New Books In Central Asian Studies

Jonathan Daly is a professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His newest book Crime and Punishment in Russia: A Comparative History from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin (Bloomsbury, 2018), provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the criminal justice system in Russia from the 1700s to the present. Rather than following the typical narrative of Russia being a backwards, Asiatic state that struggled to modernize, Daly begins the book noting that “Russia developed as one of the most successful states in human history.” He highlights the achievements of the Russian state, such as the 1649 Ulozhenie, (which was one of the most detailed and elaborate law codes devised in the early modern world), Empress Elizabeth’s curtailment of capital punishment, the 1864 judicial reform (in which Russia became the first non-Western country to establish an independent judiciary functioning largely according to Western best practices), early Bolshevik criminal justice for reg

Names can be deceiving. Americans call the area where Moscow’s writ runs “Russia.” But the official name of this place is the “Russian Federation.” Federation of what, you ask? Well, there are a lot of people who live in “Russia” who are in important senses not Russians. There are Ingush, Buryats, Chechens, Mordvinians, Tatars, and many others. Russia, then, is a “Federation” of Russians and non-Russians. But even that’s not quite right. As Valerie Kivelson and Ronald Suny point out in their excellent book Russia’s Empires (Oxford University Press, 2016), Russia is really an empire, and has long been. Since the 16th century, Moscow has gathered, conquered, colonized, assimilated, or otherwise brought to heel a great number of places occupied by people who were not Russians. Russians built this empire for different reasons at different times; it grew and (especially recently) it shrank. But it was always there, and still is. Kivelson and Suny co

In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring. Whether producing music shows such as Little Blue Flame, game shows like Let’s Go Girls or dramatic mini-series, the creators of Soviet programming in the 1950s through 1970s sought to produce television that was festive. Evans demonstrates that television programmers conducted audience research and audience voting as they attempted to meet Soviet citizens’ expectations and hold their interest. Rather than stagnating, the producers and filmmakers experimented with multiple forms, in particular in presenting the news. In this interview, Christine Evans discusses her thoroughly researched and entertaining study, and what we can learn about Soviet society in the Brezhnev era through the television it created and watched. Christine E. Evans is assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwauke

Kimberly speaks with Dr. Christopher J. Lee about his newest book A Soviet Journey: A Critical Annotated Edition (Lexington Books, 2017). A Soviet Journey was a travel memoir written by South African writer and anti-apartheid activist, Alex La Guma. The memoir describes La Guma’s experiences in Soviet Central Asia, Siberia, and Lithuania. La Guma’s notes on his travels in the Soviet Union in the 1970s provide insight on the lasting impact of the Soviet Union on writers and intellectuals from the Third World. Dr. Lee edited, annotated, and provided an analytical introduction to La Guma’s work. Lee’s addition to the book includes critical analysis of La Guma’s travel memoir. He places La Guma and the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) into the context of the Soviet role in anti-imperial struggle in the Third World and provides depth to our understanding of the African National Congress connection to radical groups like the CPSA. Lee also shows, through La Guma’s writing,

The Himalayas have long been at the crossroads of the exchange between cultures, yet the social lives of those who inhabit the region are often framed as marginal to historical narratives. And while scholars have studied religious diversity in the context of modern nation-states, such as India, Pakistan, Tibet, or Nepal, seldom has the Himalaya been the focus of examination in and of itself. Megan Adamson Sijapati, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Gettysburg College, and Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, remedy this scholarly void in their new collection of essays, Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya (Routledge, 2016). The volume explores religious responses to Himalayan modernity as witnessed in the cultural encounter with new social realities, expectations, and limits. The characteristics of the Himalayan region are fluid, moving beyond geographical boundaries, or mountain and valley zones, as are the contemporary hu

Victor Taki’s Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I.B. Taurus, 2016) invites the reader to explore the captivating story of the relationship of the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century, and highlights the role the Oriental world played in the shaping of Russian national idea and Russia’s relationship with Europe. Dedicated to the study of previously less well known sources such as diplomatic correspondence, military memoirs, or former captives narratives, this book argues that, for Russia, the relationship with the Ottoman Empire served as a way to establish the image of self as a superior, more progressive westernized state. The book also talks about the transformation of the image of the Ottoman Empire in Russian cultural imagination over the course of the 19th century as well as Russian attitudes towards Christian co-religionists living outside Christian lands. Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empireis particularly interesting as a multidi

Justin M. Jacob‘s new book proposes that we understand modern China as a national empire, and traces the strategies of difference that have consistently marked Xinjiang as a part thereof. Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State (University of Washington Press, 2016) guides readers through a history of the institutions and strategies employed in support of late imperial and early Republican rule in Xinjiang. Jacobs explains the imperial repertoires of the Republican period, frames the challenges of Xinjiang officials to negotiate between Russian and Chinese imperial authority in Central Asia, traces the rise of ethnopopulism, and much much more. This will be required reading for anyone interested in China’s past, present, and possible futures.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bringing together secondary and primary sources in a wide range of languages, David Brophy’s new book is a masterful study of the modern history of the Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinjiang. Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier (Harvard University Press, 2016) joins what have usually been treated as separate subjects–the histories of the Soviet Uyghurs and the Xinjiang Uyghurs–into a single, coherent story of the creation of a Uyghur nation through a series of small steps undertaken in changing political conditions. The book argues that an account of the emergence of the Uyghur nation is a convergence of two stories: the rediscovery of the Turkic past among intellectuals connected to the Russian, Muslim, and Ottoman world of letters, and the history of efforts to capitalize on the breach created by the Russian Revolution to effect political change in Xinjiang. Moving away from a discourse of Uyghur nationalism in favor of an account of historical forms

In what promises to become a classic, Adeeb Khalid’s (Professor of History, Carleton College), Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Cornell University Press, 2015) examines the interaction of nationalism and religious reform in 20th-century Muslim Central Asia. How does the desire and anticipation of revolution generate new ways of imagining Islam, politics, and the nation? While addressing this question in the context of Muslim modernist voices and movements in Tsarist and eventually Soviet Russia, Khalid presents an intimidatingly dense yet deliciously rich narrative of how the Bolshevik revolution transformed Islam and Muslims in Central Asia. With a focus on the religious and intellectual careers of scholars attached to the modernist Jadid movement, Khalid explores ways in which they imagined the idea of a modern religious and political order through appeals to what they understood as authentically national sources and roots. Brimming with nuance and insight, this boo

The plight of Afghanistan remains as relevant a question as ever in 2016. Just what did the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the international occupation of this country accomplish? Will an Afghan government ever exercise effective control over its territory and build a modern, prosperous integrated nation-state? How will Afghanistan evolve in light of the Taliban’s enduring strength and the rise of groups like the Islamic State? What role can regional powers like Pakistan and China play in the future of this nation? Timothy Nunan (Harvard Academy Scholar for International and Area Studies) offers news ways to think about these questions in his book Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Unlike many existing works, Nunan does not limit his analysis to how Afghanistan became an important aspect of great power politics or Cold War rivalries. Instead, he offers a fascinating history of how ideas about international development and humanitariani

Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Julie Billaud is a fascinating account of women and the state and ongoing ‘reconstruction’ projects in post-war Afghanistan. The book moves through places such as gender empowerment training programmes and women’s dormitories, and analyses such topics as the law and veiling in public. Subtle and engaging, Kabul Carnival is a rare and much needed anthropological insight into women’s lives in Afghanistan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adolf Hitler famously (and probably) said in a speech to his military leaders “Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This remark is generally taken to suggest that future generations won’t remember current atrocities, so there’s no reason not to commit them. The implication is that memory has something like an expiration date, that it fades, somewhat inevitably, of its own accord. At the heart of Fatma Muge Gocek’s book is the claim that forgetting doesn’t just happen. Rather, forgetting (and remembering) happens in a context, with profound political and personal stakes for those involved. And this forgetting has consequences. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians 1789-2009 (Oxford University Press, 2015) looks at how this process played out in Turkey in the past 200 years. Gocek looks at both the mechanisms and the logic of forgetting. In doing so she sets the Turkish decisions to rei

Eugene N. Anderson‘s new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) pays careful attention to a wide range of contexts of concern with nature and its resources. Readers of Anderson’s book will find fascinating discussions of rice agriculture and fermentation, the etiquette of food and eating, concerns with deforestation in classical literature, the emergence of principles and practices of environmental management, and much more. Throughout the book, Anderson situates China within a larger frame of Central Asian history, with extensive discussions of the Silk Road and the importance of Mongol empire for the movement and circulation of food- and environment-related materials and practices. Though the main part of the book ends with the Ming Dynasty, a final chapter considers the themes of the book as they thread through m

The Young Turk revolution of 1908 restored the Ottoman constitution, suspended earlier by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and initiated a new period of parliamentary politics in the Empire. Likewise, the revolution was a watershed moment for the Empire’s ethnic communities, raising expectations for their full inclusion into the Ottoman political system as modern citizens and bringing to the fore competitions for power within and between groups. In Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford University Press, 2014), Bedross Der Matossian examines how Ottoman ethnic communities understood and reacted to the revolution. Focusing on the Arab, Armenian and Jewish communities, and using sources in multiple languages, including Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Ladino and Ottoman Turkish, Der Matossian highlights the contradictions and ambiguities in interpretations of  Ottomanism and its reification as political structure. How, for example, could these groups express loyalty t

Jacob Dalton‘s recent book, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (Yale University Press, 2011), examines violence (both symbolic and otherwise) in Tibetan Buddhism. Dalton focuses in particular on the age of fragmentation (here 842-986 CE), and draws on previously unexamined Dunhuang manuscripts to show that this period was one of great creativity and innovation, and a time when violent myths and rituals were instrumental in adapting Buddhism to local interests, thereby allowing Buddhism to firmly establish itself in Tibet. While much twentieth-century scholarship faithfully followed Tibetan historiography’s assertion that the age of fragmentation was a dark time during which the light of Buddhism faded completely, Dalton not only confirms that Buddhism continued throughout this period, but also looks to the Dunhuang materials to show that it was in fact the age-of-fragmentation narratives of demon taming that laid the groundwork for the emergence of a new, pan-Tib

In his fascinating new book, Rian Thum explores the craft, materiality, nature, and readership of Uyghur history over the past 300 years. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Harvard University Press, 2014) argues that understanding Uyghur history in this way is crucial for understanding both Uyghur identity and continuing relationships with the Chinese state. Rather than writing a narrative of “Xinjiang,” Thum instead crafts his history as a story of the shifting spaces of Altishahr, an Uyghur name for “six cities” and a term “used by people who are denied the political power to draw maps.” In Thum’s hands, Altishahr ceases to be a frontier or marginal area: instead, it moves to the center along with the broader field of Uyghur history and historiography. After describing the textual landscape of Altishahri manuscripts as of the beginning of the twentieth century and introducing the genre of the tazkirah as a major vehicle for popular local history, Thum considers th

Central Asia is one of the least studied and understood regions of the Eurasian landmass, conjuring up images of 19th century Great Power politics, endless steppe, and impenetrable regimes. Alexander Cooley, a professor of Political Science at Barnard College in New York, has studied the five post-Soviet states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan since the end of the Soviet Union and developed a strong reputation as a commentator on the region’s politics. His recent book Great Game, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2014) charts the course of the region’s engagement with Russia, the United States, and China in the decade following September 11th. It is a tale of great power competition, brazen graft, revolution, hydrocarbons, and authoritarian rule that serves as both an excellent introduction to the region’s current politics and a primer on where Central Asia may be headed in the 21st century. As the United Sta

The Russian Empire once extended from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan and contained a myriad of different ethnicities and nationalities. Dr. Willard Sunderland‘s The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2014) is an engaging new take on the empire that explores the tumultuous history of its final decades through the life of a single imperial person, the Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a Baltic German aristocrat and tsarist military officer who fought on the side of the Whites in the Russian Civil War and, briefly – and strangely – became the de facto ruler of Mongolia in 1921. Following Baron Ungern through his youth and subsequent military career, the reader is treated to an adventure across Eurasian space. The first chapters take us into the peoples and politics of Russia’s western borders and the grand imperial capital of St. Petersburg. We then shift thousands of miles eastward to Siberia and the faraway territori

What processes must take place in order for countries to radically redefine who is a citizen? Why was Russia able to finally remove ethnicity from internal passports after failing to do so during seven decades of Soviet rule? What led German leaders to finally grant guest workers from Southern and Eastern Europe the path to citizenship after nearly five decades? How was Turkey able to move beyond the assimilation-based model that had guided the Turkish republic for eight decades and move toward a multi-cultural society? In his book Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which was awarded the 2013 Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies, Sener Akturk makes a carefully constructed argument for how states can redefine “regimes of ethnicity” through the confluence of three key processes – the rise of new counter-elites, the development of new discourses, and the emergence of hegemonic majorities, which together can

Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is efficacy determined, and what is at stake in those determinations?Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (University of California Press, 2012)guides readers through the ecologies of mind, body, and society within which Sowa Rigpa is practiced, understood, and transformed from rural Nepal to New York City. The first two chapters each chronicle a day spent in one of the main ethnographic sites featured in the book: a rural clinic and school in Mustang, Nepal; and a major medical institution in urban China. After this grounding in the wide varieties of experience that might collectively fall under the category of “Tibetan medicine,” the following chapters explore how associated people, objects, and practices engage with the opportunities and challenges posed by encounters in very different contexts. These contexts ran