A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia by Katya Hokanson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023. x + 344 pp. $80.00. ISBN 978‐1‐4875‐4560‐4

The title A Woman's Empire might bring to mind Catherine II, "the Great," who oversaw considerable Russian imperial expansion.The actual focus of Katya Hokanson's book emerges in her subtitle: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia.It treats the writing of women who traveled in Asia, especially Central Asia, in the later nineteenth century in the context of their travels or expeditions.This overlaps with analogous writings from other parts of the empire, such as Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia's ethnographic study Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (translation published 1993); indeed, her father got the extra surname to honor his explorations in the Tian-Shan mountains, near the Pamirs, which feature in this book.The topic also resonates with the final expedition of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev's entomologist father in Nabokov's novel The Gift, as Hokanson briefly notes (p.20): this moment in late imperial scientific ambition has been important in Russian history and culture.The peasants back home recur in implicit or explicit comparison to the residents of Central Asia encountered by these authors.The topic lets the reader look at practices and assumptions of imperial expansion and Russia's "civilizing" mission (both of these in competition with Britain) while considering women's roles in science and the imperial bureaucracy.The writers treated at significant length are Vera Dukhovskaia, Elena Apreleva, Elena Blavatskaia, Iuliia Golovnina, Aleksandra Potanina, Ol'ga Fedchenko, Praskov'ia Uvarova, and Anna Rossikova.Among them only Blavatskaia is widely known (as Blavatsky in the West), though Apreleva has received attention from scholars of women's writing.Most of the women have been discussed by other scholars, cited here, but this is the first time they have been treated together, making for some interesting comparisons.The texts treat travel to Turkestan, including the Pamirs, and to a lesser extent the Far East; they present a variety of memoir, stories, and scientific or ethnographic records.Hokanson makes the important point that surveying previously unknown territory scientifically means assimilating and claiming its natural riches-and this was recognized by the local population, though they were "pacified" by the time of the expeditions she addresses.Hokanson spends considerable time citing men who wrote about the same areas or expeditions-Golovnina's husband; Colonel Olcott, the co-founder of Theosophy and Blavatskaia's fellow traveler in India.This provides context, though it is not always clear whether the reader is meant to understand better the ambitions of the expedition or to evaluate the woman's writing alongside the men's, particularly with regard to Blavatskaia and her veracity.Hokanson returns again and again to the Great Game and Russia's imperial competition with Britain, reflected in the competition of individual writers (especially Blavatskaia) with other or earlier writers.Some texts were quickly or even originally published in English, foregrounding the sense of a common interest in Central Asia.Some of the various editions offer different information and interpretation, and Hokanson usefully teases out how

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