György Almásy: Documenting Central Asia at the Turn of the Century

Blanka Benkő-Kovács

Founder - Political Advisor, International Security and Defence Policy Expert

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Central Asia was no longer the largely inaccessible world through which Ármin Vámbéry had travelled in disguise four decades earlier. The Russian Empire had consolidated its rule over much of the region, railways were reaching Tashkent and Andijan, and the imperial administration was transforming the political and economic landscape of Turkestan. Yet beyond the expanding cities and transport networks, large parts of the Tien Shan and the societies inhabiting its valleys and high pastures remained little documented by European scholarship.