The Tsar's Tropics: Exotic Plants and Empire in the South Caucasus

Did the Russian Empire have a colony in the tropics? In the 19th century, the answer to this question was less obvious than it might seem today. As Russia extended its rule south of the Caucasus Mountains, many within tsarist society envisioned the new imperial possessions as an open-air greenhouse for exotic plantation crops—essential for metropolitan commerce, medicine, and industry. They promoted the idea of the region as Russia’s own nearly tropical colony. This lecture will explore how and why the Tsarist Empire sought to transplant a piece of the tropical world to the South Caucasus.

Oleksandr Polianichev earned his Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence in 2017. Since 2019, he has worked at Södertörn University in Stockholm. A historian of empire and colonialism with a focus on imperial Russia, Oleksandr is currently working on two book projects. The first, based on his doctoral thesis, explores Ukrainian settler colonialism in the North Caucasus. His second major project, Tropics of Tsardom: Plants and Empire in the South Caucasus, 1800–1917, examines the invention of Russia’s own quasi-tropical realm on the Caucasus Black Sea coast. His most recent essay on this topic, “Dream of the Russian Tropics,” was published in Aeon Magazine.