Imperial Meaning-Making of Central Asian Social Spaces: A Study of Geographical Imaginations in Travel Writing for the Russian Empire (1839-1905)

 How did the newly conquered space become a part of the imperial imagination? The basic premise of this study is that meaning-making was fundamental for empire-building. Recent historiography has shown a growing interest in studying the diverse geographical imaginations of expanding empires. While this scholarship has extensively discussed the master structures of imperial discourse, the mechanism of its production has not yet received enough attention. The main aim of this project is to reconstruct the processes of meaning-making during the imperial enlargement, tracing the production of geographical imaginations for the Russian Empire during the conquest and colonisation of Central Asia (1839-1905). The conventions of the travel writing genre and common tropes across gender, ethnic and status differences will be analysed. Travel writing will also be examined as part of a complex field of social communication, with a focus on reconstructing the networks and hierarchies involved in text creation. This approach views travel writing as a multi-actor interaction process that includes authors, publishers, readers and others. The aim is to develop a methodology for studying travel writing that considers not only the authors’ discursive strategies and biases but also the intricate context of text creation and circulation.