Colonial Persian: The Transformative Impact of Russian Imperialism on the Language and Materiality of Central Asian Paperwork

• In Event: Empires of Paper: Knowledge Production, Paper Technology, and Power in Imperial and Soviet Central Asia

Abstract

From 1885 to 1920, the protectorate of Bukhara constantly exchanged paperwork with colonial Russian authorities. The communication challenges created by this colonial relationship were partly linguistic, but bureaucratic technologies and imperial categories of knowledge posed equally formidable barriers to mutual comprehension. Bridging this conceptual gap required encyclopedic knowledge of colonial Russian society on the part of Bukharan scribes and in time transformed the very language of Bukharan communication, creating a new register of "colonial Persian": an unintentional language modernization project without any modernists.

Author

• James Robert Pickett, U of Pittsburgh