The Watchmaker: Entangled Histories of Eurasia's 19th Century Viewed through the Prism of a Traveler's Odyssey

Abstract

So began the Cossack soldier’s debriefing in the year 1859, when he had just made it back to Orenburg after more than a decade of captivity in Central Asia.2 The Russian military in Orenburg had taken a special interest in Gordeev and other former prisoners because they all had extensive, firsthand knowledge of the Central Asian polities Russia would defeat in less than a decade.3 Beyond the military intel about troublesome neighbors, the Russian officer’s interest was also piqued by Gordeev’s narrative about a European prisoner in Central Asia: Giovanni, an Italian watchmaker whose journey into Persian-speaking territories began in Tehran and