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Alexander Massov

Alexander Massov is Head of the History Department at St Petersburg State Maritime Technical University and Professorial Chair of the Pacific Research Master’s Program at St Petersburg State University. He specialises in the history of Russian–Australian relations and is the author of numerous articles and monographs in this field. He is co‑author and co-editor of Encounters under the Southern Cross: Two Centuries of Russian-Australian Relations 1807–2007 (2007), and co-editor of From St Petersburg to Port Jackson: Russian Travellers’ Tales of Australia 1807–1912 (2016).

A New Rival State? »

Australia in Tsarist Diplomatic Communications

Edited by: Alexander Massov, Marina Pollard, Kevin Windle

Publication date: October 2018

A New Rival State? is a unique collection of dispatches written in 1857–1917 by the Russian consuls in Melbourne to the Imperial Russian Embassy in London and the Russian Foreign Ministry in St Petersburg. Written by eight consuls, they offer a Russian view of the development of the settler colonies in the late nineteenth century and the first years of the federated Commonwealth of Australia. They cover the federalist movement, the changing domestic political situation, labour politics, the treatment of the Indigenous population, the ‘White Australia’ policy, Australia’s defensive capacity and foreign policy as part of the British Empire. The bulk of the material is drawn from the Russian-language collection The Russian Consular Service in Australia 1857–1917, edited by Alexander Massov and Marina Pollard (2014), using documents from the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

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