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When this conquest was completed, they turned to theeast of the Caspian, and in twenty years (1864-85) overranthe independent oases of Central Asia and subduedthe nomads. Frontiers in the European sense did notexist, but by 1880 there did exist the new fact of thecontiguity of Russian power with Persian weakness andAfghan instability.The British were quick to take alarm: for the firsttime since Napoleon their ascendancy in southern Asiawas in danger of being challenged by another Europeanpower. To the Russians it seemed that they were butfollowing the example of the British in India, andthat, if they combined economic advantages for themselveswith their civilizing mission, the British were thelast people who could object. They rightly denied thattheir conquest of Central Asia was planned as a steptowards the invasion of India. Once the Russians hadexpanded down the Volga, across the Urals, acrossSiberia, the impact of settled, organized power on nomador oasis life was bound to be overwhelming, when the onehad the armoury of Western technique at its commandand the other had nothing but ramshackle khanates,distance, or the desert.It was, however, true that Central Asia gave theRussians "a basis of operations which, if need be, canbe offensive" (Giers, 1883). As has been seen, in 1900,in concert with the French, they were prepared to makeit such. Once at least, at a moment of expected warwith England (1878), an expedition was on the move inTurkestan, and the British were justified in holding thatthe second Afghan war which followed was partly dueto Russian instigation. They were also justified in theirview that the Trans-Caspian railway, built (1881-88)along the northern frontier of Persia, had strategic objects,and in their repeated complaints that the St Petersburgauthorities could not or would not control their subordinateson the distant confines of the empire. TheRussian foreign office in particular had little effective sayin Central Asia, where the real rulers were the ministryof war and the governors-general, and where the Russianswere constantly at loggerheads with each other, a fact435