This article examines the representation of the Kazakh steppe in Annette M. B. Meakin’s travelogue “A Ribbon of Iron” (1901), one of the earliest English female-authored accounts of Siberia at the turn of the twentieth century. Situating Meakin’s narrative in the political context of the Boxer Rebellion and the Blagoveshchensk massacre, the study analyses how her descriptions of Omsk and its surroundings construct the Kazakh steppe as an imperial periphery. Particular attention is paid to Meakin’s ethnographic sketches of the Kazakhs, whom she calls “Kirgiz,” and to the ways in which their everyday practices – yurts, kumys, horsemanship, clothing – are aestheticised and framed within orientalist categories. The article also highlights the role of mediating figures – Jewish residents, German settlers, Russian officials – in shaping her access to Kazakh life. By reading Meakin’s text through imagological and postcolonial approaches, the study argues that European travel writing inscribed Siberia into Western discourse as a multiethnic contact zone marked by hierarchy, ambivalence, and imperial tension.
Keywords: Annette Meakin, A Ribbon of Iron, Kazakh steppe, Siberia, travel writing, orientalism, interethnic relations