In this edition of our Meet the Editors series we speak to Alexander Morrison, Fellow and Tutor in History at New College, Oxford, UK and Associate Editor of Central Asian Survey. Alexander shares how his upbringing sparked his passion in Central Asia, the challenges and successes in his career, and his advice for early-career researchers.
How did you first become interested in academia?
My late father was a journalist for Reuters, so I spent my childhood traveling the world. We spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union because my father was a Russian specialist. Although I wasn’t born there, we moved when I was six months old and I left at five. My parents also lived in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and early 1980s and shared many stories. Both spoke Russian and encouraged me to learn it at school. Our house was always full of books on Soviet and Russian history, so I can’t claim much originality in terms of the path I chose as a scholar!
I was good at languages and history at school, so I studied history at university, and then I pursued a Masters in history. The next question was whether I would get funding or not for my PhD, but I fortunately secured a seven-year prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. That made my career into academia much smoother than it is for a lot of people. Working in academia is a career that I truly enjoy.
What influenced your interest in Central Asian and Russian history?
I was actually more interested in South Asian history at first, inspired by my grandmother who came from an Anglo-Indian family, and whose mother had lived in India for most of her early life, and didn’t especially like living in the UK. So, I studied Hindi and Urdu at Oxford, but since I’d already invested so much time learning Russian, it seemed silly not to use it. Initially, I was interested in British colonialism in India, but I expanded my focus to Russian colonialism, which led me to Central Asia, the Russian Empire’s most colonial periphery.
Can you tell me more about your thesis?
I wrote my doctoral thesis drawing comparisons between British rule in northwestern India and Russian rule in Samarkand in the 19th century. Looking back on it, I know there were things I got wrong. I assumed the reader knew much more about British India and used it as a tool to better understand colonialism in Central Asia. While the colonial nature of British rule in India is widely accepted, many historians, especially in Russia, dispute the colonial nature of Russian rule in Central Asia. However, what I should have done is tried to get the two halves of the study in dialogue with each other so that we could learn about colonialism in India through looking at Central Asia and vice versa. There were definite commonalities. The British were not terribly conscious of what the Russians were doing, while the Russians were aware of what the British were doing, often using them as example of how things ‘could be done’ or in some cases, how things were much worse in the British Empire.
Did you encounter any problems while conducting your research?
I definitely faced linguistic problems. My main research languages were Russian and English, and while I can read Persian, I’m not particularly proficient. This meant some areas were inaccessible to me. For instance, the social changes after the Russian conquest.
The arrival of the Russians and the new power structures they established clearly brought significant changes, but understanding the specifics—like how elites from pre-colonial societies adapt in a colonial context—is tricky. Do they maintain their power, or do they lose it to new groups? That’s a question I couldn’t answer. My focus was more on understanding what the Russian state thought it was doing, and for that, the records offered a lot. But, like any historical research, you must be careful not to stretch the evidence beyond what it can tell you. You need to be mindful of what the people who produced these records likely knew, and what they didn’t understand at the time.
Could you tell me a bit about the chapter in the The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism titled Russian ‘Settler Colonialism’?
Edited By Edward Cavanagh, Lorenzo Veracini
In the chapter, I tried to highlight some of the unique aspects of Russian settler colonialism, especially when compared to British, French, or other European examples. One key difference is that, for a long time, the Russian state discouraged migration. The Russian Empire had a vast amount of land and resources but not enough labour to exploit them.
When comparing this to British or French settler colonies, one thing I found is that race didn’t play the same central role in the Russian Empire. Russian authorities weren’t as concerned with racial mixing, such as intermarriage between Russian peasants and indigenous populations, which was a major issue in other European empires. What they did care about was cultural and religious assimilation. They were worried that settlers might stop speaking Russian or abandon Orthodox Christianity, which would be seen as a threat to the cultural and religious cohesion of the Russian state. In this sense, Russian settler colonialism was less focused on race and more focused on cultural preservation.
That said, conflicts did emerge in Russia’s settler colonies, and they were driven by competition for land and resources, not racial ideology. In Siberia, the indigenous population was relatively sparse and often consisted of nomadic hunter-gatherers, so there was less direct conflict. But in Central Asia, the situation was much more intense. Russian settlers took land from nomads who were transitioning to settled agriculture, leading to significant ethnic conflicts. These tensions eventually erupted into a major revolt in 1916, which began with the massacre of around 3,000 Russian settlers and culminated in the deaths of at least 150,000 Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in brutal reprisals by the Russian state.
Using the term “settler colonialism” to describe Russia’s actions is, of course, controversial. In Russia itself, there’s a strong reluctance to apply the term “colonialism” to their own empire, and doing so can make you unpopular. But the parallels to settler colonialism elsewhere are clear, even though Russia’s approach had some distinct qualities. The conflicts, the competition for land and resources, and the ways in which settler society develops are all comparable to what we see in other European settler colonies.
Could you tell me a bit about your book The Russian Conquest of Central Asia?
The book took me about 10 years to finish, and I wrote it because I felt the existing historiography on the Russian conquest of Central Asia was wrong. At first, I thought I could write a more popular history book, relying on secondary sources. But the more I got into it, the more I realised it needed to be a deep archival study. And that’s why it took me so long to finish. In hindsight, I’m glad I approached it this way because, at the time, I had access to Russian archives, particularly in Moscow. I did a lot of research in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and provincial Russian archives, and some in places on the borders of Kazakhstan. I also spent a lot of time in Tashkent, which has the richest archive in Central Asia, and where I did most of my doctoral research.
Unfortunately, after 2005, it became much harder to work there—relations between Uzbekistan and the West soured, and I couldn’t get a visa or permission to work in the archive for a while. But I still managed to gather enough material before the situation changed. However, the archive in Almaty, Kazakhstan, remained relatively open and easy to access, and I also did some work in Tbilisi, Georgia, for materials on the Russian conquest of what is now Turkmenistan.
The book spans about 100 years, from just after the Napoleonic Wars to just before the First World War. It’s not about a single event but rather a series of campaigns and phases, which is why it’s organised both geographically and chronologically. My next goal is to get it translated into Russian, though I’m still trying to find funding for that. It’s already being read in Central Asia, but if it’s translated into Russian, it will reach a much wider audience—and of course, it will probably enrage a lot of people in Russia. But in the current political climate, that might be a good thing.
What books or other media have made an impact on you and/or your discipline?
It has really been remarkable to see how the study of Central Asia has evolved in recent years. What was once a marginal field, often treated as an offshoot of Russian and Soviet scholarship, has now come into its own as a discipline.
First, there’s the work of Paolo Satori, particularly his book Visions of Justice: Sharīʿa and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia and his broader research into the history of law under Russian colonial rule. He’s done phenomenal work exploring changes in Islamic religious and legal practices under Russian administration. His scholarship is grounded in incredibly challenging manuscript sources in Persian and Turkic. He really brings a fresh perspective, looking beyond the colonial state to tell the story of these transformations.
I was also fortunate enough to meet Timur Beisembiev about 20 years ago during his visit to Oxford. Beisembiev was a Kazakh historian who devoted his life to studying the Kokand Chronicles—an extraordinary body of literature, written in Persian and Turkic, detailing the history of the Kokand Khanate, which existed from the 1780s until the Russians destroyed it in the 1870s.
The sheer volume of these chronicles—over 100—is unprecedented for a Muslim state of Kokand’s size and duration. Beisembiev created a dictionary that allows researchers to locate specific terms and contexts across these texts and published a massive volume on Kokandi historiography.
I’d like to also highlight the late Irina Erofeeva, another Kazakhstani historian. Her work focused on the relations between the Kazakh steppe and the Russian Empire. She meticulously analysed a vast corpus of correspondence between Kazakh sultans and Russian authorities, shedding light on this complex relationship. Another remarkable scholar is Bakhtiyar Babajanov, a historian of Islam in Central Asia based in Tashkent, who produced a fantastic book on the history of the Khanate of Kokand.
Adeeb Khalid has done amazing work on the origins of Soviet Uzbekistan, but perhaps his greatest service to the field is the first popular, accessible but rigorous general history of Central Asia, which was published in 2021.
Lastly, I must mention Scott Levi, who wrote a monograph on Kokand and another remarkable book that positions Central Asia within global history during the 18th and early 19th centuries. He effectively challenges the view of Central Asia as a backwater, showing its connections to broader global currents.
We are living through something of a golden age for Central Asian historiography. And the beauty of it is that this scholarship is being produced in multiple languages—English, Russian, and even Central Asian languages—which makes it an incredibly vibrant and diverse field.
Could you tell me about your research specialisation at Oxford?
My research specialisation or my official area is the history of war, not Central Asia. When I started out in Central Asian studies, it was clear early on that you couldn’t expect to be hired solely as a Central Asian specialist. You needed another area of expertise.
So, when I got my position at Oxford, it was nominally as a historian of war. My work on the Russian conquest helped me make a strong case for that focus. And yes, I do work on military history— it’s just not the only thing I do. While job advertisements specifically for Central Asianists, particularly in the US, are more common nowadays, if you’re an early-career scholar, it’s wise to be versatile. You need to show you can work in more than one area.
A collapsing empire in the age of war and revolution
How long have you been an academic editor for Central Asian Survey, and what first attracted you to the journal?
I first became aware of Central Asian Survey when I was a graduate student. At the time, it was the only dedicated journal in the field, and though there are now one or two others, they tend to focus more on political science and contemporary affairs. What makes Central Asian Survey unique is that it’s interdisciplinary — it includes history, anthropology, and more alongside political science.
The journal has a complex history. It was launched in the 1980s. Deniz Kandiyoti took over as editor in 2003 and under her leadership, the journal introduced proper peer review and moved to a more professional and rigorous footing. The quality of the articles improved dramatically, and Central Asian Survey became an important platform for debate and discussion in what was then still a small academic field.
My own involvement with the journal began in 2012, when I was teaching at the University of Liverpool. I was in the middle of my research on the Russian conquest of Central Asia and organised a conference on the subject. I approached Deniz to ask if the journal might publish the conference proceedings as a special issue, and she kindly agreed. That special issue was published in 2014.
When Madeleine Reeves succeeded Deniz as editor, she wrote to me in 2018 to ask if I would be willing to take on the role of associate editor, with a particular focus on history. She explained that while Central Asian Survey is an interdisciplinary journal — always a challenge for any editor — she felt confident managing contemporary topics. However, she thought additional support would be helpful for handling historical submissions, particularly in identifying suitable peer reviewers.
While historical submissions represent a smaller proportion of the articles the journal receives — most of Central Asian Survey’s publications are contemporary in focus — there’s a steady stream of historical material.
What changes do you hope to see in the field we’ve kind of touched on a little bit, but over the next 10 years?
One significant shift is the academic centre of gravity is moving away from North American and European institutions and towards Central Asia itself. This is what you’d expect as the field matures and academic institutions in Central Asia continue to evolve, shedding the less positive aspects of the Soviet legacy. New institutions are emerging there. I spent three and a half years teaching in Kazakhstan and it was unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. I was surrounded by so many scholars working on Central Asia — most were foreigners, but some were locals who had studied in the West and returned to teach. The sheer concentration of expertise in that area felt world-leading. I have a good community of people working on Central Asia at Oxford, but it’s nothing on the same scale.
I hope this trend continues, but now that collaboration with Russian institutions is essentially off the table, there’s a lot of important material on Central Asia locked away in Russian archives that we can no longer access. We also don’t know what the future holds for Russia’s relationship with the Central Asian republics. Right now, the war has given Central Asian countries a bit more room to manoeuvre, but if the war leads to a stronger Russia with renewed imperial ambitions, it could have deeply troubling implications for Central Asia.
As for the role of Central Asian languages in this shift, I think it will play a part. It’s an essential component of the field. The younger generation tends to have much stronger linguistic skills than I do. My language skills are modest, but now, there are people in the field who will have Russian, and they’ll also have Uzbek or Kazakh, or at least one of the Central Asian Turkic languages. Some even speak Persian, and a few people have Chinese as well. It’s a rather intimidating field — as it attracts a lot of very linguistically talented people!
If you could spend a day working in another profession, what would you do? And why?
I’d quite like to try my hand at something agricultural, for example growing asparagus, something where I could work with my hands— or if I were any good at it, carpentry. That might be something that’d give me a lot of satisfaction.
Do you have any advice for early-career researchers specialising in Central Asian studies?
Firstly, I’d say really think carefully about choosing a topic you can handle without needing to travel to Russia. That’s just the reality we’re facing right now. The second piece of advice would be to spend a lot of time building the linguistic skills you need. It’s not that languages make a researcher — you can be a fantastic linguist and still not be a good historian — but they are often a necessary, if not sufficient, qualification. And getting to the level you need takes a lot of time and hard work. The longer you leave it, the harder it becomes. So, my advice would be to pick a topic you can work on within the constraints we have right now, and make sure you get your languages down early and properly.
