The Private Collections of Russian Turkestan in the Second Half of the 19th and Early 20th Century

This paper explores the origins and contents of collections from Russian Turkestan. These collections were brought together by various people, officers in the Russian army, scientist, travellers and antiquaries. The author shows which items were collected and how the composition of the collections changed over time, much priced items becoming very expensive a few decades after the Russian conquest. The demand for antique objects very early on led to the creation of a specialised market in such objects. The collections described in the paper were in a way instrumental in shaping the view Europeans held of Central Asia and Central Asians, since it were the objects brought from there, the drawings and, later on, the photographs wich were the visual counterpart of travelogues and other written reports.