Authors

Anita Frison¹;  ¹ University of Padua, Italy

Discussion

In a recent contribution (2016), Lüthi et al. have reflected upon the notions of ‘colonialism without colonies’ and ‘colonialism at the margins’, stating that countries without colonies “had an explicit self-understanding as being outside the realm of colonialism, but nevertheless engaged in the colonial project in a variety of ways and benefitted from these interactions”. While their focus was mainly on Switzerland, Sweden and Iceland, their reasoning can be fully applied to Russia, in relation not only to its much debated ‘internal colonies’, but also to its attitude towards countries which were colonised by Europeans.

This proposal aims at providing a preliminary discussion of the image (Beller, Leerssen) of ‘black Africa’ circulating in late Imperial Russia (1850-1917) through travelogues, accounts and essays written by Russian travellers and scholars or translated from contemporary Western sources (e.g. Pavlovsky 1860-62; Yunker 1879; Putsykovich 1897; Berezin 1904; Rudnev 1906; Gorodetsky 1914). The materials will be analysed within the framework of postcolonial studies and imagology, with the intention of verify whether Imperial Russia constructed its own notion of ‘black Africa’ or shared the one promoted in European colonial countries, thus complying with Western discourse (Foucault) on the colonies.