Page from an eighteenth-century trade record. Photo used with kind permission of the Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck.
Current Projects
War Wounds: Soldiers’ Bodies Between Firearms Technologies and Military Medicine
My current research project deals with issues of warfare, violence, wounds, and trauma medicine in the Russian Empire. This project is based on a substantial collection of records regarding Russian soldiers being injured in early modern battles, records that follow the wounded soldier from the immediate aftermath of battle through petitions for treatment and eventual retirement. These detailed and often disturbingly graphic documents raise questions about early modern concepts of the body and of pain, the evolving technology of firearms and practices of military medicine, as well as of how Russia’s early modern wars of expansion impacted individuals. The historical and the modern meet at the Black Sea. Since at least the 1670s the Russian Empire has been involved in conflicts over control of this region, with battles taking part in close proximity to the current front in the Russo-Ukraine War; the present war has also produced documents on the military-medical bureaucracy wounded soldiers must navigate, documents with notable similarities to those written centuries earlier. My work then brings a unique perspective in comparing the present and the past of wars and wounds.
My current research project deals with issues of warfare, violence, wounds, and trauma medicine in the Russian Empire. This project is based on a substantial collection of records regarding Russian soldiers being injured in early modern battles, records that follow the wounded soldier from the immediate aftermath of battle through petitions for treatment and eventual retirement. These detailed and often disturbingly graphic documents raise questions about early modern concepts of the body and of pain, the evolving technology of firearms and practices of military medicine, as well as of how Russia’s early modern wars of expansion impacted individuals. The historical and the modern meet at the Black Sea. Since at least the 1670s the Russian Empire has been involved in conflicts over control of this region, with battles taking part in close proximity to the current front in the Russo-Ukraine War; the present war has also produced documents on the military-medical bureaucracy wounded soldiers must navigate, documents with notable similarities to those written centuries earlier. My work then brings a unique perspective in comparing the present and the past of wars and wounds.