Exceptional Subjects: Koreans, Settler Colonialism, and Imperial Subjecthood in the Russian Far East, 1860s–1917

• Published in: Nationalities papers Vol. 49; no. 6; pp. 1065 - 1081
• Main Author: Glebov, Sergey
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.11.2021
• Subjects: 19th century; 20th century; Administrators; Citizenship; Colonialism; Empires; Equal rights; Ethnicity; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Peasants; Population; Population policy; Provinces; Race; Regulation; Russian Revolution; Sovereignty; Central Asia; Japan; Siberia; Russia; colonialism; Russian Far East; imperial subjecthood; Koreans; Russian Empire
• ISSN: 0090-5992; 1465-3923
• DOI: 10.1017/nps.2020.63

This article traces debates and policies of the Russian imperial administrators toward the Korean population in the Far Eastern provinces of the Russian Empire. Koreans were initially treated as de facto members of the peasant estate, and in the 1890s many were granted the status of Russian subjects. Yet the rise of settler colonialism and a nationalizing empire from the 1880s, and especially after the Russian revolution of 1905, complicated the issue of Korean subjecthood and led to policies that excluded Koreans from the regulations normally applicable to peasants, such as the right to increased land allotments. At the same time, the neotraditionalist approach to the management of difference in the empire was still present in the 1910s, albeit never clearly articulated to compete with the nationalizing idiom.