Beyond Bukhara: Trade, identity and interregional exchange across Asia. (7th December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Marsden, Magnus
• Is Part Of: History and anthropology. Volume 29(2018)Supplement 1
• Page Start: S84
• Page End: S100
• Publication Date: 2018-12-07
• Subjects: Trade -- Afghanistan -- Bukhara -- Turkey -- Saudi Arabia -- China -- inter-Asia -- identity; Anthropology -- Periodicals; History -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2018.1496915
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0275-7206

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article explores the nature of inter-Asian trade dynamics through a consideration of the role played by traders from northern Afghanistan's Central Asian borderlands in the Chinese international trade city of Yiwu. It explores the role that traders from this region have played in commercial exchanges involving China, the Arabian Peninsula and a range of settings in West Asia. In addition to documenting the inter-Asian scope of these traders' activities, the article also addresses the shifting nature of their identity formations in relationship to successive waves of migration. The traders often identify themselves in relationship to ethno-national identity categories (Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik) that are politically salient in Central Asia and Afghanistan today. At the same time, the traders also emphasise their being from families that migrated from the territories of the Emirate of Bukhara during the early years of communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s.