More than 500 years ago, the Silk Road famously connected traders from all over the world, linking the major cities of China and Southeast Asia with those of Europe and Africa. Vast wealth traveled this route, wending across the mountains and steppes of Central Asia, creating rich and sophisticated towns along the way. Bukhara and Samarkand became two of the world's greatest cities, enviable centers of learning and culture.

• How did Central Asia go from being the most cosmopolitan place on earth to an area now seen as one of the most isolated, remote places in the world?
• How did a region where a dizzying array of cultures had long intermingled and coexisted peacefully become a place associated (at least in Western eyes) with intolerance and terrorism?

This course tries to answer such questions by providing an overview of modern Central Asian history. Using both lecture and discussion, it focuses on the colonial and post-colonial periods of the last 300 years: especially in Russian and Soviet Central Asia, but also the neighboring areas dominated by Britain and China (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Xinjiang). It offers a strong emphasis on the links and connections across these political borders, which were at first largely artificial and porous but which became crucially important and shaped local communities in deeply divergent ways. It also emphasizes social and cultural history, as a complement and counterweight to the usual political frameworks and classic grand narratives of khans, revolutions, and wars. Three themes structure the course: the fragmented, changing character of regional identities; the complexities of popular attitudes towards, and relations with, various forms of state power; and the differences between — and the complicated economic, environmental, political, artistic, and cultural legacies of — the major imperial systems (Russian, British, Chinese).

Students will be evaluated on their class contributions as well as written work (short essays and class exercises) and two exams.