Acknowledgements
The size of this book and its long gestation mean that many people need to be thanked, but also that the number of words available for acknowledgements is limited.
I started working on the land-and-water reform in 2008, and since then I have benefitted from financial and institutional support from a range of institutions, particularly as a post-doctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2009–2011), based at Hokkaido University’s Slavic Research Center, and as a British Academy Newton International Fellow (2012–2013) at the University of Manchester. Work in Tashkent would have been impossible without the Institut Français d’Études sur l’Asie Centrale and its then director Bayram Balci. Research in Russian archives was facilitated by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and especially the Centre d’Études Franco-Russe (CEFR-CNRS). In Moscow I enjoyed Olga’s and Misha’s generous hospitality, while Farhod Maqsudov greatly helped me on my first Tashkent trip. While teaching at Nazarbayev University I enormously benefitted from the competent input of colleagues from different disciplines with a similar interest in Central Eurasia. Both the meetings of the ‘Eurasian Reading Circle’ and informal discussions fed into my ongoing work. The History department at Liverpool had the temerity to appoint me as a Russianist, but has allowed me to continue teaching the history of modern Central Asia, too. Interacting with students in both settings has shaped my questions and writing in ways that are impossible to summarise here. In Liverpool, special thanks go to Andrew Redden and Diana Jeater for pointing at works on land reform in Mexico and Zimbabwe, and to Michael Hopkins for the endless supply of coffee and sympathy.
Numerous senior scholars have encouraged and prodded me to complete this project, believing in it more than myself at times: among them Tomohiko Uyama, Marianne Kamp, Adeeb Khalid, Peter Gatrell, and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. I have a great debt of gratitude toward Paolo Sartori for proposing HdO8 as a home for the manuscript and making sure I got it past the finish line. I am also thankful to influential teachers I met over the years, particularly Catherine Poujol and Marco Buttino. I have learnt to pay attention to the drafting process of documents from Daniele Menozzi’s seminars at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and to see history-writing as a
I am thankful to the publishers of Revolutionary Russia, The Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and Monde(s) for allowing me to reproduce here, with adaptations, parts of articles that had appeared on their pages. Sections of Chapter 9 were included in a manuscript originally submitted for Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, and I want to acknowledge the input of their referees. The two anonymous readers for HdO8 provided very valuable advice on how to improve this book, including where to cut it. In the production phase, I must acknowledge help from Markus Hauser for the precious historic maps, and Mehmet Volkan Kaşıkçı for a high-resolution scan of Figure 2.
My parents have always supported me in my research, even when it meant saying goodbye as their only child set off to faraway places. My greatest regret is that my father Sergio was not able to see this book before his illness and death: I dedicate it to his memory. My husband Alexander has provided scholarly insight, confidence boosters, and both welcome and unwelcome distractions along the way. I cannot thank him enough. Our daughter Dorothy will be relieved that this specific ordeal is over, while the arrival of Anthony has been an incentive to wrap up the index more quickly.