Authors

Discussion

Explorations in Turkestan with an Account of The Basin of Eastern Persia and Sistan was published in Washington D.C. in 1905 under the direction of Raphael Pumpelly. This multi-author volume recounts the archaeological, environmental and cultural observations of foreign visitors to Tsarist Turkestan in the first years of the twentieth century. The volume and its backstory make clear the enormous importance of the Trans-Caspian Railway, which had begun construction eastwards from the Caspian Sea two decades previously, as a route for scholarly investigation. The railway both opened up Turkestan from the west and also shaped and mapped the scholarly experience, defining what one saw and what was reported back. By 1918 the railway also represented a point of military vulnerability as British imperial agents, gathered in Iran, discussed the Turkestan cotton harvest. This paper will review Anglo-American expeditions to Turkestan along the Trans-Caspian railway and ask how the route changed Anglophone thinking about Central Asia.