Best History Studies of 2019: Ab Imperio and KRES Poliskola Present Awards
KRES Poliskola is pleased to announce that a good tradition has been established: with our support, despite the COVID-19 crisis that has gripped the world, the third annual competition of AB Imperio magazine for the best history research on the new imperial history of Northern Eurasia, diversity and nationalism in the post-Soviet space, was successfully completed.
The most interesting works of 2019 were selected by the International Contest Committee comprised of the Ab Imperio’s editorial board and editors. After a thorough study of history books and articles published in 2019 in peer reviewed journals, including Ab Imperio, two works received the highest grades and were awarded with the monetary prizes; two more publications were noted, also worthy of victory.
The winners are:
1. The best book
Paolo Sartori, Pavel Shabley. Experiments of the Empire: Adat, Sharia and the Production of Knowledge in the Kazakh Steppe.
Paolo Sartori, Pavel Shabley. Eksperimenty imperii: adat, shariat iproizvodstvo znanii v Kazakhskoi stepi (Experiments of the Empire: Adat, Sharia and the Production of Knowledge in the Kazakh Steppe). Moscow: New Literature Review, 2019. 280 p. ISBN: 978-5-4448-1145-0 (in Russian).
Specialists in the history of Muslim societies Pavel Shabley (associate professor of the Kostanay Branch of Chelyabinsk State University) and Paolo Sartori (senior researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences) carried out painstaking work to thoroughly recreatethe historical events of the 60s and 70s of the 19th century in the Russian Empire.
It was during this period that the process of accession of the Kazakh steppe to the Russian Empire was completed, and the establishment of the procedure for managing this territory became of paramount importance. The authors of the book analyze this process, methods of integrating Sharia law into the general legal system of the Romanov’s empire, consider the specifics and complexity of the events, touching upon similar problems in the regions of Siberia and the North Caucasus. To what extent were the actions of the imperial authorities successful and what impact do those events have on already (in many cases) individual countries, 150 years later? Answers are suggested by the authors in this outstanding work.
Ab Imperio’s International Contest Committee also highlighted Dmitry Shumsky’s monograph, “Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion,” published by Yale University Press (Dmitry Shumsky. Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. 297 pp. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-300-23013-0).
2. The best article in a scholarly journal or an edited collection of essays:
The article “The Etnos Archipelago Sergei M. Shirokogoroff and the Life History of a Controversial Anthropological Concept” was published by the University of Chicago’s journal Current Anthropology. Its authors – Professor, Chair in The Anthropology of the North at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, Great Britain) David Anderson and Ph.D. in History, researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, (Stockholm, Sweden) Dmitry Arzyutov. The authors explore the concept of understanding the ethnos that developed during the Cold War, through the historical studies of the biography of one of its supporters, Russian-Soviet-Chinese anthropologist Sergei Shirokogorov.The concepts underlying modern ethnography, formed under the influence of his travels and correspondence, had a significant impact on the main areas of anthropology.Decent work, rightfully chosen as the winner by the Ab Imperio international committee.
Ab Imperio’s editorial board and editors specially noted article Heather Coleman, “From Kiev across All Russia: The 900th Anniversary of the Christianization of Rus’ and the Making of a National Saint in the Imperial Borderlands,” Ab Imperio, Volume 19, Issue 4 (2018): 95–129 (March 2019).
We congratulate the winners and wish them continued success!
This concludes the 2019 contest. The 2020 publications contest will open in the fall. Do not miss it!
