For centuries, travelers have made Central Asia known to the wider world through their writings. In this volume, scholars employ these little-known texts in a wide range of Asian and European languages to trace how Central Asia was gradually absorbed into global affairs. The representations of the region brought home to China and Japan, India and Persia, Russia and Great Britain, provide valuable evidence that helps map earlier periods of globalization and cultural interaction.

A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced over millennia. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

Central Asia has been perceived as a landscape of connections, of Silk Roads; an endless plain across which waves of conquerors swiftly rode on horseback. In reality the region is highly fragmented and difficult to traverse, and overcoming these obstacles led to routes becoming associated with epic travel and high-value trade. Put simply, the inhabitants of these lands became experts in the art of travelling the margins. This volume seeks to unravel some of the myths of long-distance roads in Central Asia, using a desert case-study to put forward a new hypothesis for how medieval landscapes were controlled and manipulated.

“This book provides a deep reading of Nikolai Karazin’s works and his relationship with Central Asia. Elena Andreeva shows how Karazin’s prolific creations have much to tell us about Russian imperialism, colonial and local society as well as Russians’ self-identity as colonizers and Europeans. The work offers an original contribution to the scholarship on Russian imperial history and that of Central Asia, and Russian literary history also. Karazin’s importance—at the time and now—is appropriately highlighted.” - Jeff Sahadeo, Associate Professor, Carleton University, Canada “Elena Andreeva’s book resurrects a vital if forgotten figure from the Russian past: Nikolai Karazin, Russia’s Kipling, a multifaceted participant in Russian imperial expansion, whose fiction, journalism, ethnography and visual representations may well have done more than any agent of the Russian state to represent and popularize Russia’s conquest of Central Asia to a newly literate Russian public beyond the educated elites. Archivally based and carefully argued, Andreeva’s study of Karazin reveals the absence of any singular logic to Russian imperial expansion. In her analysis Karazin emerges as a vernacular enthusiast of empire who was able to reconcile a skeptical attitude towards tsarist autocracy with an idealized view of Russia’s 'civilizing' mission in the East.” - Harsha Ram, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA This book is dedicated to the literary and visual images of Central Asia in the works of the popular Russian artist Nikolai Karazin. It analyzes the ways Karazin’s discourse inflected, and was inflected by, the expansion of the Russian empire – and therefore sheds light on the place of art and culture in the Russian colonial enterprise. It is the first attempt to interpret Karazin’s images of Central Asia within Russian imperial networks and within the maze of the Russian national identity that informed them.

A major history of Central Asia and how it has been shaped by modern world events Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events. Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-eighteenth century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule. Predominantly Muslim with both nomadic and settled populations, the peoples of Central Asia came under Russian and Chinese rule after the 1700s. Khalid shows how foreign conquest knit Central Asians into global exchanges of goods and ideas and forged greater connections to the wider world. He explores how the Qing and Tsarist empires dealt with ethnic heterogeneity, and compares Soviet and Chinese Communist attempts at managing national and cultural difference. He highlights the deep interconnections between the "Russian" and "Chinese" parts of Central Asia that endure to this day, and demonstrates how Xinjiang remains an integral part of Central Asia despite its fraught and traumatic relationship with contemporary China. The essential history of one of the most diverse and culturally vibrant regions on the planet, this panoramic book reveals how Central Asia has been profoundly shaped by the forces of modernity, from colonialism and social revolution to nationalism, state-led modernization, and social engineering.

This volume examines the major cultural, religious, political, and urban changes that took place in the Iranian world of Inner and Central Asia in the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic periods. One of the major civilizations of the first millennium was that of the Iranian linguistic and cultural world, which stretched from today’s Iraq to what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No other region of the world underwent such radical transformation, which fundamentally altered the course of world history, as this area did during the centuries of transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. This transformation included the religious victory of Islam over Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and the other religions of the area; the military and political wresting of Inner Asia from the Chinese to the Islamic sphere of primary cultural influence; and the shifting of Central Asia from a culturally and demographically Iranian civilization to a Turkic one. This book contains essays by many of the preeminent scholars working in the fields of archeology, history, linguistics, and literature of both the pre-Islamic and the Islamic-era Iranian world, shedding light on some of the most significant aspects of the major changes that this important portion of the Asian continent underwent during this tumultuous era in its history. This collection of cutting-edge research will be read by scholars of Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Iranian, and Islamic studies and archaeology. Contributors: D. G. Tor, Frantz Grenet, Nicholas Sims-Williams, Etsuko Kageyama, Yutaka Yoshida, Michael Shenkar, Minoru Inaba, Rocco Rante, Arezou Azad, Sören Stark, Louise Marlow, Gabrielle van den Berg, and Dilnoza Duturaeva.

“For those who still get their ‘-stans’ mixed up, Hiro’s book provides a detailed and nuanced overview of the region.” —Financial Times (Best Books of the Year) The nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran—the majority of them former Soviet republics—remain little understood in the West even in the post-Cold War era. This book delves into these Central Asian countries: their histories, cultures, economics, politics, militaries, and relationships with regional neighbors, Russia in particular. Ultimately, Inside Central Asia is an outstanding, in-depth introduction to this part of the world, “full of dependable history-telling and analysis” (The Economist). Praise for the work of Dilip Hiro “The writing is clear and informative.” —The New York Times “Hiro’s mix of lively writing and serious detail should draw in readers.” —Choice “Intriguing analysis.” —Publishers Weekly “[An] eminent historian.” —Kirkus Reviews

For its citizens, contemporary Central Asia is a land of great promise and peril. While the end of Soviet rule has opened new opportunities for social mobility and cultural expression, political and economic dynamics have also imposed severe hardships. In this lively volume, contributors from a variety of disciplines examine how ordinary Central Asians lead their lives and navigate shifting historical and political trends. Provocative stories of Turkmen nomads, Afghan villagers, Kazakh scientists, Kyrgyz border guards, a Tajik strongman, guardians of religious shrines in Uzbekistan, and other narratives illuminate important issues of gender, religion, power, culture, and wealth. A vibrant and dynamic world of life in urban neighborhoods and small villages, at weddings and celebrations, at classroom tables, and around dinner tables emerges from this introduction to a geopolitically strategic and culturally fascinating region.

"Evocative and enigmatic, the Silk Road occupies a unique place in contemporary culture and international affairs. Across the world, it has captured the imagination as a story of camel caravans crossing desert and mountain, of precious goods moving between East and West, and of ideas, religions and technologies migrating across land and sea. As China seeks to "revive" the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century, this compelling, yet poorly understood, narrative of history now serves as a platform for building trade, diplomatic, infrastructure and geopolitical connections. "The Silk Road: Connecting Histories and Futures" is the first book to critically investigate the merits and problems of this fabled geocultural narrative of history, and map out the role it plays in international affairs. Four thematic sections trace its rise to global fame as a domain of scholarship and foreign policy, a celebration of peace and internationalism, and how it created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. China's Health Silk Road and civilizational politics are among the themes discussed that open up the Silk Roads as a space for critical enquiry"--