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About Erika Monahan

I am a historian of early modern Russian Empire. My intellectual agenda in a nutshell is to better understand Russia and lands that became part of the Russian Empire in their early modern context. I am also very interested in Environmental history.

Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow

Erika's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Erika:

Russian and Eurasian Studies September 9, 2023

Red Leviathan

The Secret History of Soviet Whaling

Ryan Tucker Jones

Hosted by Erika Monahan
The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near extinction by …
Russian and Eurasian Studies June 18, 2023

Foreigners in Muscovy

Western Immigrants in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Russia

Simon Dreher and Wolfgang Mueller

Hosted by Erika Monahan
Listen:
This interview delves into a book that is indebted to the scholarly work with which New Books Network founder, Marshall Poe, began his career: ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia …
Medieval History May 10, 2023

Authorship, Worldview, and Identity in Medieval Europe

Christian Raffensperger

Hosted by Erika Monahan
What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the broader, medieval Europe that …
Russian and Eurasian Studies March 6, 2023

Mixing Medicines

The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia

Clare Griffin

Hosted by Erika Monahan
Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from …
Russian and Eurasian Studies November 24, 2022

Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725

A Forgotten Friendship

Kees Boterbloem

Hosted by Erika Monahan
Once upon a time, it was said that Russia was isolated and ignorant until Peter the Great opened Russia to the West and ushered in modernization. While Tsar Peter I …
Russian and Eurasian Studies September 22, 2022

A Spiritual Revolution

The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825

Andrey V. Ivanov

Hosted by Erika Monahan
The ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and society in the long eighteenth century. Though the Orthodox …
Media August 23, 2022

Information

A Historical Companion

Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton

Hosted by Erika Monahan
Information is everywhere. We live in an “Information” Society. We can get more of it faster, quicker, and in more different shapes and sizes than at probably any other time …
Russian and Eurasian Studies December 28, 2021

Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia

The Transfer of Power 1450-1725

Paul Bushkovitch

Hosted by Erika Monahan
The transfer of power is something every must state attend to (and preferably by peaceful means). Remarkably, this fundamental aspect of statecraft was governed by custom rather than law into the …