The Russian Conquest of Central Asia A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914

The Russian conquest of Central Asia was perhaps the nineteenth century's most dramatic and successful example of European imperial expansion, adding 1.5 million square miles and at least 6 million people - most of them Muslims - to the Tsar's domains. Alexander Morrison provides the first comprehensive military and diplomatic history of the conquest to be published for over a hundred years. From the earliest conflicts on the steppe frontier in the 1830s to the annexation of the Pamirs in the early 1900s, he gives a detailed account of the logistics and operational history of Russian wars against Khoqand, Bukhara and Khiva, the capture of Tashkent and Samarkand, and the bloody subjection of the Turkmen, as well as Russian diplomatic relations with China, Persia and the British Empire. Based on archival research in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and India, memoirs and Islamic chronicles, this book explains how Russia conquered a colonial empire in Central Asia, with consequences that still resonate today.

Introduction; 1. Russia's steppe frontier and the Napoleonic generation; 2. 'Pray for the camels': the winter invasion of Khiva, 1839–1841; 3. 'This particularly painful place': the failure of the Syr-Darya line as a frontier, 1841–1863; 4. From Ayaguz to Almaty: the conquest and settlement of Semirechie, 1843–1882; 5. The search for a 'natural' frontier and the fall of Tashkent, 1863–1865; 6. War with Bukhara, 1866–1868; 7. The fall of Khiva, 1872–1873; 8. 'Those who should be spared': the conquest of Ferghana, 1875–1876; 9. 'The harder you hit them, the longer they will be quiet afterwards': the conquest of Transcaspia, 1869–1885; 10. Aryanism on the final frontier of the Russian empire: the exploration and annexation of the Pamirs, 1881–1905; Epilogue: after the conquest.

Alexander Morrison is Fellow and Tutor in History at New College, Oxford. His publications include Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India (2008).