On Land and Sea. Medical geography in the Russian empire (1770—1870)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Renner
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405969656

Why was medicine crucial – or considered to be crucial – in the building, sustaining and understanding of the Russian Empire? Did it bring health to the imperial subjects or were they supressed through new regimes of hygiene? While medical experts drafted disciplinary regimes and ways to exploit the peripheries’ resources and even dreamt of projects to improve the environment, the question remains, how were these plans eventually enforced?Previous research has hardly studied these questions. To answer them the project starts from the contemporary concept of medical geography which defined disease as an imbalance between living bodies and the environment. Medics studied geographical parameters as well as humans on Russia’s imperial periphery in order to fight or prevent diseases. The medical knowledge produced for this purpose will be studied in manifold documents: physicians’ notebooks and patient histories, instructions and reports, topographic descriptions and statistical accounts, memoirs, and popular articles. The new medical-geographical discourse about health and disease in environmental contexts evolved through interaction with “traditional” medical cultures at the peripheries and in regular exchange with scholars worldwide.The years between 1770 and 1870 were a time of imperial expansion, but also of internal consolidation. The medical service grew significantly; physicians gained influence as experts, deployed to all parts of the vast Russian empire and the seas surrounding it. Against this background, the project combines macro- and micro-analyses. It highlights the transnational or rather inter-imperial transfer of medical knowledge through scholarly discourse. This approach considers Russia alongside European overseas empire and links medicine with other disciplines (geography, climatology, meteorology). On the local level, the project adopts a broadly postcolonial perspective on how “traditional” medicine shaped medical science as conducted by representatives of the imperial centre. Utilizing medical geography, physicians helped conceptualize the Russian empire’s spatial diversity as did physicians elsewhere. Yet the Russian case highlights the essence of imperial medicine more clearly than other imperial histories and thus will enlarge our understanding how empires work. In Tsarist Russia medicine did not become imperial just because it was transferred to a remote periphery, but because medical experts and expertise helped control and define this very periphery as something “other”.The project will be conducted by an “entangled” research team consisting of two professors, two postdoctoral researchers, two PhD students and four student assistants. The cooperation contributes to the entanglement of Russian and German academic cultures and to a better understanding of the two countries′ mutual history.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Russia
• Partner Organisation: Russian Science Foundation
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Elena Vishlenkova