Angus Russell

My doctoral research focusses on the transmission of Mongol institutional models to Moscow across the long fifteenth century, from the reigns of Vasilii I (1389-1425) to Vasilii III (1505-33). By assessing charter evidence in particular, I seek to define the interplay of Muscovite bureaucratic, fiscal and legal norms with their analogues in the Qipchaq Khanate (‘Golden Horde’) and its successor polities; building on my earlier work investigating both the Mongol relay network (iam) and forms of Inner Asian landholding, I am interested in delineating forms of mediation between putatively nomadic and sedentary societies.

To this end, I also intend to explore how such institutional transmission mirrored contemporary ideological currents that perceived the khans’ rule as antithetical to Byzantine imperial heritage, and to compare the evolution of Muscovite practice with administrative innovation in neighbouring regions of Eurasia. More broadly, I hope to situate my research within debates around cross-cultural connected histories, and transcontinental mobility, in the late medieval and early modern periods.

Before coming to Cambridge, I studied for my undergraduate degree in History and Russian, and my master’s degree in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, at the University of Oxford.