The Sexual and Gender Politics of Sport Mega-Events by Heather Sykes

Author:Heather Sykes [Sykes, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Gender Studies, Sports & Recreation, General, Cultural & Social Aspects
ISBN: 9781317690009
Google: iHWuDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 33342189
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Circassians and British orientalism

British imperial interests in the Caucasus had an impact on the Russian colonization of Circassian peoples. In the nineteenth century, Russians and Western Europeans referred to Circassian people as ‘mountaineers’. In the Russian imagination, Circassian ‘mountaineers’ were thought to be ‘ungovernable’, ‘unproductive’ and lacking interest in their own improvement. Russians drew on Enlightenment anthropology, Kreiten (2009) explains, to depict them as ‘obstinate’ and ‘lazy’, in contrast to a newly emerging modern Russian citizen-subject, who was ‘peaceful, hardworking and industrious’. Russians regarded the ‘mountaineers’ as having a ‘wild character’ that mirrored their wilderness surroundings, so that their ‘cultural difference was essentialized to a degree where Circassians no longer seemed redeemable’ (p. 225). These depictions of Circassian ‘mountaineers’ worked to racialize muslim Circassians as culturally different from christianizing Russia and British empires.

During our interview, Mohammad Hamzouq explained that Circassians are living the results of hidden agreements between the superpowers over the past 100 years.

Mohammad: Historically, when the Russians were fighting … they wanted to take this region. The Ottomans were getting weaker, the British were trying to get in, so the Circassians wanted to form an alliance so that they can save something in Sochi, in their land. So they aligned with the British; the British promised them to go and figure things out there.

Rouhi: They gave them a flag! And lied to them!

Circassians had been subjected to Victorians’ orientalist gaze of during the British empire. This led to the depiction of women as ‘Circassian beauties’ and men as ‘mountaineers’ in the imperialist British imagination. British orientalist David Urquhart played a role in instigating the organization of indigenous groups into a national body under a Circassian flag. Urquhart’s orientalist imaginary of a superior and pure muslim ‘culture’ was a key motivator for his colonial interference in the northwest Caucasus. His orientalist lens viewed all Circassians as one essentializable group on the basis of their muslimness, overriding far more important regional differences. British colonial diplomats were protecting their political and trade interests with the Ottoman empire and India, relying on their orientalist relation with Circassian peoples.

Irma Kreiten’s (2009) excellent analysis shows how British imperial and orientalist views about Circassians shaped Russian colonialism. ‘Cleansing’ and ‘re-settlement’ were methods of state power used by the Russian empire in the mid-nineteenth century. This led to, Kreiten explains, the ‘removal’ of the Circassians as part of Russia’s ‘modernization’. Russian colonialists were seen as ‘modern-minded liberals’ rather than ‘radical’. Russian colonization used western discourses about ‘government’, ‘anthropology’ and ‘citizenship’. Russia’s violent, military genocide of the Circassians relied on these modernist discourses to justify its ethnic cleansing policy. The practice of ‘civilizing’ occurred simultaneously with the practice of ‘cleansing’.

The Russian military planned a ‘simple exchange’ to replace the local Circassian population with Russian Cossacks. Initially, the government objected. Kreiten documented the Russian government’s moral objections, recorded as: ‘The mountaineers deep affection for their homeland … is not to be doubted that they would prefer death to the settlement on the steppes … and that this would not lead to their submission, but to their extermination’ (cited in Kreiten, 2009: 217).

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