Russian Conquest of Central Asia

Russian Conquest of Central Asia

During the 19th century as European colonization continued to expand, czarist Russia launched a concentrated campaign to extend its own empire by annexing lands in central western Asia. In Central Asia, the Russians were particularly interested in the Uzbek oasis states of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva, all part of present-day Uzbekistan.

Although Bukhara and Khiva suffered devastating losses to their independence and cultures during the Russian conquest, Kokand ultimately paid the heaviest price when the Russians attempted to eradicate its existence.

While Russia was most interested in expanding its empire in order to compete with Western powers, the czar viewed Central Asia as a land of untapped resources with undeveloped potential as a major trading center. The invasion of the Muslim states of Central Asia also allowed the czar to add millions of new subjects to his already large citizenry. Until the mid-19th century, Central Asia had succeeded in repelling Russian advances.


However, as Russia’s military grew stronger and more sophisticated, Central Asia was powerless to defend itself from encroachment. For some 50 years after the annexation, the invaders unsuccessfully attempted to Russify the Muslims of Central Asia.

Despite this failure, the Russians succeeded in transforming Central Asian culture in a number of ways that included new economic and education systems and major overhauls of the communication and transportation sectors.

Czar Peter I launched an unsuccessful campaign to annex Bukhara and Khiva in the early 18th century in an effort to establish a trading route between Russia and India. When he sent armed troops to Khiva in 1717, the Khivans annihilated the entire expedition.

Succeeding czars determined that they were more likely to make inroads in Central Asia by practicing diplomacy and promoting trade relations. However, little progress was made. As a result, another unsuccessful military attack on Khiva was launched in 1839–40.

At the same time that Khiva was attempting to stave off Russian attack, Bukhara established a relatively amiable relationship with the monarch. In 1847 the Russians erected a fort at the mouth of the Sir Darya, paving the way for eventual annexation of the surrounding area.

The Russians spent the years between 1853 and 1864 plotting their strategy for annexing Central Asia, where the raw cotton that Russian textile factories so badly needed was readily available. The need for Asian cotton grew even more urgent when the American supply of cotton was halted by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

By the time the Russians became a real presence in Central Asia, Bukhara and Khiva already had well-established cultures that dated back to the eighth century, and both were actively involved in trade. Both Muslim states were home to diverse ethnic groups and were relatively politically and socially stable.

Neither Bukhara nor Khiva had been exposed to Western thought and culture; therefore, neither khanate had developed the sense of nationalism that might have been used to unite the people against Russian invasion. After the annexation, the Russians allowed both Bukhara and Khiva a good deal of political autonomy. As a result, less modernizing and Russification occurred in these khanates than in other areas of Central Asia.

Bukhara was wealthier and more industrialized than Khiva, with a population that was predominately Muslim. The khanate was ruled by the emir, a hereditary monarch, although day-to-day affairs came under the province of a chief minister, a treasurer, and a tax collector.

Each province of Bukhara was ruled by its own emir. Outside of Bukhara, the emir was viewed as the most powerful ruler in the area, and he was notorious for furthering his own interests at the expense of others.

When Czar Alexander II ordered his forces to attack Bukhara in 1868, the khanate was in the midst of of internal strife. Tribal conflicts had accelerated, and the peasant class was ready to revolt in response to the levying of excessive taxes.

The Muslim clergy, who strongly resented the Russian presence in Bukhara called for a jihad (holy war). Although Emir Muzaffar al-Din repeatedly attempted to negotiate terms with the Russians that were favorable to Bukhara, he was unsuccessful. The emir ultimately negotiated a treaty that essentially established Bukhara as a Russian protectorate while allowing him to continue ruling the khanate.

The merchant class reaped the greatest benefits from the Russian presence in Bukhara because trade with the outside world opened up new avenues for amassing wealth. As this new cultural elite rose to power, the gulf between the peasants and the rest of the population expanded. Today, as one of the main cities of Uzbekistan, Bukhara is a major trading center and a popular tourist destination.

The population of Khiva was more ethnically diverse than Bukhara, with the Uzbeks making up 65 percent and the Turkomans 27 percent. Other minorities included the seminomadic Karakalpaks and the Kazakhs. The Khan of Khiva possessed powers similar to those of the emir of Bukhara, but in Khiva the government was highly centralized.

Early in 1839 Czar Nicholas I announced his decision to attack Khiva, although his forces were disguised as a scientific expedition to the Aral Sea. By the end of the year, the expedition could no longer be disguised, and the attack took place.

It was not until 1869, however, that the Russians managed to surround Khiva on three sides and begin the invasion. Russian forces encountered almost no resistance as they invaded Khiva on May 29, 1873. Three months later, the Khan signed a peace treaty.

Because Khiva, unlike Bukhara, had been conquered by invasion, the Kahn’s power to rule was much more restricted that that of the emir of Bukhara. The rich history of Khiva and the preservation of much of the original khanate have made the modern-day city a magnet for tourists from around the world.

The invasion of Kokand was accomplished in 1866, and the government acted as a Russian ally against neighboring Bukhara. At this point, Kokand was allowed to run its own affairs in much the same way that Bukhara was operating. However, in 1875, civil unrest within Kokand surfaced in response to increased taxes, political repression, and a rising sense of nationalism.

When tensions exploded into outright revolt in Ozgan in July 1875, all avenues of authority disintegrated. Khudayar Khan escaped to neighboring Tashkent and demanded Russian protection. His son, Nasrid-din Bek, ascended to the seat of power and quickly established relations with Russia. Nevertheless, on August 29, the Russians military arrived, putting an end to the possibility of Kokand’s independence.

On February 19, 1876, the Russians abolished the khanate of Kokand, replacing it with the region of Ferghana, which was placed under the authority of a military governor. Before the Russians arrived in Kokand, the khanate had been a significant trade and administrative center for the Ferghana Valley region.

After the annexation, Ferghana was established as the center of Russian Turkestan and became the major cotton-producing area of the Russian Empire. In the 21st century, Kokand has regained its status as a trading center, specializing in the manufacture of fertilizers, chemicals, machinery, and cotton and food products.

Russo-Ottoman Wars

Russo-Ottoman Wars

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottomans and Russians fought a series of wars over territory around the Black Sea and the Balkans. As the Ottoman Empire slowly declined, the Russians extended their control over former Ottoman territories around the Black Sea.

Russia sought access to warm water ports and entry into the Mediterranean through the Ottoman controlled Dardanelles. Russian imperial ambitions in the Balkans also brought them into conflict with the Ottomans and Austria.

In 1696, while much of the Ottoman army was fighting against the Holy League led by Austria in the Balkans, Russia under Peter the Great took the port of Azov on the Azov Sea. Russia and the Ottomans signed a separate treaty in 1700 that reaffirmed the terms of the earlier Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, whereby the Ottomans lost territory in the Balkans and Poland moved into the Ukraine.


Russia and Austria joined together to attack the Ottomans in the mid-18th century, but under the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739 the Ottomans regained Belgrade, which they had lost in 1718.

However, the Russians slowly realized their ambitions for access to Azov and then the Black Sea. Under the Treaty of Belgrade, Russia gained some land along the Azov, but they were forbidden to fortify the area.

Following their defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the Ottomans under Sultan Mustafa III signed the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji (in present-day Bulgaria), with Russia led by Catherine II. Under this treaty the Russians gained ports along the Crimean and territory in the Caucasus.

The Ottomans were also forced to grant independence to the Crimean Khanate that Russia formally annexed in 1783. Russia also gained the right to serve as the so-called protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman empire, thereby increasing its involvement in the domestic affairs of the Ottoman state.

Russo-Turkish War and Near Eastern Crisis

Russo-Turkish War

The Balkans had been effectively under the rule of the Ottoman Turks since 1389, when the medieval Serbian kingdom was crushed at the Battle of Kosovo. However, beginning in the 17th century with the Turkish defeat at Vienna in 1683, the Turks were in almost a constant retreat. Wars with Russia that had ended in 1774 with the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji and in 1792 at Jassy had established Russia as a diplomatic presence in the Balkans and determined to make its presence felt.

Moreover, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had inaugurated the League of Three Emperors with Russia and Austria in 1872–73, as a way of making palatable the sudden rise to prominence in Central Europe of a united Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

The League of Three Emperors was a de facto diplomatic understanding, or demarche, that the future of the Balkans could be settled by Austria and Russia. Bismarck felt that Germany had no real interests in the Balkans, which, in his famous phrase, were “not worth the bones of a Pomeranian [part of Germany] grenadier.”


It turned out that the League of Three Emperors could not have come at a better time for Czar Alexander II of Russia. Freed from a concern over Austria and Germany as a source of danger, Alexander was able to modernize both his army and navy.

Coincidentally, Alexander’s modernization of the Russian juggernaut came at the perfect time. In its years of decline since 1683, Turkish rule had veered from incompetent to brutal and back again, with a few efforts at enlightened reform that never lasted.

In June 1875 the Slavic Christians in Bosnia and Herzegovina revolted against Turkey, and the Ottoman Turks retaliated in force. In spite of these reprisals, the rebellion against Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II spread in April 1876 to Bulgaria. Soon the entire Balkans had risen up against Abdul Hamid II, whom many of Ottoman subjects called Abdul the Damned.

In 1876 Prince Milosh Obrenovich, although a vassal of Turkey, also declared war on the Ottomans. Like Alexander II of Russia, he had recently modernized his armed forces. With the Serbs, the Montenegrians rose up against the Turks, turning the original Bosnia-Herzegovina revolt into an all out Balkan rebellion against Abdul Hamid II.

At the same time, the doctrine of Pan-Slavism animated the Russian people to come to the aid of the South Slavs in the Balkans. Pan-Slavism had its origin in the outburst of nationalism against Napoleon I of France and held that mystical, ancient bonds united all Slavs.

Because Russia was the most powerful Slavic state, it meant that it had an obligation to help the “little Slavic brothers” in the Balkans. Since this philosophy also provided a rationale for Russian expansion into the Balkans, it received the encouragement of the czarist government. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of Crime and Punishment, was also a great propagandist for PanSlavism. On April 12, 1877, Alexander II declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

In one of the great defensive battles of the 19th century, the Turkish general Osman Pasha managed to hold the Russians and their new Romanian allies for five months at Plevna (Pleven), but eventually the superior Russian force compelled him to surrender. As a mark of his heroism, he was treated with great courtesy by the Russian commanders.

Once the siege of Plevna was won, the Russians and their allies kept up the impetus of their drive to the south. It appeared that they were determined to go all the way to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and end the Ottoman power once and for all.

However, although the British public had been aroused by the Turkish atrocities in the Balkans, the British prime minister did not want to see the Russian Bear swimming in the Dardanelles, the gateway to the Mediterranean, which had been a British lake since the victory of Lord Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805. For the same reason, the British had intervened in the Crimean War from 1854–56 on the side of the Ottoman Empire, to keep the Russians from conquering the empire and gaining access to the Mediterranean.

In February 1878 the British Mediterranean fleet was put on a war footing and sailed to a position off Constantinople, a potent reminder that the Russians had advanced as far as the British were going to allow them to. Queen victoria herself announced that “she would rather abdicate than allow the Russians to enter Istanbul [Constantinople].”

Alexander II was conscious that if a peace were not made with the Turks, the British, and also Austria, might intervene on the side of his enemy. Therefore, in March 1878, Turkey and Russia concluded the Treaty of San Stefano. The Russians sought to take full advantage of the Turks in their defeated state.

The treaty immediately aroused the envy and concern of Austria, which had its own plans for expansion into the Balkans, ultimately to the disadvantage of the Serbians. Bismarck began to realize that his League of Three Emperors was in a deep crisis as a result of the San Stefano treaty. Consequently, he invited the great powers of Europe to the Congress of Berlin from June to July in 1878.

Great Britain was reassured by the fact that the territorial integrity of the Ottomans in Europe was maintained, and the great harbor at Constantinople would not become a Russian naval base. Austria was allowed to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it would later annex to its empire in 1908, causing great hatred among the Serbs, who also desired the territory.

Russia lost most of its conquests won in the war, although the Congress of Berlin did regain for Russia much of the territory given up at the Peace of Paris, which had brought the Crimean War to an end in 1856. However, because much of Bulgaria had had to be relinquished to the Ottomans, and Great Britain and Austria had coerced Russian into doing so, the Pan-Slavs considered the Treaty of Berlin as having robbed Russia of what it justly gained by right of conquest in the war.

The Treaty of Berlin, although it attempted to avert a European war, only tragically succeeded in sewing the seeds for World War I 26 years later. In June 1914, precisely 26 years after the opening of the Congress of Berlin, the Serb terrorist Gavrilo Princip would kill the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia.