Willard Sunderland
TAMING THE WILD FIELD: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe,
Cornell University Press, 2006, 264 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 4 maps, 14
halftones ISBN: 978-0-8014-7347-


Stretching from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the
Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas, the vast European steppe has
for centuries played very different roles in the Russian imagination. To the
Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the "wild field," a region
inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the
fragile Slavic settlements to the north. For the emperors and empresses of
imperial Russia, it was a land of boundless economic promise and a marker of
national cultural prowess. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so
alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol
of Russia itself.

Traversing a thousand years of the region's history, Willard Sunderland
recounts the complex process of Russian expansion and colonization,
stressing the way outsider settlement at once created the steppe as a region
of empire and was itself constantly changing. The story is populated by a
colorful array of administrators, Cossack adventurers, Orthodox
missionaries, geographers, foreign entrepreneurs, peasants, and (by the late
nineteenth century) tourists and conservationists. Sunderland's approach to
history is comparative throughout, and his comparisons of the steppe with
the North American case are especially telling. Taming the Wild Field
eloquently expresses concern with the fate of the world's great grasslands,
and the book ends at the beginning of the twentieth century with the
initiation of a conservation movement in Russia by those appalled at the
high environmental cost of expansion.


Reviews
"In his sweeping survey of steppe colonization, Willard Sunderland argues
that Russian officials and intellectuals transformed the lands to the south
of Moscow from 'the seemingly most alien of wildernesses to a touchstone of
the nation.' . . . Sunderland details processes of Russia's colonization
that highlight its particularities as well as place the country within a
larger western imperial pattern of expansion. . . . [Sunderland]
thoughtfully considers the complexity of steppe expansion, and what it tells
us about educated society, the state, and empire in Russia, as well as
fitting this expansion into a global pattern from the sixteenth to the end
of the nineteenth century."-Jeff Sahadeo, Journal of Colonialism and
Colonial History, Fall 2005

"The 'wild field' was the name given by the early forest-dwelling Eastern
Slavs to the immense grasslands (also known as the steppe) that stretched
north of the Black Sea from the Danube River to the Ural Mountains. . . . In
this excellent [book], Sunderland examines the expansion of Russia into this
area. . . . Using extensive local and national archives, the author shows
that this colonization changed over time and established a multifaceted
imperialism that involved empire building, state building, society building,
and nation building. Sunderland makes frequent comparisons to the history of
similar regions such as the North American Great Plains. Highly
recommended."-Choice, April 2005

"This book provides an engaging and provocative account of the role of
popular and state initiatives in Russian colonization of the Black
Sea-Caspian steppe from the sixteenth century to the late nineteenth
century. . . . Taming the Wild Field would make an excellent addition to
required reading lists for undergraduate Russian history surveys. . . .
Taming the Wild Field makes the case for reasserting the importance of late
Muscovite and Imperial Russian history by placing them within the larger
contexts of the history of Inner Eurasia and the comparative study of
empire."-Brian Davies, Russian Review, July 2005

"As Willard Sunderland points out in this pioneering study of the
colonization of the Russian steppe, the 'wild field' in his title,
historians have been largely as prone as Russian rulers to accept the vision
of the eighteenth-century cartographers that the steppes were an empty space
awaiting to be peopled. . . . Sunderland offers a fresh perspective from
which to appreciate history's multiple experiences with
decolonization."-Louise McReynolds, Journal of World History, September 2005

"Sunderland's book offers a thoughtful, complex interpretation of this major
subject and deserves to be read by anyone seeking to understand the profound
impact of the Russian empire on its frontier peoples and lands."-Daniel
Brower, Slavic Review,Fall 2005
"Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe is a
brilliant study of the colonization process in Russia that unpacks the
complex cluster of meanings and perceptions embedded in the standard image
of a country 'colonizing itself.' Willard Sunderland makes an outstanding
contribution to our understanding of the dynamic interplay of geography,
resettlement, and national identity in imperial Russia."-Mark Bassin,
Department of Geography, University College London and Associate Editor,
Geopolitics

"Covering nine centuries and using evidence as varied as chronicles,
travellers' accounts, folklore, state documents, and settlers' testimony,
Willard Sunderland painstakingly reconstructs the process by which the 'wild
field,' whose nomadic inhabitants depredated the eastern Slavs, gradually
became an archetypally Russian space. This book follows this centuries-long
process in an absorbing narrative that combines the latest perspectives on
problems of encounter, settlement, and empire with a fine appreciation for
the contingencies and ironies that punctuated the 'domestication' of the
steppe."-David McDonald, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Taming the Wild Field brings out the goals and character of the
colonization of the steppe, the varied meanings it had for Russian state and
society, and the problems that accompanied it. Willard Sunderland's book is
an important contribution to the history and understanding of empire in
Russia."-Richard Wortman, Columbia University

"Willard Sunderland's "Taming the Wild Field" is a much needed survey of the
one thousand-year-long process by which the nomadic steppes north of the
Black Sea were slowly turned into a land of Russian peasant farmers.
Sunderland writes with elegance and wit. His research is thorough and
wide-ranging, both within the central and provincial archives of Russia and
Ukraine and in the broader comparative literature on imperialism and
colonization."-David Christian, author of A History of Russia, Central Asia,
and Mongolia
About the Author
Willard Sunderland is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Cincinnati.