The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 18141914 [Paperback]

A comprehensive diplomatic and military history of the Russian conquest of Central Asia, spanning the whole of the nineteenth century.Russia's conquest of Central Asia was perhaps the nineteenth century's most dramatic and successful example of European imperial expansion. Alexander Morrison provides a definitive diplomatic and military history, explaining how and why a vast region of steppe, desert, mountain and oasis, mainly populated by Muslims, came under Russian rule.Russia's conquest of Central Asia was perhaps the nineteenth century's most dramatic and successful example of European imperial expansion. Alexander Morrison provides a definitive diplomatic and military history, explaining how and why a vast region of steppe, desert, mountain and oasis, mainly populated by Muslims, came under Russian rule.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, 18391841; 3. 'This parl3,