Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598-1725

Christoph Witzenrath is Assistant Lecturer at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. His research interests include medieval, early-modern European, Russian and Soviet history.

• 1. The Cossack Group 2. The Economics of Siberian Service 3. Integration of the Trading Frontier: The Sovereign’s Affair 4. Kormlenie and Bribery – Local Influence and Administration 5. Local and Central Power in the Baikal Region 1689-1720

'Specialists who are interested in early modern institutions, the problem of autocracy, and Russian empire-building will find it well worth their time to wade through its welter of details and fascinating case studies.' - Brian J. Boeck, DePaul University, Russian Review, 2008'This book is both carefully researched and convincingly argued. While locating his work in a broad spectrum of the secondary literature, Witzenrath helpfully summarizes current understandings of workings of Muscovite authority. His research then significantly extends our perception of the extra-institutional functioning of Russian society in the long seventeenth century. The focus on Russia’s Siberian colony is particularly important; the diverse arrangements which allowed the extension (and transformation) of Russian administrative and social functions into its regions and colonies have not received the attention they deserve.' - CAROL B. STEVENS Colgate University, American Historical Review, 2008'Christoph Witzenrath's scholarship is fundamentally sound and he has contributed enormously to our understanding of Siberian history and the role of the cossacks' - Thomas Nelson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 2007'Witzenrath produced a commendable volume that joins the ranks of a swelling literature on seventeenth-century Muscovite local government. Not only Russian specialists, but scholars of the early modern Americas and the Eurasian and African peripheries will gain by reading his noteworthy investigation.' - H-Soz-u-Kult, December 2009