Authors
Jennifer Keating1; 1 University College Dublin, Ireland Discussion
Taking as its foundation two short accounts of the Karkara fair, one by the imperial official Count Konstantin Pahlen, one by the Kazakh writer Mukhtar Auezov, this paper explores the many over-lapping lives of an annual trade fair held in eastern Turkestan. Located in the high pastures of eastern Semirech'e, the fair was held each summer from the 1890s to considerable success, turning over a million rubles on occasion. The paper explores the fair as a critical yet ephemeral economic episode when networks of exchange, mobility, labour and environmental dependence were materialised via the trade of animals, fabrics, sewing machines, tea, furs and so forth. These were items that sustained communities on multiple scales, from local pastoralists to merchants from Kashgar, Tibet, Russia, Germany and the United States. In exploring the interconnected spatial, economic and environmental networks that met at the Karkara fair, the paper considers what looking at this rural high altitude spot can tell us about mobility, economy and ecology more generally in the late imperial era. 
