Cover -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Writing, Travel, and the Global History of Central Asia -- Part I. Identity, Information, and Trade, c. 1500-1850 -- 1 Early Modern Circulation between Central Asia and India and the Question of "Patriotism" -- 2 Prescribing the Boundaries of Knowledge: Seventeenth-Century Russian Diplomatic Missions to Central Asia -- 3 Central Asians in the Eighteenth-Century Qing Imperial Illustrations of Tributary Peoples -- 4 The Steppe Roads of Central Asia and the Persian Captivity Narrative of Mirza Mahmud Taqi Ashtiyani -- Part II. Empire, Archaeology, and the Arts, c. 1850-1940 -- 5 "The Rubicon between the Empires": The River Oxus in the Nineteenth-Century British Geographical Imaginary -- 6 Buddhist Relics from the Western Regions: Japanese Archaeological Exploration of Central Asia -- 7 A Russian Futurist in Asia: Velimir Khlebnikov's Travelogue in Verse -- 8 Narrating the Ichkari Soundscape: European and American Travelers on Central Asian Women's Lives and Music -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z -- Contributors.