Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Alexander Morrison, “Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India” (Oxford UP, 2008)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Alexander Morrison, “Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India” (Oxford UP, 2008)
Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace.
This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies
View all episodes
By Marshall Poe
4.7
1616 ratings
Great Britain and Russia faced off across the Pamirs for much of the nineteenth century; their rivalries and animosities often obscuring underlying commonalities; these were, after all, colonial Empires governing ‘alien’ peoples, and faced much the same problems insofar as maintaining their rule was concerned. Alexander Morrison‘s Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly that; traces the issues faced by the Russian administration in the region around Samarkand and the British administration in the Punjab, issues ranging from judicial systems and grassroots administration to dam building and educating the colonized local populace.
This is a book that is at once fluent and erudite; its the great strengths are a very detailed bibliography, and an extensive use of Russian archival sources, as well as local sources in Persian; too often has the story of Russia in Central Asia been recounted to an Anglophone audience from the works and thoughts of British colonial administrators. This is also a work that analyses macro, holistic administrative structures and does not rely on the retelling of anecdotes involving flamboyant frontier officials; a recounting that delves behind the sabre-rattling of the Great Game suffices in itself to make this book a must-read.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies
More shows like New Books in Central Asian Studies
View all
Global News Podcast
7,654 Listeners
New Books in History
204 Listeners
New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies
40 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
192 Listeners
New Books in Military History
161 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
161 Listeners
New Books in Anthropology
49 Listeners
New Books in Environmental Studies
24 Listeners
New Books in Political Science
62 Listeners
New Books in Literary Studies
22 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
109 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
Asia Geopolitics
315 Listeners
Foreign Policy Live
591 Listeners
Odd Lots
1,842 Listeners
Pivot
9,278 Listeners
Russian Roulette
148 Listeners
Ologies with Alie Ward
23,946 Listeners
ChinaTalk
269 Listeners
The Asia Chessboard
103 Listeners
In Moscow's Shadows
352 Listeners
The Ezra Klein Show
15,481 Listeners
The Foreign Affairs Interview
421 Listeners
Empire
2,140 Listeners
On with Kara Swisher
3,318 Listeners