A Blade Across Empires: Prince Bambar’s Ceremonial Sabre
Art historian Ekaterina Heath traces the history of an 18th century sabre, examining its movement across Russian, steppe, and Qing imperial contexts, as part of a broader history at Kalmyk visual culture.
Noyon Bambar’s sabre, eighteenth century, The State Artillery Museum, St Petersburg.
Often dismissed as a peripheral artefact of diplomacy, a presentation sabre can function as a powerful political medium, carrying authority across languages, regimes, and imperial systems. Awarded by Catherine II to the Kalmyk leader Bambar in 1762, this gold-inscribed blade travelled from the Russian court across the steppe to Qing China during the Torghut migration of 1771, before reappearing as a Boxer-era war trophy and, later, a stripped-down museum object in St Petersburg. Tracing the sabre’s shifting meanings, from imperial reward to steppe diplomatic resource, Qing emblem of submission, and modern museum specimen, this paper argues that sovereignty in eighteenth-century Eurasia was not fixed or imposed, but materially staged, negotiated, and repurposed through objects that circulated far beyond their point of origin.
Part of the Art History Seminar Series, convened by Mary Roberts and Nick Croggon, and presented by the Power Institute and the discipline of art history at the University of Sydney.
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Ekaterina Heath
Dr Ekaterina Heath is a casual academic in the Department of Art History. Her research focuses on imperial visual and material cultures across Eurasia in the long eighteenth century, with particular attention to objects and images as sites of political negotiation and cultural exchange. Her first book, on gardens, women, and political agency in eighteenth-century Russia, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026. This talk forms part of a new book project on Kalmyk visual culture, examining the circulation of objects across Russian, steppe, and Qing imperial contexts.