Central Asia

05 Sep 2024 14:14

---

Contacts with Europeans in ancient times; the Greco-Bactrians; Bronze Age and earlier cities, their culture and commerce; the Silk Road; nomadism, relations of current nomads to those of Herodotus, cycles of nomadic invasion (one of my pet theories is that Lenin was the last great Central Asian conqueror); "lost cities of desert Cathay"; Paul or Pavel Nazaroff; Sir Aurel Stein; current politics; cultural history; cultural exports; shamanism; pagan survivals under Islam. Ladakh. Xinjiang under Chinese rule. Above all, Afghanistan.

Someday, I'd like to spend a year or so wandering about the middle of Asia on a yak; but neither the local conditions nor my career make this very likely. In the meanwhile, I read about people who did.

Recommended, historical and scholarly:
• S. A. M. Adshead, Central Asia in World History [Comments in World History]
• W. Barthold / V. V. Bartol'd, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion
• Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Mummies of Ürümchi
• Christohper I. Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages [Review by Danny Yee]
• Mark Dickens, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Tocharian, But Were Afraid to Ask
• Catherine Guirkinger, Gani Aldashev, Alisher Aldshev and Maté Fodor, "Economic Persistence despite Adverse Policies: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan", Working Paper No. 2020-39 ECARES, Universite Libre de Bruxelles [Comments under "Transmission of Inequality"]
• Adeeb Khalid, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present [i.e., from the 1700s to 2020]
• Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia [Authors' website, with reviews]
• Jeannette Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological Explorer [Review: The Lives of Aurel Stein, or, the Road to Balkh]
• Alec Nove and J. A. Newth, The Soviet Middle East: A Model for Development? [1967]
• S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China [Including the parts of Central Asia currently ruled from Beijing. Review]
• S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane [JSTOR]
• Sir Aurel Stein, On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks [Review: Slow Road to Cathay]
• Annabel Walker, Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road [Review: The Lives of Aurel Stein, or, the Road to Balkh]
• Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road

Recommended, 20th and 21st century travel writing and photography:
• Carolyn Drake, Wild Pigeons
• Roland and Sabrina Michaud
  • Caravans to Tartary
  • The Horsemen of Afghanistan
  • Mirror of the Orient
• Palani Mohan, Hunting with Eagles: In the Realm of the Mongolian Kazakhs
• Paul Nazaroff, Hunted Through Central Asia: On the Run From Lenin's Secret Police
• Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
• Katie Orenstein, The Road to Kashgar
• Manolis Priniotakis [All in The American Prospect, 2001]
  • The Road to Osh: Central Asia needs more than a war on terror
  • China's Designated Terrorists: China is using the war on terrorism to brand the Uyghurs of Xinjiang
• Daniel Schwartz, Travelling through the Eye of History

Recommended, fiction from outsiders:
• Richard Bulliet, Chakra
• Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
• Frederic Prokosch, The Seven Who Fled [Or rather, half a recommendation and a warning. Review: Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Every Man Is Foul]

Curiosa:
• Langston Hughes, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia [The product of Hughes's officially-sponsored tour through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 1934. Not his best writing, and in many places achingly naive about the Soviets, but also a fascinating document. Reprinted in 2006 by David Mikosz in Bishkek, annotated with Hughes's hand-written corrections (almost all of them improvements, to my mind); I'm not sure if Mr. Mikosz is still selling them. See also From Harlem to Samarkand.]

To read, general history:

To read, pre-history:
• Michael D. Frachetti, Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia
• Charles Graves, Proto-Religions in Central Asia [Looks completely crackpot]
• Fredrik T. Hiebert et al., A Central Asian Village at the Dawn of Civilization: Excavations at Anau, Turkmenistan
• E. E. Kuzmina, The Prehistory of the Silk Road
• Bertille Lyonnet and Nadezhda A. Dubova (eds.), The World of the Oxus Civilization
• Vadim Mikhailovich Masson and Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, Central Asia: Turkemnia before the Achaemenids

To read, history from ancient times through the gunpowder empires:
• Thomas T. Allsen
  • Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia
  • Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles
• Petya Andreeva, Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE--500 CE
• Ying Bai and James Kai-sing Kung, "Climate Shocks and Sino-nomadic Conflict", Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (2011): 970--981
• Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China [In a series titled "Studies in Social Discontinuity", which sounds intriguing]
• Christopher Beckwith
  • Empires of the Silk Road [Review by Danny Yee, which I wholeheartedly endorse based on reading about half the book]
  • The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China
• Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World
• Michal Biran, Jonathan Brack and Francesca Fiaschetti (eds.), Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals
• Audrey Burton, The Bukharans: A Dynastic, Diplomatic, and Commercial History, 1550--1702
• Nicola Di Cosmo (no relation), Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History
• Johan Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road
• Richard C. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century [Review by Danny Yee]
• Frye, Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion
• Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov, The Kushans and World Civilization
• Peter B. Golden
  • Nomads and Sedentary Societies in Medieval Eurasia
  • Central Asia in World History
• René Grousset, Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia
• Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe
• Michel Hoang, Genghis Khan
• Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion
• Matthew W. King, In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms
• Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road
• Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History
• Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives
• Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History
• Mote, Imperial China, 900--1900 [Emphasis on Central Asian contacts]
• Donald Ostrowski, Musocvy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304--1589
• Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia
• Hugh Pope, Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World [Talk by Pope about the book]
• Karl Reichl, Signing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry
• Gabriel Ronay, The Tartar Khan's Englishman
• Rabban Sauma, The Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China: Medieval Travels from China Through Central Asia to Persia and the Arab World
• J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests
• Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics
• Jonathan Karam Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580--800
• Roderick Whitfield, Susan Whitfield and Neville Agnew, with photos by Lois Conner and Wu Jian, Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road
• Susan Whitfield, Aurel Stein on the Silk Road
• Sir Aurel Stein, Lost Cities of Desert Cathay &c.
• Xin Wen, The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road
• Fances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia [Review in Times Literary Supplement]

To read, the Great Game and the era of European imperialism:
• Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia
• Hopkirk
  • Foreign Devils on the Silk Road
  • Setting the East Ablaze
• Shafqat Hussain, "Small players in the great game: Marginality and representation on the northern frontiers of nineteenth-century colonial India", South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 29 (2006): 235--253
• Jennifer Keating, On Arid Ground: Political Ecologies of Empire in Russian Central Asia
• Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia
• Kwangmin Kim, Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market
• Karl E. Meyer, The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland
• Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game, 1856--1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia
• Tatiana Shaumian, The Great Game and Tsarist Russia
• Jennifer Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia

To read, Soviet-era history:
• Edward Allworth (ed.), Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, a Historical Overview (3rd edition 1994)
• Elizabeth E. Bacon, Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study of Culture Change [Written in the 1960s by a Soviet sympathizer]
• Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan
• Mario Riccardo Cucciolla, The Crisis of Soviet Power in Central Asia: The 'Uzbek cotton affair' (1975-1991) [Ph.D. thesis, 2017, IMT Lucca]
• Adrienne Lynn Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan
• Kho, Koreans in Soviet Central Asia
• Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919--1929
• Paula A. Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia
• Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia

To read, post-Soviet politics, life, history, etc.:
• Nozar Alaolmoiki, Life After the Soviet Union: The Newly Independent Republics of Transcaucasus and Central Asia
• Jon Anderson, Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's Island of Democracy?
• Uradyn E. Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia
• Alex Cooley
  • Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations
  • Great Game, Local Rules
• Tom Cliff, Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang
• Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds.), Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus
• Robert Ferguson, The Devil and the Disappearing Sea: A True Story about the Aral Sea Catastrophe
• David Gullette, "Theories of Central Asian Factionalism: The Debate in Political Science and Its Wider Implications", Central Asian Survery 26 (2007): 373--387
• Henze, Whither Turkestan?
• Dilip Hiro
  • Between Marx and Muhammad: The Changing Face of Central Asia
  • Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran
• Hunter, Central Asia Since Independence
• Takashi Inoguchi and Zen-u Lucian Hotta, "Quantifying Social Capital in Central and South Asia: Are There Democratic, Developmental, and Regionalizing Potentials?", Japanese Journal of Political Science 7 (2006): 195--220 [Survey results from "Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekista" in 2003. Even before reading, I'm a little leery of the idea of treating, say, Uzbekistan and the Maldives as comparable cases...]
• Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia
• David Lewis, The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia
• Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts
• Erica Marat, The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After
• Kelly M. McMann, Corruption as a Last Resort: Adapting to the Market in Central Asia
• Neil Melvin, Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road
• Martha Brill Olcott, Central Asia's Second Chance
• Maya K. Peterson, Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia's Aral Sea Basin
• Richard Pomfret, The Central Asian Economies since Independence
• Scott Radnitz [Studies political networks and mobilization in post-Soviet Central Asia; various papers look interesting]
• Robert Rand, Tamerlane's Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan
• Ahmed Rashid
  • Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
  • Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia
• Sean R. Roberts, The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority
• Oliver Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations
• Rudelson, Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China's Silk Road
• M. Holt Ruffin, Civil Society in Central Asia
• Philip Shishkin, Restless Valley: Revolution, Murder, and Intrigue in the Heart of Central Asia
• Carlos Spottorno, China Western
• Erika Weinthal, State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia

To read, travelers' tales and memoirs [I realize this are all by outsiders; travelers' tales by natives to the region would be very interesting to me]:
• Akchurin, Red Odyssey
• Frederick Bailey, Mission to Tashkent
• Tom Bissell, Chasing the Sea: Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia
• Wilfird Blunt, The Golden Road to Samarkand
• Frederick Burnaby, A Ride to Khiva
• Mildred Cable and Francesca French
  • Through Jade Gate and Central Asia; an Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert
  • The Gobi Desert
• Charles Gallenkamp, Dragon Hunter: Roy Champan Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions
• Geyer, Waiting for Winter to End [Travels in the 1990s]
• Gippenreiter, Fabled Cities of Central Asia: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva [photo/travel book]
• Philip Glazebrook, Journey to Khiva: A Writer's Search for Central Asia
• Gunnar Jarring, Return to Kashgar: Central Asian Memoirs in the Present
• Eleanor Lattimore (wife of Owen), Turkestan Reunion
• Owen Lattimore (husband of Eleanor)
  • High Tartary
  • Inner Asian Frontiers of China
• Ella Maillart, Turkestan Solo: One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum
• Geoffrey Moorhouse, Apples in the Snow [Travels in ex-Soviet Central Asia]
• Pavel (Paul) Nazarov (Nazaroff), Kapchigai Defile
• Nazaroff, Move on!
• Rawicz, The Long Walk [Walking out of a Siberian gulag to India!]
• Rod Richard, Calling from Kashgar: A Journey through Tibet
• Stevens, Night Train to Turkistan
• Jeffrey Tayler, Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing
• Thubron, Lost Heart of Asia
• Emil Trinkler, The Stormswept Roof of Asia; by Yak, Camel & Sheep Caravan in Tibet, Chinese Turkistan & over the Kara-Koram [Is that the ultimate travel title or what?]
• Giles Whittell, Extreme Continental: Blowing Hot and Cold through Central Asia
• Kenneth Wimmel and Ella Maillart, Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia
• A. Wu, Turkestan Tumult

To read, art history;
• Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route
• Sarah Fraser et al., Dunhuang: A Centenial Celebration of the Discovery of the Cave Library
• Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner (eds.), Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China
• Edgar Knobloch, Monuments of Central Asia: A Guide to the Archaeology, Art and Architecture of Turkestan
• Paul Kocot Nietupski, Labrang: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery at the Crossroads of Four Civilizations
• Tamara Talbot Rice, Ancient Arts of Central Asia
• Soren Stark and Karen S. Rubinson with Zainolla Samashev and Jennifer Y. Chi (eds.), Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan

To read, fiction:
• Chingiz Aitmatov
  • A Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
  • Place of the Skull
• Eric Balkan, City of Tears [historical novel]
• Yasushi Inoue, Tun-huang: A Novel

To read, not otherwise classified above:
• Raffael Ayé, Manuel Schweizer and Tobias Roth, Birds of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan
• V. V. Barthold, An Historical Geography of Iran ["the Iranian world in its larger sense, comprising part of what is now Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan as well as Iran proper"]
• Aleksandr Markovich Belenitskii, Central Asia [archaeology]
• Black, Modernization of Inner Asia
• Carole Blackwell, Tradition and Society in Turkmenistan: Gender, Oral Culture and Song
• Katie Boyle, Colin Renfrew and Marsha Levine (eds.), Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia
• David Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, volume I: Inner Eurassia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire
• Peter de Barros Damgaard et al., "137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes", Nature 557 (2018): 369--374
• D. Devahuti (ed.), The Unknown Hsuan-Tsang
• Jo-Ann Gross (ed.), Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change
• Choongwon Jeong et al., "The genetic history of admixture across inner Eurasia", Nature Ecology and Evolution 3 (2019): 966--976
• Anatoly Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World
• Ljalja Kuznetsova, Shaking the Dust of Ages: Gypsies and Wanderers of the Central Asian Steppe [Photo book]
• John Lewton, Smarkand and Bukhara
• Hasan B. Paksoy, Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule
• Janet Rizvi
  • Ladakh, Crossroads of High Asia
  • Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh
• Francis Robinson, The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran, and Central Asia
• Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca (eds.), Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present
• Denis Sinor, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia
• Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North [Really, I need a Siberia notebook]
• Svat Soucek, A History of Inner Asia [Review by Danny Yee]
• R. A. Stein [no relation], Tibetan Civilization
• Rowan Stewart and Susie Weldon, Kyrgyzstan
• Richard Tapper and K. S. McLachlan, Technology, Tradition and Survival: Material Cultures in the Middle East and Central Asia
• University of Kansas, Carrie [Full-text books on-line, mostly about Central Asia at the moment]
• Willem Van schendel and Erik J. Zurcher (eds.), Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century
• Wei-Chuan Weng, Bazaars of Chinese Turkestan
• Monica Whitlock, Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia