Negotiating imperial rule

"In the beginning of the 19th century, tsar Alexander I set new conditions for Russian immigration policy. Immigrants from troubled German lands were to be sent into the Northern Black Sea Steppe during a state-sponsored colonization. Categorized by officialdom as "German colonists," the newcomers soon established colonies all over the region. This book illuminates the ways in which marriage and household formation were instrumentalized by the imperial politics in the Northern Black Sea Steppe and conditioned by socioeconomic rationality of its colonization."--Page [4] of cover.