Beyond The Steppe Frontier A History Of The Sinorussian Border Sren Urbansky by Sören Urbansky PPGYDWAAQBAJ instant download after payment.

The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by exploring the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, & border guards. 

Through the perspectives of locals, including railroad employees, herdsmen, & smugglers from both sides, Sören Urbansky explores the daily life of communities & their entanglements with transnational & global flows of people, commodities, & ideas. Urbansky challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, & undermining, border making.

Because Russian, Chinese, & native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping & mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. 

Relying on a wealth of sources culled from little-known archives from across Eurasia, Urbansky demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, & religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, & propaganda.

Beyond the Steppe Frontier sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery & expands our understanding of how borders are determined.