This book provides a comprehensive history of the genesis, existence, and demise of Imperial Russia’s largest penal colony, made famous by Chekhov in a book written following his visit there in 1890. Based on extensive original research in archival documents, published reports, and memoirs, the book is also a social history of the late imperial bureaucracy and of the subaltern society of criminals and exiles; an examination of the tsarist state’s failed efforts at reform; an exploration of Russian imperialism in East Asia and Russia’s acquisition of Sakhalin Island in the face of competition from Japan; and an anthropological and literary study of the Sakhalin landscape and its associated values and ideologies. The Sakhalin penal colony became one of the largest penal colonies in history. The book’s conclusion prompts important questions about contemporary prisons and their relationship to state and society.

In 1887, following several years’ imprisonment for his role in the People’s Will terrorist group, Ivan P. Iuvachëv was exiled with other political prisoners to the notorious Sakhalin penal colony. The penal colony emerged during the late 1860s and 1870s and collapsed in 1905, under the weight of Japan’s invasion of Sakhalin. The eight years between 1887 and 1895 that Iuvachëv spent on the island were some of the most tumultuous in the penal colony’s existence. Originally published in 1901, his memoir offers a first-hand account of this netherworld that embodied the extremities of tsarist Russian penality. A valuable historical document as well as a work of literature testifying to one man’s ability to retain his humanity amid a sea of human degradation, this annotated translation marks the first time Iuvachëv’s memoir has appeared in any language besides Russian.

This annotated translation of To the Far North presents the diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Russian physician who was part of the 1900 expedition to the Chukotka Peninsula to find gold. No other account so richly details life along the North Pacific Rim before World War I, especially from a Russian perspective. This volume relates the expedition's formation, development, and aftermath and offers unique insights on the region's place in both Russian policymaking and geopolitics. The illustrated diary includes picturesque descriptions of San Francisco, the Nome Gold Rush, Chukchi culture, Petropavlovsk, Vladivostok, and Nagasaki, Japan. Andrew A. Gentes's translation is based on an edition of Akifëv's book that was published in St. Petersburg in 1904. The diary shows how Russian and American views and cultural values clashed over a territory that is today more geopolitically important than ever. By documenting Akifëv's personal travels outside the expedition, To the Far North also demonstrates, in both human and personal terms, the role Russians played in shaping this region's history.

During the Cold War, Switzerland functioned as a hub for Chinese propaganda networks. Despite its fierce anti-communism, the Swiss Confederation was one of the first capitalist countries to recognise the People's Republic of China (PRC). As a neutral country and as the home base for many international organisations, Switzerland represented a strategic centre for the spread of Maoism throughout the world. Focusing on cultural diplomacy and questioning the notion of soft power, this book explores how the PRC developed its influence and its prestige abroad through its Embassy in Bern, the most important in Western Europe. The book also discusses how China’s approach in Switzerland, bypassing traditional diplomatic structures, and relying on contacts with individual people – "foreign friends" – was then used, and continues to be used, in many other countries, including the United States, France, and Japan.

This book examines the transnational phenomenon of Japonisme in the exoticist and “autoexoticist” literature of the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the way in which reciprocal processes of transcultural acquisition – by Japan and from Japan – were portrayed in the medium of literature, the book illustrates how literary Japonisme and the wider processes whereby Japan, with its alien exotic culture and unique refined aestheticism, was absorbing Western civilization in its own way in the late nineteenth century at the same time as the phenomenon of Japonisme was occurring in Western fine arts, which were inspired by traditional Japanese artistic practices. Specifically, the book focuses on the literary works of Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti, who travelled from France and America, respectively, to Japan, and Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, who in turn went, respectively, to Germany and England from Japan. Exploring the eclectic hybridity of Japan’s modernization during the late nineteenth century, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Comparative Literature.

This book argues that although relations between China and Europe are strained in many areas, including trade, human rights and views about political systems, nevertheless established linkages, especially when considered in the context of long-term historical linkages, development trajectories and intellectual cultures, offer good prospects for future progressive collaborative exchanges. Approaching the subject in a balanced way, giving equal weight to the perspectives of both sides, the book examines China and Europe’s shared experiences of age-old civilizations, of the disorienting effects of the economic, social and political upheavals triggered by the late eighteenth century creation of the modern world, and of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries era of European empires, warfare and the Cold War. It contends that although China and Europe appear superficially to have followed different paths, with many problems in their relationship resulting, they in fact have a very great deal in common concerning how they have coped with the long shift from ancient civilizations to the modern world of natural-science-based industrial capitalism.

Over the course of the nineteenth century Siberia developed a fearsome reputation as a place of exile, often imagined as a vast penal colony and seen as a symbol of the iniquities of autocratic and totalitarian Tsarist rule. This book examines how Siberia’s reputation came about and discusses the effects of this reputation in turning opinion, especially in Western countries, against the Tsarist regime and in giving rise to considerable sympathy for Russian radicals and revolutionaries. It considers the writings and propaganda of a large number of different émigré groups, explores American and British journalists’ investigations and exposé press articles and charts the rise of the idea of Russian political prisoners as revolutionary and reformist heroes. Overall, the book demonstrates how important representations of Siberian exile were in shaping Western responses to the Russian Revolution.