Tropics of Tsardom: Plants and Empire in the South Caucasus, 1800s–1917
The project aims at elucidating the historical phenomenon the very existence of which has until very recently remained a subject of debate and controversy—the Russian empire’s colonial endeavour. Focusing on the South Caucasus, the project shows how, in the absence of overseas colonies, the Russian quest for tropical commodities resulted in the refashioning of this southernmost tsarist possession as a breeding ground for tropical plantation crops: from cotton and tea to bamboo. In doing so, broad segments of the Russian society, including members of the imperial government, outspokenly advocated the vision of the South Caucasus as Russia’s own mercantile colony, which would supply the metropole with raw “exotic” products and serve as a market for Russian manufactured goods. Just like it was in colonial settings elsewhere, botanical gardens, state-run, and private estates of the South Caucasus came to serve as nodes of trans-imperial networks of circulation of seeds and saplings of southern plants, which were supposed to transform the region’s ecosystem. The project contends that the pursuit of tsarist tropics altered the local ecosystem and economic relations, leading to major ecological changes and to the ever-increasing dependence of indigenous producers upon the export of commodities.
Based on a wide array of previously unknown primary sources, the project is the first to demonstrate how plants helped tsarist Russia to grow its colonial empire.
Based on a wide array of previously unknown primary sources, the project is the first to demonstrate how plants helped tsarist Russia to grow its colonial empire.
Final report
Purpose
Tropics of Tsardom has traced the history of the Tsarist Empire’s ambitious environmental endeavor in the South Caucasus, which sought to transform the region into Russia’s own “tropics,” a zone for cultivating exotic, delicate, evergreen plants native to warmer parts of the world. The purpose of the project has been to offer a new perspective on the long-debated and contentious question of Russian colonialism by approaching it through the history of plants and environmental transformation.
Focusing on imperial botany, agriculture, horticulture, and gardening, the project has highlighted the “colonial” dimensions of Russia’s historical experience and has situated them within broader global patterns shared with the overseas empires of Western Europe. In doing so, it has positioned the Tsarist Empire as an unexpected yet significant participant in the transimperial circulation of knowledge, plants, and expertise. More broadly, the project has traced the emergence of the idea of the tropical world, from imaginaries, discourses, and mythologies to concrete practices of acclimatization, by situating these developments within a Russian imperial context not typically associated with tropicality.
Implementation
Tropics of Tsardom was structured chronologically, following the development of the tsarist “tropical” project from the 1820s to the end of the First World War. The primary objects of study included agricultural societies, botanical gardens, acclimatization facilities, state-run enterprises and private estates, with particular attention to individual enthusiasts of tropical and subtropical cultivation, their life trajectories, and their activities.
As an empirically grounded study, the project relied extensively on primary sources. It drew on materials collected from archival repositories in Georgia, Russia, UK and France, with the Central Historical Archive in Tbilisi and the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg serving as the most important collections (the latter accessed with the assistance of research aides).
Equally central to the project was a systematic engagement with imperial periodicals. A wide range of newspapers and specialized journals were consulted, many of them read in full, from the first to the final issue. These included Kavkaz (1846–1918), Zemledel’cheskaia gazeta (1834–1917), Vestnik sadovodstva, plodovodstva i ogorodnichestva (1860–1917), Sel’skoe khoziaistvo i lesovodstvo (1841–1918), Trudy Vol’nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (1765–1915) and many others, amounting to roughly one hundred periodical titles in total.
Results and conclusions
Whereas previous scholarship has tended to consider the tropicalization of the Caucasus as an early Soviet project, Tropics of Tsardom demonstrated that Russia’s “tropical” endeavor was in fact a century older. It has shown that, from the second quarter of the nineteenth century, newly acquired territories in the South Caucasus increasingly came to be envisioned as a Russian colony suited for the production of “colonial” commodities. This vision, shared by administrators, scientists, and entrepreneurs, gave rise to experimental efforts to introduce and acclimatize exotic crops sourced from across the globe.
One of the project’s key findings was the centrality of “colonial” terminology within Russian imperial discourse. The study revealed the extent to which tsarist elites articulated the Russian imperial project in explicitly colonial terms. Although “colony” never became a formal legal category, it was nonetheless widely employed by both the educated public and the ruling elite.
By focusing on exotic plants and the idea of tropicality, the project clarified and contextualized the meaning of the “colonial” within the Russian imperial vocabulary. Describing the South Caucasus as a “colony” articulated a specific vision of its relationship to the imperial center: a region that would enrich the metropole by serving simultaneously as a market for manufactured goods and as a source of exotic commodities. This was a distinctly forward-looking language, oriented toward an anticipated future rather than reflecting existing realities. The term “colony” thus functioned as an aspirational category, designating an ideal to be realized through the development of the region’s productive capacities and the exploitation of the South Caucasus’s allegedly near-winterless climate.
New research questions
The project has generated a number of new research questions that could not be addressed within its scope but that would significantly deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the construction of the tsarist “tropics.” One such question concerns the role of the Imperial Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg in the acclimatization of imported plants. To what extent its functions paralleled those of Kew Gardens within the British Empire remains an open question and a clear research desideratum, currently difficult to examine without access to Russian archival collections. More broadly, reconstructing the concrete pathways through which exotic plants reached their final destinations in the Caucasus would shed further light on the networks of biotic transfer and the institutional and logistical nodes that sustained them.
Another key question concerns the place and role of Crimea. The peninsula’s southern coast, with its uniquely mild climate, served as an early site of imperial experiments in the acclimatization of exotic plants in the late eighteenth century. Yet its relationship to later developments in the Caucasus remains unclear. What role did Crimea play in shaping these subsequent initiatives, and why was it not incorporated into the conceptual framework of Russia’s “tropics”? Addressing these questions would help clarify both the spatial logic and the internal hierarchy of imperial environmental experimentation.
Dissemination
The dissemination of the project’s results has been extensive throughout its duration and afterwards. The project leader was actively engaged in international scholarly exchange and was invited to present research findings at a number of major conferences and workshops. These included “Measuring Eurasia: Survey Sciences at the Edges of Empire” at University College Dublin (June 2024), “Transimperial Histories of (Post)Colonial Entanglements in Russian-Ottoman Borderlands, 1850s–1950s” at Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin (February 2025), “Transnational Approaches to the Long Nineteenth-Century History in East-Central Europe,” organized by the Vilnius Branch of the German Historical Institute Warsaw (April 2026), and “Modernization and Empire in the History of the Caucasus” at the University of Basel (May 2026). These invitations reflect the project’s international visibility and its relevance to multiple historiographical fields.
In addition, the project leader actively sought out further opportunities for dissemination by presenting at leading international conferences. These included the Tensions of Europe conference in Aarhus (June 2022), the Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in New Orleans (November 2022), the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) conference in Bern (August 2023), as well as specialized workshops and conferences such as “Colonial Cities and Border Regions in the Long Nineteenth Century” at the Herder Institute in Marburg (September 2022) and “The Foreign Expatriates in the South Caucasus” at the Georgia Branch Office of Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (December 2025).
The project leader also took part in the organization and co-organization of thematic panels at major international conventions such as ASEEES. These included the panels “Tropics for Russia: Imperial Lives of Exotic Plants in Western Georgia” at the ASEEES Annual Convention in Philadelphia (November 2023) and “Botanical Histories of Tsarist Central Asia and the Caucasus” in Washington (November 2025).
Beyond conferences, the project’s findings were disseminated through invited lectures, seminars, and talks at a wide range of academic institutions. These included the European University Institute in Florence (June 2022), the University of Vienna (June 2022), the Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies at EHESS in Paris (March 2024), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (June 2024), the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (December 2024), the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University (March 2025), University College Dublin (March 2025), the University of Zurich (April 2025), the University of Basel (September 2026), the University of Göttingen (January 2026), and Ilia State University in Tbilisi (February 2026), among others.
A book manuscript based on the project’s findings is currently in preparation, while several peer-reviewed articles will appear in the coming years. In addition to academic outputs, the project also engaged broader audiences. In 2023, a short essay was published at the invitation of Aeon Magazine, and another piece appeared the same year on the Study of Islam in Central Eurasia Blog. An interview based on the project was also featured in the popular book series L’âme des peuples, published by Éditions Nevicata, in the volume Géorgie. L’étreinte du Caucase by Clément Girardot.
Tropics of Tsardom has traced the history of the Tsarist Empire’s ambitious environmental endeavor in the South Caucasus, which sought to transform the region into Russia’s own “tropics,” a zone for cultivating exotic, delicate, evergreen plants native to warmer parts of the world. The purpose of the project has been to offer a new perspective on the long-debated and contentious question of Russian colonialism by approaching it through the history of plants and environmental transformation.
Focusing on imperial botany, agriculture, horticulture, and gardening, the project has highlighted the “colonial” dimensions of Russia’s historical experience and has situated them within broader global patterns shared with the overseas empires of Western Europe. In doing so, it has positioned the Tsarist Empire as an unexpected yet significant participant in the transimperial circulation of knowledge, plants, and expertise. More broadly, the project has traced the emergence of the idea of the tropical world, from imaginaries, discourses, and mythologies to concrete practices of acclimatization, by situating these developments within a Russian imperial context not typically associated with tropicality.
Implementation
Tropics of Tsardom was structured chronologically, following the development of the tsarist “tropical” project from the 1820s to the end of the First World War. The primary objects of study included agricultural societies, botanical gardens, acclimatization facilities, state-run enterprises and private estates, with particular attention to individual enthusiasts of tropical and subtropical cultivation, their life trajectories, and their activities.
As an empirically grounded study, the project relied extensively on primary sources. It drew on materials collected from archival repositories in Georgia, Russia, UK and France, with the Central Historical Archive in Tbilisi and the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg serving as the most important collections (the latter accessed with the assistance of research aides).
Equally central to the project was a systematic engagement with imperial periodicals. A wide range of newspapers and specialized journals were consulted, many of them read in full, from the first to the final issue. These included Kavkaz (1846–1918), Zemledel’cheskaia gazeta (1834–1917), Vestnik sadovodstva, plodovodstva i ogorodnichestva (1860–1917), Sel’skoe khoziaistvo i lesovodstvo (1841–1918), Trudy Vol’nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (1765–1915) and many others, amounting to roughly one hundred periodical titles in total.
Results and conclusions
Whereas previous scholarship has tended to consider the tropicalization of the Caucasus as an early Soviet project, Tropics of Tsardom demonstrated that Russia’s “tropical” endeavor was in fact a century older. It has shown that, from the second quarter of the nineteenth century, newly acquired territories in the South Caucasus increasingly came to be envisioned as a Russian colony suited for the production of “colonial” commodities. This vision, shared by administrators, scientists, and entrepreneurs, gave rise to experimental efforts to introduce and acclimatize exotic crops sourced from across the globe.
One of the project’s key findings was the centrality of “colonial” terminology within Russian imperial discourse. The study revealed the extent to which tsarist elites articulated the Russian imperial project in explicitly colonial terms. Although “colony” never became a formal legal category, it was nonetheless widely employed by both the educated public and the ruling elite.
By focusing on exotic plants and the idea of tropicality, the project clarified and contextualized the meaning of the “colonial” within the Russian imperial vocabulary. Describing the South Caucasus as a “colony” articulated a specific vision of its relationship to the imperial center: a region that would enrich the metropole by serving simultaneously as a market for manufactured goods and as a source of exotic commodities. This was a distinctly forward-looking language, oriented toward an anticipated future rather than reflecting existing realities. The term “colony” thus functioned as an aspirational category, designating an ideal to be realized through the development of the region’s productive capacities and the exploitation of the South Caucasus’s allegedly near-winterless climate.
New research questions
The project has generated a number of new research questions that could not be addressed within its scope but that would significantly deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the construction of the tsarist “tropics.” One such question concerns the role of the Imperial Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg in the acclimatization of imported plants. To what extent its functions paralleled those of Kew Gardens within the British Empire remains an open question and a clear research desideratum, currently difficult to examine without access to Russian archival collections. More broadly, reconstructing the concrete pathways through which exotic plants reached their final destinations in the Caucasus would shed further light on the networks of biotic transfer and the institutional and logistical nodes that sustained them.
Another key question concerns the place and role of Crimea. The peninsula’s southern coast, with its uniquely mild climate, served as an early site of imperial experiments in the acclimatization of exotic plants in the late eighteenth century. Yet its relationship to later developments in the Caucasus remains unclear. What role did Crimea play in shaping these subsequent initiatives, and why was it not incorporated into the conceptual framework of Russia’s “tropics”? Addressing these questions would help clarify both the spatial logic and the internal hierarchy of imperial environmental experimentation.
Dissemination
The dissemination of the project’s results has been extensive throughout its duration and afterwards. The project leader was actively engaged in international scholarly exchange and was invited to present research findings at a number of major conferences and workshops. These included “Measuring Eurasia: Survey Sciences at the Edges of Empire” at University College Dublin (June 2024), “Transimperial Histories of (Post)Colonial Entanglements in Russian-Ottoman Borderlands, 1850s–1950s” at Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin (February 2025), “Transnational Approaches to the Long Nineteenth-Century History in East-Central Europe,” organized by the Vilnius Branch of the German Historical Institute Warsaw (April 2026), and “Modernization and Empire in the History of the Caucasus” at the University of Basel (May 2026). These invitations reflect the project’s international visibility and its relevance to multiple historiographical fields.
In addition, the project leader actively sought out further opportunities for dissemination by presenting at leading international conferences. These included the Tensions of Europe conference in Aarhus (June 2022), the Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in New Orleans (November 2022), the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) conference in Bern (August 2023), as well as specialized workshops and conferences such as “Colonial Cities and Border Regions in the Long Nineteenth Century” at the Herder Institute in Marburg (September 2022) and “The Foreign Expatriates in the South Caucasus” at the Georgia Branch Office of Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (December 2025).
The project leader also took part in the organization and co-organization of thematic panels at major international conventions such as ASEEES. These included the panels “Tropics for Russia: Imperial Lives of Exotic Plants in Western Georgia” at the ASEEES Annual Convention in Philadelphia (November 2023) and “Botanical Histories of Tsarist Central Asia and the Caucasus” in Washington (November 2025).
Beyond conferences, the project’s findings were disseminated through invited lectures, seminars, and talks at a wide range of academic institutions. These included the European University Institute in Florence (June 2022), the University of Vienna (June 2022), the Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies at EHESS in Paris (March 2024), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (June 2024), the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (December 2024), the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University (March 2025), University College Dublin (March 2025), the University of Zurich (April 2025), the University of Basel (September 2026), the University of Göttingen (January 2026), and Ilia State University in Tbilisi (February 2026), among others.
A book manuscript based on the project’s findings is currently in preparation, while several peer-reviewed articles will appear in the coming years. In addition to academic outputs, the project also engaged broader audiences. In 2023, a short essay was published at the invitation of Aeon Magazine, and another piece appeared the same year on the Study of Islam in Central Eurasia Blog. An interview based on the project was also featured in the popular book series L’âme des peuples, published by Éditions Nevicata, in the volume Géorgie. L’étreinte du Caucase by Clément Girardot.