Empire of solidarities: a connected history of private charity across a decentred Romanov Empire, 1855–1914

By the late nineteenth century, the Romanov Empire stretched half-way across the globe, turning inhabitants of the territory stretching from today’s Tallinn to Vladivostok into subjects of one and the same empire. Yet, we know little about whether the population felt any impulse to help one another in times of need. Under what circumstances did people feel compassion towards distant others and how far-ranging did their sympathies extend? What did these solidarities mean, how were they enacted and expressed through ideas, emotions, and lived experiences? If solidarities could reach across such a multiconfessionally and multiethnically heterogenous empire, how does the Romanov experience enrich our understanding of empire and solidarity as seemingly irreconcilable notions? EMPSOLID applies an unconventional lens to answer these questions. It pioneers a new history of affective practices that, for the first time, focuses on private charity as a method to make solidarities visible and allow us to study them in action. The project’s objectives are to: 1) trace the conceptual history of solidarity in the empire; 2) gather and analyse examples of grassroots private charitable initiatives (benevolent and charitable associations, fundraising campaigns, and private donations) across four regionally distinct Romanov imperial border regions (Baltic provinces, Southwestern provinces, South Caucasus, Turkestan) from 1855-1914 on behalf of beneficiaries outside of the givers’ vicinities; and 3) digitally map flows and networks of donations to generate insights into larger trends and spatial patterns in charitable practices. The project’s ambitious, decentring perspective aspires to envision a long-overdue new spatial history of the Romanov Empire in the long nineteenth century founded on horizontal threads of solidarity linking regions and postulates that these charitable entanglements formed a crucial part of the social fabric holding together nineteenth-century empires.