Central Asia
27 Aug 2011 09:42
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, especially in Kyrgyz Republic; cultural history; cultural exports; shamanism; pagan survivals under Islam. Ladakh. Sinkiang 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]
- 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
- 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]
- Paul Nazaroff, Hunted Through Central Asia: On the Run From Lenin's Secret Police
- Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
- Frederic Prokosch, The Seven Who Fled [Or rather, half a recommendation and a warning. Review: Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Every Man Is Foul]
- S. Robert Ramsey, The Languages of China [Including the parts of Central Asia currently ruled from Beijing. Review]
- 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]
- Recommended, contemporary travel writing and photography:
- Roland and Sabrina Michaud
- Caravans to Tartary
- The Horsemen of Afghanistan
- Mirror of the Orient
- Katie Orenstein, The Road to Kashgar
- Manolis Priniotakis [All in The American Prospect, 2001]
- 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 in many ways 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:
- Chingiz Aitmatov [novelist]
- A Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
- Place of the Skull
- Akchurin, Red Odyssey
- Nozar Alaolmoiki, Life After the Soviet Union: The Newly Independent Republics of Transcaucasus and Central Asia
- Thomas T. Allsen
- Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia
- Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles
- Jon Anderson, Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's Island of Democracy?
- Elizabeth E. Bacon, Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study of Culture Change [Written in the 1960s by a Soviet sympathizer]
- Frederick Bailey, Mission to Tashkent
- Eric Balkan, City of Tears [historical novel]
- Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China [In a series titled "Studies in Social Discontinuity", which sounds intriguing]
- Aleksandr Markovich Belenitskii, Central Asia [archaeology]
- Christopher Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road [Review by Danny Yee, which I wholeheartedly endorse based on reading about half the book]
- Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World [Blurb]
- Tom Bissell, Chasing the Sea: Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia
- Black, Modernization of Inner Asia
- Carole Blackwell, Tradition and Society in Turkmenistan: Gender, Oral Culture and Song
- Wilfird Blunt, The Golden Road to Samarkand
- Katie Boyle, Colin Renfrew and Marsha Levine (eds.), Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia
- Uradyn E. Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia [Blurb]
- Frederick Burnaby, A Ride to Khiva
- Audrey Burton, The Bukharans: A Dynastic, Diplomatic, and Commercial History, 1550-1702
- Through Jade Gate and Central Asia; an Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert, by Mildred Cable and Francesca French, with an introduction by Rev. John Stuart Holden. --- London, Constable & Co., ltd., 1927.
- Mildred Cable with Francesca French, The Gobi Desert
- Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route
- David Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, volume I: Inner Eurassia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire
- Alex Cooley, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations [Blurb. Supposely includes detailed case studies of the post-Soviet republics.]
- Nicola Di Cosmo (no relation), Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History
- Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia [Blurb]
- Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds.), Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus
- D. Devahuti (ed.), The Unknown Hsuan-Tsang [Blurb]
- Adrienne Lynn Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan [Blurb, intro]
- Eurasia Research Center
- Robert Ferguson, The Devil and the Disappearing Sea: A True Story about the Aral Sea Catastrophe
- Richard C. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century [Review by Danny Yee]
- Michael D. Frachetti, Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia [blurb]
- Sarah Fraser et al., Dunhuang: A Centenial Celebration of the Discovery of the Cave Library
- Frye, Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion
- Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov, The Kushans and World Civilization
- 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
- Peter B. Golden
- Nomads and Sedentary Societies in Medieval Eurasia
- Central Asia in World History
- Charles Graves, Proto-Religions in Central Asia [Looks completely crackpot]
- Jo-Ann Gross (ed.), Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change
- René Grousset, Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia
- 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?
- Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe
- Dilip Hiro, Between Marx and Muhammad: The Changing Face of Central Asia
- Hopkirk
- Foreign Devils on the Silk Road
- Setting the East Ablaze
- Hunter, Central Asia Since Independence
- 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
- 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...]
- Yasushi Inoue, Tun-huang: A Novel
- Gunnar Jarring, Return to Kashgar: Central Asian Memoirs in the Present
- Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner (eds.), Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China
- Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia [online]
- Anatoly Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World
- Kho, Koreans in Soviet Central Asia
- Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia
- Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road
- Edgar Knobloch, Monuments of Central Asia: A Guide to the Archaeology, Art and Architecture of Turkestan
- E. E. Kuzmina (ed. Victor H. Mair), The Prehistory of the Silk Road [Blurb]
- Ljalja Kuznetsova, Shaking the Dust of Ages: Gypsies and Wanderers of the Central Asian Steppe [Photo book]
- Eleanor Lattimore (wife of Owen), Turkestan Reunion
- Owen Lattimore (husband of Eleanor)
- High Tartary
- Inner Asian Frontiers of China
- David Lewis, The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia
- John Lewton, Smarkand and Bukhara
- Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History
- Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts [Blurb]
- Ella Maillart, Turkestan Solo: One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum
- Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives [Blurb]
- Erica Marat, The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After
- Vadim Mikhailovich Masson and Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, Central Asia: Turkemnia before the Achaemenids
- Mayhew, Plunkett and Richmond, Lonely Planet Guide to Central Asia
- Neil Melvin, Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road
- Karl E. Meyer, The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland
- Paula A. Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia
- Geoffrey Moorhouse, Apples in the Snow [Travels in ex-Soviet Central Asia]
- Mote, Imperial China, 900--1900 [Emphasis on Central Asian contacts]
- Pavel (Paul) Nazarov (Nazaroff), Kapchigai Defile
- Nazaroff, Move on!
- Paul Kocot Nietupski, Labrang: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery at the Crossroads of Four Civilizations
- Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia
- Martha Brill Olcott, Central Asia's Second Chance [Blurb, link to first chapter]
- Donald Ostrowski, Musocvy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304--1589
- Hasan B. Paksoy, Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule
- Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia [Blurb]
- Hugh Pope, Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World [Talk by Pope about the book]
- 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
- Rawicz, The Long Walk [Walking out of a Siberian gulag to India!]
- Karl Reichl, Signing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry [Blurb]
- Tamara Talbot Rice, Ancient Arts of Central Asia
- Rod Richard, Calling from Kashgar: A Journey through Tibet
- Janet Rizvi
- Ladakh, Crossroads of High Asia
- Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh [Blurb]
- Francis Robinson, The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran, and Central Asia
- Gabriel Ronay, The Tartar Khan's Englishman
- 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
- J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests
- Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics
- Tatiana Shaumian, The Great Game and Tsarist Russia [Blurb]
- Jennifer Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia
- 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]
- Sir Aurel Stein, Lost Cities of Desert Cathay &c.
- R. A. Stein [no relation], Tibetan Civilization
- Rowan Stewart and Susie Weldon, Kyrgyzstan
- Stevens, Night Train to Turkistan
- Richard Tapper and K. S. McLachlan, Technology, Tradition and Survival: Material Cultures in the Middle East and Central Asia
- 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?]
- 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
- Erika Weinthal, State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia
- Wei-Chuan Weng, Bazaars of Chinese Turkestan
- 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
- Life along the Silk Road [Blurb]
- Aurel Stein on the Silk Road
- Monica Whitlock, Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia
- 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
- Fances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia [Review in Times Literary Supplement]
- A. Wu, Turkestan Tumult
