Isaac Scarborough
Assistant professor
- Name
- Dr. I.M. Scarborough
- Telephone
- 071 5272655
- i.m.scarborough@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Isaac Scarborough is Assistant Professor of Social and Economic History at the Institute for History, Leiden University.
Fields of interest
I am a social and economic historian of empire in the 20th century, with research interests in the Soviet Union, the Dutch Empire, and comparative models of development. I am interested in overcoming established disciplinary and political divisions between ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ and better understanding global process of economic development in the modern period. I also serve as co-editor of Itinerario, a journal of comparative imperial history.
Research
My research encompasses a variety of sub-disciplines and geographies, but I am currently pursuing three broad fields of study. First, I am working on a broad comparative project considering ways of evaluating imperial taxation and financial systems. Imperial finances remain poorly studied and understood, and in many cases have remained a space of lacunae, considered unique to their particular times and places. In contrast, I am interested in finding ways to compare divergent imperial economic systems and outcomes, and to explicitly include capitalist, socialist, and pre-capitalist imperial systems in one spectrum of economic development. To this end, I am currently working on two subprojects: first, to compare Soviet financial practices with those of other non-capitalist empires, including the Roman Empire (as part of Leiden University’s ‘Reevaluting Conceptions of Imperial Monetary Flow’ Startersbeurs project), and to develop a larger model of imperial finance deriving from these examples. Second, I am currently beginning a comparative study of Surinamese finance and economic development in the 20th century, using this case study of a lesser-known and less-developed imperial economy to test the models for application across colonial empires. This last subproject has been generously funded by a recent NWO XS grant.
My second current research project represents a large-scale re-evaluation of Soviet economic development in Central Asia. Drawing upon both my previous work on Tajikistan and in comparison to other imperial programmes of economic development, I am interested in considering what the real outcomes of Soviet economic changes may have been. This includes a reconsideration of Soviet taxation policy, monetary redistribution, and raw material extraction in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Finally, I am also pursuing a long-term study of Soviet gerontology. The science behind the study of ageing, gerontology overlaps with elements of geriatric medicine, cytology, developmental biology and demographics. In the USSR, research into gerontology was largely based out of the Institute of Gerontology in Kyiv, Ukraine – but was also deeply embedded in the global development of the science over the 20th century. Together with colleagues working on Leiden University’s ‘Human Development and its Outliers’ Startersbeurs project, I am working to consider how gerontology and the science of ageing in the USSR intersected with and influenced gerontology across the world.
Assistant professor
- Faculty of Humanities
- Institute for History
- Scarborough I.M. (2026), From Kyiv to Vienna: Soviet gerontology’s international influence, History of the Human Sciences : .
- Scarborough I.M. (2025), Review of: Feygin Y. (2024), Building a ruin: the Cold War politics of Soviet economic reform: Harvard University Press. The economic history review 78(3): 989-990.
- Scarborough I.M. (2024), Chains of white gold: Tajikistan’s cotton monoculture across the Soviet divide, Saeculum 73(2): 263-286.
- Scarborough I.M. (2024), Capitalism by any other name(s): engaging with markets before the Soviet collapse. In: Gevorkyan A.V. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of post-socialist economies. Oxford Handbooks: Oxford University Press.
- Scarborough I.M. (2023), Moscow's heavy shadow: the violent collapse of the USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Scarborough I.M. (2023), Like Cooking Plov with Hoja Nasreddin: recalculating Financial Transfers to Tajikistan, 1971–1989, Europe-Asia Studies 75(6): 1014-1040.
- Grant S. & Scarborough I.M. (2023), Geriatrics and ageing in the Soviet Union: medical, political, and social contexts. London: Bloomsbury.
- Scarborough I.M. (2023), "Aftershocks of Perestroika: Tajikistan's Flattened Modernity". In: Croix J.F. de la & Reeves M. (Eds.), The Central Asian World. London: Routledge. 55-67.
- Scarborough I.M. (2022), A New Science for an Old(er) Population: Soviet Gerontology and Geriatrics in International Comparative Perspective, Social History of Medicine : hkac001.
- Scarborough I.M. (2022), War: Disordering and Ordering. In: Duyvesteyn I. & Wal A.M. van der (Eds.) World History for International Studies. Leiden: Leiden University Press. 154-173.
- Scarborough I.M. (19 April 2022), Perestroika in the Periphery: Tajikistan Interviewed by Guillory S. for SRB Podcast [interview].
- Scarborough I.M. (17 October 2022), White gold, reaped and sown: Tajikistan’s cotton monoculture across the Soviet divide (Lecture). All Souls College: Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Monday Seminar.
- Zubok V., Cox M., Pechatnov V.O., Braithwaite R., Spohr K., Radchenko S., Zhuravlev S., Scarborough I.M., Savranskaya S. & Sarotte M.E. (2021), A Cold War endgame or an opportunity missed? Analysing the Soviet collapse thirty years later, Cold War History 21(4): 541-599.
- Kalinovsky A.M. & Scarborough I.M. (2021), The Oil Lamp and the Electric Light Progress, Time, and Nation in Central Asian Memoirs of the Soviet Era, Kritika (Bloomington) 22(1): 107-136.
- Scarborough I.M. (2021), The USSR is Dead: Long Live the USSR? Tajikistan's Inconclusive Transition to Security (In)dependence, 1991-1992, Europe-Asia Studies 74(2): 219-236.
- Scarborough I.M. (2020), Review of: Foltz R. (2019), A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East. London: I.B. Tauris. Nations and Nationalism 26(2): 498-499.
- Scarborough I.M. (2020), Review of: Raab N.A., All Shook Up: The Shifting Soviet Response to Catastrophes, 1917-1991. Journal of Contemporary History 55(2): 441-443.
- Scarborough I.M. (2018), Review of: Miller C. (2016), The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. Durham: University of North Carolina Press. Journal of Contemporary History 53(2): 483-484.
- Scarborough I.M. (2017), An unwanted dependence: Chechen and Ingush deportees and the development of state-citizen relations in late-Stalinist Kazakhstan (1944-1953), Central Asian Survey 36(1): 93-112.
- Scarborough I.M. (2016), (Over)determining social disorder: Tajikistan and the economic collapse of perestroika, Central Asian Survey 35(3): 439-463.