Blog #2

A small Russian sate conquered a number of neighboring Russian-speaking cities and incorporated them into its expanding territory. Over the next three centuries, this small Russian state extended Russian domination over the vast tundra, forests, and grasslands of northern Asia and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Because of the Russian expansion, it brought numerous Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Baltic peoples into the Russian Empire. Russian attention was drawn to the grasslands south and east of the Russian heartland, an area long inhabited by various nomadic pastoral people, and people who were organized into feuding tribes and clans to the recent disappearance of the Mongol Empire. The Russian Empire took shape in three centuries. A line of wooden forts offered protection to frontier towns and trading centers as well as to mounting numbers of Russian farmers. Political leaders and educated Russian frontiers defined the empire in grander terms by defending the Russian frontiers, enhancing the power of the Russian state, and bringing Christianity.
The Russian military brought both the steppes and Siberia under Russian control. Russian authorities demanded an oath by which native peoples swore the monarch of the Russian Empire. They also demanded a tribute paid in cash or in kind. This meant enormous quantities of furs that are extremely valuable. The most transforming feature of the Russian Empire was the Russian settlers because their numbers over-whelmed native peoples giving their lands a distinctive Russian character. The loss of hunting grounds and pasturelands to Russian agricultural settlers and local people became dependent on Russian market for grain, sugar, tea, tobacco, and alcohol. Required fees and permission to cross agricultural lands occurred if pressures encouraged pastoralists to abandon their nomadic ways.
With a multiethnic empire, Russians diminished as a proportion of the overall population and remained politically dominant. Non-Russians such as Ukrainians and Belorussians were predominated and vast territories of Siberia and the steppes had small populations. Because Russia was one of the great powers of Europe, it was the wealth of the empire, rich agricultural lands, valuable furs, and mineral deposits that made Russia dominant. The Russians created an empire similar to the Western Europe in terms of conquest, settlement, explotation, religious conversion and feelings of superiority.
The Chinese pushed deep into central Eurasia and the Turko-Mongol invaders from Central Asia created the Mughal Empre bringing Hindi South Asia within a single Muslim ruled political system. The Ottoman Empire brought Muslim rule to a large Christian population in southeastern Europe and Turkish rule to largely Arab populations in North Africa and the Middle East. Therefore, the expanding of Asian empires reflected the energies and vitality of their respective civilizations and gave rise to profoundly important cross- cultural encounters.