Geoffrey Wheeler (historian)
Geoffrey Edleston Wheeler CIE CBE (22 June 1897 – 1 February 1990) was a British soldier and a historian who studied Central Asia.
He was born in Bromley, Kent, the son of Owen Wheeler, an Army Reserve captain, and his wife Eugenie. He joined the army in 1915, becoming a second lieutenant in the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment and later reaching the rank of captain by the end of World War I. In 1918 he moved to the Indian Army, serving with the 1/6th Gurkha Rifles and then the 7th Rajput Regiment. From 1919 to 1925 he worked on the General Staff as an intelligence officer, covering India, Palestine, and Malta.
In 1926 Wheeler served as the British Military Attaché in Mashhad, Iran, and from 1928 to 1931 he was stationed in Iraq. He spent about 15 years in India working in the External Affairs Department, the Ministry of Information, and the General Staff at Army Headquarters. In 1946 he joined the British embassy in Tehran as Press and Oriental Councillor, staying there until 1950. He retired from the Indian Army in 1949 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
In 1953 he left government service and founded the Central Asian Research Centre in London, directing it until 1968 and editing its journal Central Asian Review. He also served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society from 1961 to 1966.
He married Irena Bulatova in 1927; they had one son. She died in 1973. Wheeler died in Surrey, England. His memoirs Fifty Years of Asia are held at Oxford University’s St Antony’s College.
Wheeler’s writings focused on the history of Central Asia from the Russian conquest in the 19th century to the Soviet era in the 20th century. He helped promote Central Asian studies during a time when the field was in decline and contributed to debates about Soviet influence and the formation of Central Asian ethnic identities. His work was widely read in universities around the world.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:59 (CET).