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Abstract

Cotton production historically played a central role in Central Asia. Under the Tsarist Russian rule and the Soviet planning economy Russian Turkestan and later Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were transformed into major cotton-producing regions through policies that promoted low-taxation, large-scale irrigation and cotton seed bank loans. These policies reorganized traditional rural agriculture introducing collective farms and used rural labour force to build the cotton economy. Cotton production and environmental changes as a consequence had important implications for public health in Central Asia yet it was silenced during the Soviet era. While existing research examined the socio-economic and environmental consequences of cotton farming in Central Asia, the studies which focus on the relationship between cotton agriculture and public health remain lacking. This research aims to fill in this gap by studying this relationship. The main objective of this research is to examine the relationship between cotton production and public health in Central Asia, through the example of rural Kyrgyzstan under the Soviet rule. This study adopts a medical anthropological framework to investigate the relationships between cotton production, environmental change, and public health in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan – namely the southern oblasts of Osh and Jalalabad which are the main regions where cotton was cultivated. Medical anthropology provides a lens to understand not only the biomedical impacts of environmental change but also the social, political, and historical contexts in which health outcomes are produced and often silenced, including the local knowledge. The methodology combines archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and environmental health assessment to capture the complex interplay between cotton monoculture and public health in Osh and Jalalabad.

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In the mid-to-late 19th century, as the Russian Empire expanded into Southern Central Asia, agriculture gradually became a crucial component of governance in the “new frontier.” Western scholarship often emphasizes the Empire’s attempts to transform Southern Central Asian agriculture through Western technology, citing engineering failures and ecological damage as evidence of its inefficient and unsustainable rule. This paper argues that the agricultural reforms carried out by the Russian Empire in Southern Central Asia were not aimed at establishing a “civilizational order.” They served as a core instrument of frontier governance, intended to consolidate rule, increase fiscal revenue, promote colonization and integrate Southern Central Asia from an “outer frontier” into an “inner frontier.”

The primary sources for this study consist of Russian Imperial local government reports, agricultural surveys, water conservancy project archives and related legal documents. The analysis proceeds along three dimensions: institutional construction, water conservancy and cotton industrialization. First, at the institutional level, the Empire did not forcibly impose land privatization but instead incorporated local land and water-rights customs through legislation, creating a form of “governance continuity.” Second, in water conservancy practice, early attempts to directly transplant Western models largely ended in failure. It was through the efforts of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, who integrated local irrigation knowledge and effectively employed local labor, that the water system was improved and irrigated land expanded. Third, in the cotton industry, the Empire transitioned from market-driven to state-led development. Through tariff protection, variety improvement, technology promotion and the establishment of a research network, local government effectively promoted the scaling and institutionalization of cotton cultivation in Southern Central Asia. Although factors such as high production costs and limited administrative capacity prevented the realization of “cotton self-sufficiency,” this process successfully integrated Southern Central Asia into the empire-wide cotton supply chain and market system.

This paper contends that the Russian Empire’s agricultural governance in Southern Central Asia was a pragmatic process unfolding within the tensions among imperial rationality, local knowledge and market forces. Despite issues such as inefficiency, knowledge gaps and limited social integration, the reforms—through adjustments to land institutions, improvements in water conservancy and the development of the cotton industry—largely achieved the goals of consolidating rule, promoting colonization, and fostering economic integration. The completion of the Orenburg–Tashkent railway further strengthened the region’s ties to the Russian heartland, marking Southern Central Asia’s transition from a frontier to an “inner frontier.”

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Abstract

The rearing of silkworms and the added-value chain underpinning silk fabrics are attested in Central Asia since antiquity, but how this sector adapted when the region entered the ‘age of steam’ is unclear. Central Asia’s sericulture figures marginally in Giovanni Federico’s landmark account of the silk industry in the 19th-early 20th centuries. True, this was a very small, and declining, share of the global silk trade. However, when seen from colonial Central Asia itself, the importance of this sector is striking.

First, according to contemporary sources, up to 80 percent of Turkestan’s cocoons were exported to European markets, especially Milan and Marseille. The pebrine epidemic and the consequent search for ‘pure’ silkworms had pushed Italian merchants to procure cocoons from the region already during the Russian advance, as Zanier documented. The advent of drying technology, though, greatly expanded the potential for trade in cocoons. At the turn of the century, Corsican entrepreneur Joachim Aloisi became, by mandate of the Tsarist colonial authorities, the ‘official’ purveyor of ‘pasteurized’ silkworm grains, guaranteed against pebrine and flacherie. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and scientific personnel (e.g. physicians) opened ‘grain stations’ in several Turkestani cities, employing local women. Aloisi’s biography, the impact of new science and technology (dryers, microscopes) on previous silk-rearing practices, and the economy of cocoons exports remain opaque, and form another part of my research.

Second, Central Asia’s raw silk (undyed skeins) had become a key export from the region into north-west India in the first half of the 19th century. For Jagjeet Lally, such silk replaced imports from Bengal, until Chinese silk became widely available after 1842. Silk-reeling in Central Asia itself through the whole 19th century, nonetheless, remains unexplored.

In this paper I present the preliminary results of my quest to cast new light on the development of sericulture and silk reeling in the colonial period, particularly in the light of the global connections outlined above.