Negotiating Imperial Rule : Colonists and Marriage in the Nineteenth-century Black Sea Steppe

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, tsar Alexander I set new conditions for Russian immigration policy. Immigrants from troubled German lands were to be sent into the Northern Black Sea Steppe during a state-sponsored colonization. Categorized by officialdom as “German colonists,” the newcomers soon established colonies all over the region. This book illuminates the ways in which marriage and household formation were instrumentalized by the imperial politics in the Northern Black Sea Ste