Where Empires Meet : Orientalism and Marginality at the Former Russo-British Frontier*

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of orientalism and marginality in two regions at the former Russo-British frontier between Central and South Asia. Focussing on Tajikistan ’s Gorno-Badakhshan and Gilgit-Baltistan in today ’s Pakistan, an analysis of historical and contemporary orientalist projections on and in the two border regions reveals changing modes of domination through the course of the twentieth century (British, Kashmiri, Pakistani and Russian, Soviet, Tajik). In this regard, different local experiences of “ colonial ” rule, both in Gorno-Badakhshan and Gilgit-Baltistan, challenge “ classical ” periodisations of colonial/postcolonial and colonial/socialist/postsocialist. This article furthermore maintains that processes of marginalisation in both regions can be interpreted as effects of imperial and Cold War contexts that have led to the establishment of the frontier. Thus, a central argument is that neither the status of the frontier between Central and South Asia as a stable entity, nor the periodisations that have conventionally been ascribed to the two regions as linear timelines can be taken for granted.