Reclaiming Byzantium: Russia, Turkey and the Archaeological Claim to the Middle East in the 19th Century [Hardcover]

There is a long-held feeling in Russia that Moscow is the true heir to the Christian Byzantine Empire. In 1894, Imperial Russia opened one of the world's leading centres for Byzantine archaeology in Istanbul, the Russian Archaeological Institute  its purpose was to stake the claim that Russia was the correct heir to 'Tsargrad' (as Istanbul was referred to in Russian circles).

This then is the history of that institute, and the history of Russia's efforts to reclaim its Middle East  events since in the Crimea, Syria and Georgia are all, to some extent, wrapped up in this historical framework. Ure looks at the founding of the Russian Archaeological Institute, its aims, and its place in the 'digging-race' which characterised the late Imperial phase of modern history. Above all, she shows how the practise of history has been used as a political tool, a form of soft power .

Reclaiming Byzantiumis a compelling and sophisticated book. Pinar ?re examines how both imperial Russia and the Ottoman empire approached the archaeological past, in an age of imperial competition and nationalist mobilization. This book is a model of entangled history, examining not only the relationship between the Russian and Ottoman empires over the Byzantine and Slavic past in Ottoman territories, but equally how both states and their scholarly communities had also to confront, on the one hand, the challenge of Western empires and knowledge projects (the British and French empires and their archaeological endeavors)-but also the growing claims of nationalizing states in the Balkans: Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. It is a nuanced study of the relationships between power and knowledge, one conducted on several planes: inter-imperial competitil£