Slavery and Empire in Central Asia

Using newly-uncovered archival evidence, Jeff Eden sheds unprecedented light on the lives of slaves ensnared by the Central Asian slave trade.

Jeff Eden (Author)

9781108470513, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 July 2018

240 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.5 kg

'Slavery and Empire in Central Asia dispels a multitude of myths and stereotypes about slavery in Central Asia, partly through the meticulous reading of Russian archives, partly through Jeff Eden's innovative use of documents and narratives in Persian and Chaghatai. He shows that almost everything we thought we knew about Central Asian slavery is untrue … Through the study of slavery Eden is also able to explore trade, social norms and hierarchies and the relations between nomadic and sedentary populations in a crucial period of Central Asia's under-studied history.' Alexander Morrison, University of Oxford

The Central Asian slave trade swept hundreds of thousands of Iranians, Russians, and others into slavery during the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, autobiographies, and newly-uncovered interviews with slaves, this book offers an unprecedented window into slaves' lives and a penetrating examination of human trafficking. Slavery strained Central Asia's relations with Russia, England, and Iran, and would serve as a major justification for the Russian conquest of this region in the 1860s–70s. Challenging the consensus that the Russian Empire abolished slavery with these conquests, Eden uses these documents to reveal that it was the slaves themselves who brought about their own emancipation by fomenting the largest slave uprising in the region's history.

Introduction
1. The setting: Russia, Iran, and the slaves of the Khanates
2. Beyond the bazaars: geographies of the slave trade in Central Asia
3. From despair to liberation: M?rz? Ma?m?d Taq? ?shtiy?n?'s ten years of slavery
4. The slaves' world: jobs, roles and families
5. From slaves to serfs: manumission along the Kazakh frontier
6. The Khan as Russian agent: native informants and abolition
7. The conquest of Khiva and the myth of Russian abolitionism in Central Asia.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]