The Heart of Asia: A History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates from the Earliest Times

Published in 1899 at the height of the Great Game, this is both a sweeping history of Central Asia and a remarkable time capsule of Victorian imperial anxieties. Skrine traces the region from its earliest days as a cradle of civilization through the Persian Empire, Alexander's conquests, and the rise and fall of the great khanates of Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand, culminating in Russian expansion. But what elevates this beyond conventional history is its contemporary dimension: written when Russia's movements eastward kept British strategists awake at night, the book captures the fears, assumptions, and geopolitical calculations of an era when the Russian Empire was Britain's closest rival for Asian dominance. The author draws on sources in multiple languages and traveled extensively through the region, lending the work an immediacy that later scholars have rarely matched. For readers seeking to understand how the past shadows present-day Central Asia, or how the British once viewed the Russian bear at their gates, this remains an indispensable window into a world that shaped, and continues to shape, the heart of Eurasia.