In his engaging, lucid introduction to Writing Travel in Central Asian History, Nile Green writes that its chapters use the lens of travel writing to “explore the different meanings given to Central Asia in the far corners of the world during the region's most intensive periods of globalization between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries” (p. 1). As Green indicates, the focus of this collection—with the notable exception of Sanjay Subrahmanyam's contribution—is on travel writing produced about Central Asia rather than travel writing produced by Central Asians themselves. Cynics might grumble that there is nothing new in this angle of approach: it is entirely typical for historians to regard the region from the vantage points of visitors, diplomats, and conquerors instead of drawing on its own rich literatures. Nevertheless, several of the essays in this wide-ranging collection offer intriguing and valuable conclusions, particularly those essays that emphasize what travel writing can tell us about the travelers themselves.

One example is the elegant essay by Imre Galambos, which considers the archaeological expeditions organized in the early twentieth century by the Japanese Buddhist abbot Ōtani Kōzui. Galambos observes how some Japanese expeditioners of the period envisioned themselves as heirs simultaneously to European traditions of exploration and to the medieval tradition of Buddhist pilgrims traveling to Central Asia to collect scriptures and relics.

Laura Hostetler's essay—which, it must be said, concerns travel writing only in the loosest sense—is likewise thought-provoking: introducing an eighteenth-century Chinese reference guide to the customs and couture of peoples inhabiting the empire's peripheries, Hostetler argues that the document does not reflect “fully formed” ethnic categories, but rather the “nascent stages” of modern ethnic categorization (p. 92).

Perhaps the most provocative and subtle essay in the collection is Ron Sela's contribution on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travelers from points west, which reveals the faltering and sporadic manner by which Russian diplomats and merchants made their way into the region before the nineteenth century. While trends in the field have long emphasized Central Asia's connectedness to neighboring regions, deploring claims of its isolation (however relative) in any given period, Sela offers a striking reminder that connectedness had certain limits, and that these limits are likewise worth articulating.