Nazarbayev University hosted the presentation of the Kazakh translation of Central Asia: A New History by renowned American historian Adeeb Khalid.
Photo: NU Image
The event took place within the framework of the international conference “Toward New Transnational/Transimperial Histories of Central Asia: Sources, Directions, Interpretations”, which brought together leading scholars from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Leiden University, and other major academic centers worldwide.
Speaking at the presentation, the author emphasized the significance of the book’s release in Kazakh: “I wrote it in English, primarily for an English-speaking audience. And the thought that people in the region itself found it important and interesting enough to translate is a profound honor for me. I cannot overstate how meaningful this is,” Khalid noted.
Answering a question about his motivation for writing the book, the scholar shared that he had long envisioned a work that would sum up his decades of research on Central Asia. However, the decisive impetus came with an invitation from Princeton University Press to produce a volume accessible to a wide readership. “I spent several years working on the manuscript, with four years devoted to writing it. For two of those years, I had no clear sense of where the project was headed or how it would end,” he admitted.
The author stressed that the book was not designed as a textbook but as a narrative accessible to a broad educated audience. He deliberately focused on the modern era of Central Asia: “Earlier periods—the prehistoric era, archaeology, the Mongol Empire, the Timurid Empire—are already comparatively well studied and covered. But the modern period, which is in many ways even more complex, lacked accessible syntheses. Addressing this gap became one of my goals. The other was to explain the history of the region to English-speaking readers, especially those outside Central Asia, in order to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions that persist to this day.”
The Nazarbayev University conference was devoted to new approaches to studying the transnational and transimperial history of Central Asia. Keynote lectures were delivered by Adeeb Khalid (Carleton College) and Mark Kramer (Harvard University). The program concluded with a cultural component — an excursion around Astana for international participants, including a visit to the ALZHIR Memorial Museum Complex.
