“To Indulge the Tears of Women and Children”: Masculinity, Violence, and Mercy in the Conquest of the Caucasus

Abstract

This article uses campaign reports and memoir literature to explore tsarist officers’ views of masculinity—both their own and that of their opponents—during the conquest of the Caucasus, focusing particularly on the Nicolaevan era. It frames conquest as a form of cultural exchange and argues that tsarist officers’ understandings of the gender order of both their own and combatant societies were a critical component of this cultural exchange. In particular, stereotypically feminine traits like mercy and gentleness were important to the cultural script of conquest in the Caucasus. To offer mercy implied the right to punish, a right which had to constantly be reasserted; the assertion of authority was deeply gendered and necessitated the subordination of local men. A case study of ritual humiliation during the conquest of the Caucasus illustrates how this worked in practice: disrupting the customary gender relations of a combatant society to remove opposing men from their authoritative role and installing an imperial officer at the top of the hierarchy.