This special issue of IJMES co-edited by regular IJMES editor Juan R. I. Cole and by Editorial Board member Deniz Kandiyoti, is based on two conferences sponsored by the Social Science Research Council in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (27–29 October 1996) and Berkeley, California (24–25 November 1997). The conferences brought together Central Asian, Middle Eastern, South Asian, European, and U.S. scholars to deliberate on issues in nationalism and the colonial legacy (because of the different connotations of these words in Russian, the Tashkent conference was entitled “Nation-Building After Independence”). The Tashkent meeting was made possible through the financial support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Program on Peace and International Cooperation of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago. The editors are deeply grateful to the Uzbekistan government and to the University of World Economics and Diplomacy and its staff for their hospitality in Tashkent, and to our Central Asian and other colleagues who presented papers and shared insights. (Thanks also to the skillful simultaneous translators!) Cassandra Cavanaugh was also crucial to the local arrangements. I think all were keenly aware that a new relationship was being built, of which this special issue of IJMES is the first physical manifestation. We are also enormously indebted to Steven Heydemann, Near East program officer at the council, for his truly heroic efforts in finding support, getting permissions, and generally making the conferences we had only imagined actually happen. This issue of IJMES is dedicated to the memory of Anthony Hyman (d. 1999), whose last article is being published here posthumously. We are the poorer for having lost this valued colleague, who was very dedicated to Afghanistan, and it is fitting that his last publication be on that troubled land.