Involuntary Orientalists: Polish Exiles and Adventurers as Observers of the Kazakh Steppe and the Caucasus

In the nineteenth century, exiles from the former Poland-Lithuania and revolutionaries fighting to restore an independent Poland developed unintentionally into ethnographers of the Russian Empire’s Eurasian frontiers. Such Poles proffered the European reading public many colorful and sensational accounts of the multinational, anti-imperial struggles against Russian “despotism.” While seeking to blacken the image of Russia first and foremost, most such texts also demonstrate broad support for the assumptions and prejudices of the Russian civilizing mission in Asia. Unlike the objects of their observations, Poles as “white Europeans” could alternate between anti-imperial rebellion and embrace of imperial policy depending on individual bias and situation.