White Early Rus: The Nexus Of Empires

White, Monica

Abstract

THE EAST SLAVS did not always inhabit an empire. At the dawn of East Slavic history in the tenth century, human settlement in the forested zone of eastern Europe consisted of a collection of loosely connected, fortified towns known as Rus. Although a few, notably Kyiv and Novgorod, had grown to an impressive size by the standards of the day, Rus was hardly grand enough to deserve the title of “empire,” and it would be more than half a millennium before anything on that scale emerged in that part of the world. Yet the appearance and early development of Rus took place at the nexus of three other empires, which profoundly influenced its religious, political, and economic systems. Much as the expansion of the Russian empire was later felt in far-flung corners of the globe, its medieval precursor was shaped by the transregional imperial polities of its own time.

• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Pages: 19-25
• Book Title: Picturing Russian Empire
• Chapter Number: 1
• ISBN: 9780197600528
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/30108767
• Publisher URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/picturing-russian-empire-9780197600528?