Bibliography of the history of Central Asia

Central Asia

Area	4,003,451 km2 (1,545,741 sq mi)
Population	75,897,577 (2021) (16th)
Population density	17.43/km2 (45.1/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	$1.25 trillion (2023)
GDP (nominal)	$446 billion (2023)
GDP per capita	$5,900 (2023; nominal) $16,400 (2023; PPP)
HDI	0.779 (high)
Demonym	Central Asian
Countries	5 recognized Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan
Languages	Dungan, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Koryo-mar, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Russian, Tajik, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, and others
Time zones	2 time zones UTC+05:00: Standard: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan UTC+06:00: Standard: Kyrgyzstan
Internet TLD	.kg, .kz, .tj, .tm, .uz
Calling code	Zone 9 except Kazakhstan (Zone 7)
Largest cities	Lista Aktöbe Andijan Almaty Astana Ashgabat Bishkek Dushanbe Fergana Karagandy Namangan Samarkand Shymkent Tashkent
UN M49 code	143 – Central Asia 142 – Asia 001 – World

This is a select bibliography of English language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of Central Asia. A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included. Book entries have references to journal articles and reviews about them when helpful. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below; see Further reading for several book and chapter-length bibliographies.

Inclusion criteria

Geographic scope of the works include the present day areas of: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and peripheral regions such as Afghanistan, Afghan Turkestan, Caspian Sea, Mongolia, East Turkestan, Xinjiang, and Iran as they relate to the history of Central Asia.

Included works should either be published by an academic or notable publisher, or be authored by a notable subject matter expert and have positive reviews in significant scholarly journals.

Formatting and citation style

This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates; references to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates. Where books which are only partially related to Central Asian history are listed, the titles for chapters or sections should be indicated if possible, meaningful, and not excessive.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included.

When listing works with titles or names published with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

General surveys

• Baumer, C. (2016). The History of Central Asia (Four volumes). London: I.B. Tauris.
• Beckwith, C. I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Golden, P. B. (2011). Central Asia in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hiro, Dilip. Inside Central Asia : a political and cultural history of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (2009) online
• Khalid, A. (2021). Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Montgomery, D. W. (Ed.). (2022). Central Asia: Contexts for Understanding (Central Eurasia in Context). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Periods

Pre-colonial era

• Beckwith, Christopher (2023). The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Mairs, Rachel (2014). The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language, and Identity in Greek Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Russian colonial era

• Becker, S. (2004). Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924. London: Routledge.
• Carrere d'Encausse, Helene. (1988). Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Geyer, D. (1987). Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy 1860–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Kappeler, A. (2001). The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (A. Clayton, trans.). Harlow: Longman.
• Khodarkovsky, M. (2002). Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• LeDonne, J. P. (1997). The Russian Empire and the World 1700–1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Morrison, A., Drieu, C., & Chokobaeva, A. (Eds.). (2020). The Central Asian Revolt of 1916: A Collapsing Empire in the Age of War and Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Morrison, A. (2021). The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Reeves, M. (2022). Infrastructures of Empire in Central Asia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23(2), 364–370.
• Rywkin, M. (ed.). (1988). Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917. London: Mansell Publishing.

Soviet era

• Cameron, S. (2018). The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Chaqueri, C. (1995). The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921: Birth of the Trauma. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Khalid, A. (1996). Tashkent 1917: Muslim Politics in Revolutionary Turkestan. Slavic Review, 55(2), pp. 270–296.
• ———. (2000). The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• ———. (2001). Nationalizing the Revolution in Central Asia: The Transformation of Jadidism, 1917–1920. In Suny, R. G. and Martin, T. (Eds.). A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. (pp. 145–164). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• ———. (2006). Between Empire and Revolution: New Work on Soviet Central Asia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 7(4), pp. 865–884.
• ———. (2015). Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Marwat, F. R. K. (1985). The Basmachi Movement in Soviet Central Asia: A Study in Political Development. Peshawar: Emjay Books International.
• Massell, G. J. (1974). The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Park, A. G. (1957). Bolshevism in Turkestan 1917-1927. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
• Sabol, Steven. (1995). The Creation of Soviet Central Asia: The 1924 National Delimitation. Central Asian Survey, 14(2), pp. 225–241.
• Sareen, T. R. (1989). British Iintervention in Central Asia and Trans-Caucasia. New Delhi, India: Anmol Publications.
• Sokol, E. D. (1954/2016). The Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• [Togan, Zeki Velidi. Memoirs: National Existence and Cultural Struggles of Turkistan https://www.academia.edu/1525786/Prof_Zeki_Velidi_Togan_Memoirs_National_Existence_and_Cultural_Struggles_of_Turkistan_and_Other_Muslim_Eastern_Turks_2011_Full_Text_translation_from_the_1969_original]
• Vaidyanath, R. (1967). The Formation of the Soviet Central Asian Republics: A Study in Soviet Nationalities Policy, 1917–1936. New Delhi, India: People's Publishing House.

Post Soviet era

• Menon, R. (1995). In the Shadow of the Bear: Security in Post-Soviet Central Asia. International Security, 20(1), 149–181.
• Minahan, James. Miniature Empires: A Historical Dictionary of the Newly Independent States (Routledge, 1998) chapters on each country post 1991.

Regional histories

Borderlands

• Keller, S. (2020). Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Convergence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Afghan Turkestan

• Under construction

Caspian Sea

• Under construction

East Turkestan

• Under construction

Iran

• Under construction

Xinjiang

• Under construction

Others

• Under construction

National

Kazakhstan

• Abylkhozhin, Zhulduzbek, et al. eds. Stalinism in Kazakhstan: History, Memory, and Representation (2021). excerpt
• Adams, Margarethe. Steppe Dreams: Time, Mediation, and Postsocialist Celebrations in Kazakhstan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
• Cameron, Sarah. The hungry steppe: Famine, violence, and the making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell University Press, 2018). online review
• Carmack, Roberto J. Kazakhstan in World War II: Mobilization and Ethnicity in the Soviet Empire (University Press of Kansas, 2019) online review
• Kaşıkçı, Mekhmet Volkan. "Living under Stalin's Rule in Kazakhstan." Kritika 23.4 (2022): 905–923. excerpt
• Kassenova, Togzhan. Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb (Stanford University Press, 2022).
• Pianciola, Niccolò. "Nomads and the State in Soviet Kazakhstan." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (2019), online.
• Pianciola, Niccolò. "Sacrificing the Qazaqs: The Stalinist Hierarchy of Consumption and the Great Famine of 1931–33 in Kazakhstan." Journal of Central Asian History 1.2 (2022): 225–272. online
• Ramsay, Rebekah. "Nomadic Hearths of Soviet Culture: ‘Women’s Red Yurt’ Campaigns in Kazakhstan, 1925–1935." Europe-Asia Studies 73.10 (2021): 1937-1961.
• Toimbek, Diana. "Problems and perspectives of transition to the knowledge-based economy in Kazakhstan." Journal of the Knowledge Economy 13.2 (2022): 1088–1125.
• Tredinnick, Jeremy. An illustrated history of Kazakhstan : Asia's heartland in context (2014), popular history. online

Kyrgyzstan

• Under construction

Tajikistan

• Bergne, P. (2007). The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Foltz, R. (2019). A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East. London: I.B. Tauris, also Includes some coverage of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

Turkmenistan

• Under construction

Uzbekistan

• Khalid, A. (2015). Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Transnational regions

Khorasan

• Under construction

Sistan

• Under construction

Transoxiana

• Under construction

Other

• Khalid, A. (1996). Tashkent 1917: Muslim Politics in Revolutionary Turkestan. Slavic Review, 55(2), pp. 270–296.

Topical studies

Religion

• Balci, Bayram (2018). Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus Since the Fall of the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Baldick, Julian (2012). Animal and Shaman: Ancient Religions of Central Asia. New York: New York University Press.

Arts and culture

• Under construction

Family and marriage

• Edgar, A., & Frommer, B. (Eds.). (2020). Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Gender and sexuality

• Sultanova, R. (2011). From Shamanism to Sufism: Women, Islam, and Culture in Central Asia. London: I.B. Tauris.

Violence, terror, and famine

• Martin, T. (1998). The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing. The Journal of Modern History, 70(4), 813–861.

Mongol conquest of Central Asia

• Under construction

Economics and trade

• Beckwith, C. I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Frankopan, P. (2016). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. London: Bloomsbury.
• Hansen, V. (2012). The Silk Road: A New History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Pomfret, R. (2019). The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty-First Century: Paving a New Silk Road. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Wood, F. (2002). The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rural and agricultural studies

• Under construction

Urban and industrial studies

• Under construction

Other

• Buell, P. D., Anderson, E. N., de Pablo Moya, M., & Oskenbay, M. (2020). Crossroads of Cuisine: The Eurasian Heartland, the Silk Roads and Food. Leiden: Brill.
• Pickett, J. (2020). Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Biographies

• Under construction

Historiography and memory studies

• Under construction

Other studies

• Bruno, A. (2022). An Anthropocene History of Central Asia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23(2), 339–344.
• Lajus, J. (2022). Aridity and the History of Water in Central Asia and Beyond. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23(2), 358–363.

Academic journals

• Central Asian Survey (1982–present); published quarterly by Taylor & Francis; ISSN 0263-4937 (print), ISSN 1465-3354 (online).
• Journal of Borderlands Studies (1986–present); five issues per year published by Taylor & Francis for the Association for Borderlands Studies; ISSN 0886-5655 (print), ISSN 2159-1229 (online).

See also

• Bibliography of Afghanistan
• Bibliography of the history of the Caucasus
• Bibliography of Russian history
• Bibliography of the Soviet Union (disambiguation)
• Soviet Central Asia

Further reading

The below works have extensive bibliographies about Central Asian history.

• Appendix: Suggestions for further reading. In Khalid, A. (2021). Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Dagikhudo, D. (2022). Central Asian Ismailis: An Annotated Bibliography of Russian, Tajik and Other Sources. London: Bloomsbury Academic.