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Abstract

The paper explores the sources and processes of generating knowledge in social, cultural and political domains about the Pamirs and its inhabitants by the Russian and British military officers and scholars. On the one hand, a rich body of knowledge was generated by the British and Russian officers and their agents, which was driven by the colonial interests of the powers. On the other hand, a corpus of knowledge was produced by imperial scholars – individuals who were not directly involved in power structures, but were concerned with understanding the cultures, languages and traditions of the mountain communities. Though the information and knowledge gained and disseminated by the two groups of explorers often fed into each other, the underlying principles and objectives of their exploration were different. The paper will engage in the comparative analysis of these two sources of knowledge and those of their counterparts to illuminate various aspects of knowledge production on the mountain region during the colonial period.