History of civilizations of Central Asia, v. 6 ... - unesdoc - Unesco

ISBN 92-3-103985-7 The new political and strategic situation
not the same as that in 1885, when Russia took Merv. In the Kazakh lands, Russia took
150 years first to exert political pressure and then to establish direct dominion. Thereafter,
it conquered the Uzbek khanates in 20 years and in another 20 years the rest of Central
Asia.
Another continuous land-mass was the Chinese empire. The strategy of the Manchu
dynasty in the nineteenth century was designed to counter the influence of Russia and of
British agents, who were particularly active in Xinjiang. 6 This followed a period when a
much more offensive policy was pursued, in the second half of the eighteenth century in
particular, when the Manchus eliminated the Dzungar empire on their western flank. 7
In order to complete its colonization of India, Britain was concerned to stall Russian
expansionism by securing that part of the Indian border exposed to threat by land, the
North-West Frontier, the real ‘Achilles heel’ of the British possessions. Britain thus adopted
a policy of direct intervention in Afghanistan and indirect in Iran.
THE KAZAKH KHANATE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The fall of Ak Masjid (the forward fortress of the Kokand khanate on the lower reaches of
the Syr Darya) to the Russian army in the summer of 1853 concluded the Russian conquest
of most of the Kazakh lands. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia had
conducted a policy of influence and then of domination that can be divided into three main
phases: 1731–1822, 1822–50 and 1850–1914. The context that gave rise to a ‘Kazakh’ 8
policy was basically a combination of past and future: first, the collapse of the last steppe
empires, and secondly, Russia’s imperial ambitions.
During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the geopolitical situation on the steppe
underwent a radical change. Although for several centuries the Kazakh khanate had been
under pressure from the Uzbek states to the south and the Bashkir tribes to the north,
the most serious threat came from the east, from Dzungaria. The Dzungar empire was
eliminated by the Qing conquest in 1757, which brought China into direct contact with the
Kazakh and Uzbek khanates for the first time in their history, engendering new relations,
in particular with the Great or Elder Horde (Zhuz) of the Kazakhs.
The Kazakh khan Abu’l Khayr (1710–48) appealed for Russian protection from the mil-
itary pressure exerted by the Dzungar empire and agreed on new ties with Russia, expressed
6 See works by Hopkirk, 1990; Morgan, 1981; Rawlinson, 1875.
7 See Miyawaki, 2003.
8 The Kazakhs, that is almost 1 million people in the eighteenth century, were referred to as ‘Kyrgyz’, or
‘Kyrgyz-Kaisaks’ in Russian sources from the 1730s until the beginning of the Soviet period. In the previous
period, i.e. from the time of the first contacts between them and Russia until the 1730s, they were called
‘Kazakhs’.
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