Ian Campbell's Knowledge and the Ends of Empire foregrounds an understudied portion of the Russian Empire—the Qazaq steppe. As such, it will most typically be categorized within the still-burgeoning fields of historical literature on Russian Central Asia and Muslims under Russian rule. Yet, although Campbell is aware of the usual debates in this arena—including those over the nature of Orientalism in Russia; the experience of minorities ruled by Russia; the challenges of managing religious diversity; and the development of ethnic-national identities—he generally skirts these, to focus instead on the scientific-administrative dimension of multiethnic empire.

Campbell's aim is to map out the theory and practice of official knowledge formation in the Qazaq steppe over the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. He shows how state functionaries and academics, aided by local Qazaq intermediaries, sought to understand the land, climate, and peoples of the region, and then used this knowledge to guide and empower Russian rule. Campbell argues that Russian administrators and their Qazaq informants adhered to broadly-shared epistemologies—agreeing, for example, that deep “scientific” knowledge, sourced from experts and locals, was a prerequisite for successful policy-making; and that traditional forms of pastoral nomadism were developmentally backward, thus necessitating Qazaq adaptation in aid of a more prosperous and civilized future. The result was a fragile colonial equilibrium, which, Campbell holds, gradually toppled, especially after 1905, when imperial officials, buffeted by the prevailing winds of reaction, economic modernization, and Russian nationalism, began to honor scientific epistemology more in name than in substance, and to disregard Qazaq perspectives as unreliable and suspect. Ultimately, Campbell concludes, this shift in Russian administrative attitudes did much to inflame the Central Asian uprising of 1916.

Structurally, the book is divided into six chapters. The first provides a summary of administrative and scientific knowledge of Qazaq lands and culture, as it was developed by tsarist officials during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The remaining five chapters proceed more-or-less chronologically, from the design and implementation of the Provisional Statute for Administration of the Qazaq steppe oblasts in 1868, through the 1916 Central Asian revolt. Chapter 2 explores the imperial personalities, debates, and assumptions that lay behind the development of the Provisional Statute. Chapter 3 considers the life of educational administrator Ibrahim Altynsarin, as representative of the opportunities and limits that Qazaq intermediaries faced during the 1870s and 1880s. Chapter 4 uses provincial publications of the 1890s—particularly Kirgizskaia stepnaia gazeta—to assess evolving debates over Qazaq civilizational progress, sedentarization, and Russian colonization. Chapter 5 examines the use of statistical information and land-allocation norms to inform and accelerate peasant settlement in the early twentieth century. Finally, Chapter 6 looks at the highly charged political debates over settlement and Qazaq legislative representation, conducted at both regional and all-imperial levels, after the 1905 revolution.

Campbell's book draws on a variety of archival and published primary sources, both Russian and Qazaq. Its acknowledgement of Qazaq intermediaries is welcome—in addition to the usual suspects such as Altynsarin, Abay Qunanbaiuly, and Älikhan Bökeikhan, Campbell offers brief forays into the domains of the zar zaman poets, and of lesser-known Qazaq contributors to newspapers like Ai-qap and Qazaq. Still, by and large—and in keeping with Campbell's purpose—this remains a book that follows the gaze of the Russian imperial apparatus as it contemplates the Qazaqs. The comparison with Virginia Martin's indispensable monograph Law and Custom in the Steppe is striking in this regard: for although these two books overlap considerably in topic, time-period, and occasionally even archives, their dramatically different points of view (Martin's being the uses, abuses, and consequences of the Russian legal regime for Qazaq “subalterns” and local elites) make them complementary works.

Ultimately much here is familiar to students of imperialism (Russian or otherwise). But Knowledge and the Ends of Empire does succeed in adding to the picture. Any fresh engagement with the Qazaq colonial period is valuable, but perhaps more thought-provoking is the book's joust with the hoary question of the empire's collapse. Campbell’s broad claim is that failures of governance and legitimacy stemmed, at least in part, from failures of epistemic practice. In theory, Russian bureaucrats continued to honor established traditions of positivism, scientific objectivity, rational rule, and the flexible incorporation of ethnic and religious diversity. But in reality, Campbell argues, they had essentially abandoned these convictions by the early twentieth century—thereby setting course toward an unworkable political future. While certainly not the whole story, this does offer an original perspective toward understanding the events of 1917.