SUMMARY:

The article reconstructs the complex process of colonial knowledge production about the Kazakh steppe from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and its nonlinear evolution. The authors identify several categories of “people in the know” who served as sources of information about the steppe society and Central Asian khanates for the Russian authorities. The complex vision of colonial knowledge production outlined in the article problematizes simple binaries between “local” and “metropole” knowledge or between imperial experts and colonial informants. Of people in the know, one type was employed by the regional administration in Orenburg. Military officers, civil officials, translators, and interpreters systematically collected geographical, economic, and political information, processed it, and submitted it to St. Petersburg. In their capacity as collectors and aggregators of information, they relied on the second category of knowledge producers – Tatar mullahs or scribes serving Kazakh sultans, as well as merchants crossing the steppe with caravans. Together, they formed networks of agents that systematically fulfilled information requests from the imperial officials. The third category of informants often did not even realize they were informants. Ordinary Kazakhs, such as caravan guides and camel drivers, were hired by Russian imperial or Kazakh officials for practical purposes, but the performance of their direct duties inevitably entailed shared knowledge about natural and social conditions on the ground.