The Swedish Knitting Instructor of the Dzungar Court

This paper explores the life of Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, a Swedish prisoner of war who lived in the Dzungar Empire for seventeen years in the early eighteenth century. Eventually, she rose in rank within the court to become the instructor to the daughters of the Khan. Her story, together with those of her Swedish compatriots, offers a view from within Dzungaria, and the role of prisoners of war in the global contacts of early modern Central Asia. In addition, the story of these men and women displaced by the Great Nordic War ties together the lives of individual war prisoners with the expansion of the both the Russian Empire eastwards and the Qing Empire westwards – and with those who were caught in the middle. This highlights the diverse mobility in the 18th century Central Asia, while showing the effects on the individual of imperial expansion and political disruption.