How geopolitics have been implemented in the North: historical perspective Ilya Solomeshch PetrSU 7...
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Transcript of How geopolitics have been implemented in the North: historical perspective Ilya Solomeshch PetrSU 7...
How geopolitics have been implemented in the North:
historical perspective
Ilya Solomeshch PetrSU
7th International Summer School in Karelia 2010
11.05.2010
‘Does history matter?’
• Ontological, cognitive and pedagogical interrelations between political sciences, IR studies and history
• Several regionally oriented and chronologically scattered cases
• Not a word about geopolitical theories…
Two basic ways of approaching history knowledge in political
discourse:
• Ignoring history and ‘inventing a bike’• Using historical facts as a facultative illustration
Cases
• TRADE, STATE and POWER: – Hansa– Pomor trade– Karelian peddler trade
• History based (geo)political discourse and speculative practices in the North
• “The Greater Finland” project(s): geopolitics in practice?
Trade, State and Power politics: Hanseatic League
Hansa: basic facts
• Where: along the coastal line of Northern Europe, from the Baltic to the North Sea, and also inland
• When: ca. 13th – 17th centuries, i.e. the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Time
• What: A. Economic and political alliance of trading cities and their guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly
• What: B. Own law system established , own protection and mutual aid system furnished -- a sort of a political autonomy and, in some cases, political entities of their own created
Hansa: Common features of the Hanseatic cities’ structure
• Despite of generally fluid structure…• Most of the Hansa cities either started as independent, or gained independence through joining the League
• Strategic locations along trade routes• Economic power combined with military might… Used not only against pirates, but also against states (war against Denmark, 1361-1370)
Hansa: reasons for decline (by the end of the 16th cent.)
• Internal contradictions• New (and renewed) territorial states as an eventual rival
• New financial and credit mechanisms in Europe
HANSA in the 21th century?
• Hanseatic rhetorics in the Baltic Sea region• Instrument of building new bridges between East and West?
• Involvement of supraregional actors
Pomor trade: basic facts
• When: 18th – beginning of the 20th centuries• What: Grain for Fish, usually barter-based exchange, compensatory function prevailing
• Where: Sea-based logistics – the Barens Sea, the White Sea
• Controversively perceived and approached by the States
• Dying away by (but not necessarily because of) 1917
Karelian Peddler Trade• What: Broad spectrum of goods, from grain and textile till coffee and sewing-machines
• Where: Karelia and Finland, waterways-based logistics
• Seasonal, compensatory function prevailing• Low average earnings• Few most successful peddlers settled in Finland • Controversively perceived by the State• Dying away by (but not necessarily because of) 1917
• Random border-crossings even in the 1930s
Case: the Greater Finland project
• The White Greater Finland and Karelian irredenta – Natural borders– Ethnic community of the Finns
• Implementation attempts– Panfennism, late 19th – early 20th cent.– ‘Tribal’ wars, 1918-22– Äänislinna 1941-44...– Euregio Karelia?????
Case: the Greater Finland project (2)
• The Red Greater Finland and Karelian statehood (1920-)– The Red Finns’ ideas and practice in Karelia– Clear references to the ideas of Kjellen and Ratzell
• Blamed for bourgeois nationalism…• Karelian real autonomy ended up with the start of centralisation of the Soviet Union by the late 1920s.
Cultural interaction through contacts
• Language• Habits and everyday life• Transfer of skills
Perceptions, images, stereotypes
The neighbour is often identified with its State, not with ethnicity, and is the Other in any case…
• Laukkuryssä for [Russian] Karelians in Finland• Ruočči for the Finns, … and Ruoččiheinä for the thisle in [Russian] Karelia
Contacts in the shadow of the State policies (1)
• Contact zone including vast borderlands of neigbouring states, from the Arctic Ocean till Karelian Isthmus and the Baltic Sea basine
• Dynamic,• Multiethnic,• Multiconfessional
• Within each state, Centre-Periphery links emphasised, [cross-border] Periphery- Periphery links neglected / limited
• Security based policy / discourse prevailing
Contacts in the shadow of the State policies (2)
• Transborder East-West contacts despite, but not owing to the State policy
• Compensatory function prevailing, both in material and in cultural spheres