Russian conquest of Central Asia

Over roughly a century and a half, from a failed expedition in 1717 to the occupation of the Pamirs in the 1890s, Russia brought the steppes, deserts and oases of Central Asia under its rule. The Russian Empire first extended a loose overlordship over the Kazakh nomads, then, mostly between the 1850s and the 1880s, conquered or subordinated the Uzbek khanates and the Turkmen tribes. The result, Russian Turkestan, later became Soviet Central Asia and is today divided among five independent states.

When the Russians arrived, the region's settled states were the Khanate of Khiva near the Aral Sea, Bukhara along the Oxus and Zarafshan rivers, and Kokand in the Ferghana Valley, all surrounded by nomadic peoples they tried to tax and control. Peter the Great sought gold and a route to India. Forts were founded along the Irtysh, including Omsk in 1716, on the edge of the Dzungar Khanate. In 1717 an expedition under Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky reached Khiva, where the khan persuaded the Russians to divide into smaller groups and then had them massacred.

The Kazakh Khanate had split into three confederations, or jüzes. Under pressure from neighbours, the leader of the Junior jüz sought Russian protection in 1730, and by 1738 Russia claimed suzerainty over all three. The two sides understood these oaths differently: St Petersburg saw submission, while many Kazakhs saw a looser, practical alliance. Russia gradually tightened its grip with a line of forts and, from 1822, administrative reforms that curtailed Kazakh movement and the power of the khans. Resistance followed, notably the rising of the sultan Kenesary Qasymuly from 1837, which ended with his death in 1847, the year a Russian fort went up at the mouth of the Syr Darya.

A large winter expedition against Khiva in 1839, intended partly to free Russian slaves, collapsed in snow and cold after only minor skirmishes; thousands of camels perished and over a thousand soldiers died. Russia then advanced step by step. In 1853 it stormed Kokand's fortress of Ak-Mechet on the Syr Darya, and in 1854 it founded Fort Vernoye, today's Almaty, in the east. By 1864 two lines of advance had joined, enclosing the steppe.

The decisive years came next. In June 1865 General Mikhail Chernyayev stormed Tashkent, one of the largest cities of the region. In 1866 Russian forces defeated Bukhara at Irjar and took Khujand, and in 1867 a governorate-general of Turkestan was created under Konstantin von Kaufman. Samarkand fell in May 1868, and a treaty that July made Bukhara a dependent emirate. Breech-loading rifles and modern artillery repeatedly allowed small Russian forces to defeat much larger armies. In 1873 columns converged across the desert on Khiva, which also became a protectorate. After a rebellion in Kokand in 1875, the khanate was abolished in 1876 and annexed as the province of Ferghana.

The Turkmen of the Karakum desert, who had no single state, put up the most determined fight. A first Russian assault on the fortress of Geok Tepe in 1879 failed. In the winter of 1880–81 General Mikhail Skobelev took it after a siege of about a month; according to one account at least 14,000 Teke Turkmen were killed. Merv submitted in 1884, and Russia's seizure of the Afghan post of Panjdeh in 1885 brought Britain close to war.

Britain feared that Russia's advance threatened India, and the long rivalry known as the Great Game was fought out by explorers, agents and diplomats. The two powers settled on Afghanistan as a buffer: its northern borders were demarcated in the 1880s and 1890s, with the Wakhan Corridor separating Russian and British territory, and the rivalry was formally closed by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Russian rule lasted, under Soviet form, until 1991, when Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan became independent.

Our 1815 map shows Central Asia before the main conquests, and the 1880 and 1900 maps show the region after Russia's advance.