 37; 1997: 45). The frontier moved from
the east coast towards the west and the south driving Indians into
reservations. This resulted in famine through the depletion of some of their
main sources of livelihood such as buValoes, also to war and, ultimately, to
defeat. The earlier policy of dealing with tribes as nations was abandoned in the
1870s. The congress decreed that no Indian tribe ‘shall be acknowledged or
recognized as an independent nation, tribe or power, with whom the United
Archaeology of the Primitive 283