Abstract
Peter I's desire to open ‘a window to Europe’, central to the making of the modern Russian empire, often overshadows his attempt to open a quarter window, or a fortochka, to a region south of its border. The year 1717 marks this attempt: on the emperor's order, Prince Bekovich-Cherkasskii led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia. At the doors of the Khanate of Khiva, the forces faced a humiliating defeat, which was subsequently swept under the rug. Over a century later, the Russian military returned to this fortochka; this time around, however, defeats, while rare, were swiftly and brutally avenged.
The first decade of the 19th century, when the Russian empire emerged as ‘the world's greatest land power’ (p. 57), forms the starting point of Alexander Morrison's book on the Russian conquests of Central Asia. Morrison sets the stage for this new era by connecting the empire's self-identification as the ‘liberator of Europe’ upon its victory over the Napoleonic army and its expansionist ambitions. This is directly tied to individuals of the ‘Napoleonic era’, including the remarkably charismatic Perovskii, ‘patriotic and militaristic’ Yermolov, anti-British Simonich, ‘cautious and emollient’ Nesselrode and, crucially, the ‘paradomaniac’ Nicholas I. The meticulous analysis and striking description of these men's, and their successors’, motives and decisions, adapt Robinson and Gallagher's concept of the ‘official mind’, one that was ‘remarkably similar to its British counterpart’ (p. 24). Morrison rethinks this classic framework to recognize not only these decision-makers’ contradictory and inconsistent perspectives fed by a ‘bundle of prejudices, assumptions, ambition and ignorance’ (p. 24) but, above all, their fixation on the empire's status and prestige as a great power. Interweaving the machinations of Saint Petersburg's elite with the battleground of Central Asia, the cycle of paranoia and obsession felt by Russian imperial agents over reputation remained constant and shaped their response to any form of insubordination and defeat, be it past or present. The book makes a convincing case for the importance of a micro-historical reading of the events. Micro-history can expose the limitations of grand narratives in explaining complex, contested and dynamic processes; in the case of Central Asia, this approach reveals the inadequacies of the dominant theories of the ‘Great Game’, ‘Cotton Canard’ and ‘Man on the Spot’.
From the second chapter on, in a loosely chronological order starting in the 1830s, the reader is taken to the expanding battlefield: from failed efforts to conquer Khiva and establish a frontier line in Syr Darya to the successive defeats of Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand; from the brutal domination over the Turkmens of Transcaspia to a relatively peaceful takeover of the Pamirs. Throughout these, the imperial forces encounter hitherto unfamiliar steppes, deserts, mountains and oases. These diverse environments are framed as a crucial component in the Russian military's gradual reassessment and application of steppe warfare and fortress strategy. Moreover, the environment underpins the most important challenge for the Russian expeditions: namely, logistics. In a notable parallel to Dominic Lieven's argument for the heroic role of horses in the Napoleonic wars, Morrison underscores the importance of camels – along with their handlers and breeders – in assisting the Russian forces’ logistical nightmares, thus, revealing the imperialist reliance, albeit with a deep-rooted distrust, on indigenous knowledge, practices and supplies.
Morrison's sensitivity to the agency of the Central Asian people is one of the book's many strengths. Despite admittedly providing an ‘overwhelmingly Russian perspective’, the author strives to reconcile this. One reads Ta’rikhi Shahrukhi alongside Mikhail Terent’ev's account of the battle of Uzun-Agach, while the oral narrative of Goni-bek delivers a harrowing account of the Turkmen massacres compared to Lomakin's military reports. Crucial to this is the author's study of the existing power dynamics and sovereignties within Central Asia. The actors in the Bukharan emirate, Khanates of Khiva and of Khoqand, as well as Pamiri ‘highlanders’, Yomud Turkmens, Kyrgyz nomads, Qazaqs of the Great Horde and others, are not monolithic and passive caricatures, as many contemporary histories have painted them, but agents with diverse positions and objectives. Alongside this, the book demonstrates how the ‘multiple, fluid frontiers and sovereignty’ (p. 169) stood in stark contrast to the Russian imperial elites’ cherished ‘European Westphalian ideas of sovereignty, as something clearly defined and territorially bounded’ (p. 28). The questions of sovereignty are intrinsically connected to those of frontiers. In Morrison's telling, the Central Asian expansions cannot be understood without tackling the Russian imperial search for a ‘firm state boundary’, underpinned by ideas of a ‘natural’ and ‘scientifically fixed’ frontier.
This search ultimately led the Russian forces to the frontiers of other imperial actors who, unlike the Central Asian ones, are viewed by the Tsarist regime as, more or less, equal and worthy of negotiations. The book includes British, Persian and Qing actors, not only as interlocutors of the Russians in the broader processes of drawing imperial frontiers, but also as important references to understanding the military expansion in a comparative perspective. The latter points to parallels with the British experience in India, Qing battles against the Junghars and the French in Algeria. These references enrich the author's scrupulous archival research conducted in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, United Kingdom, India and the Netherlands, which results in an exceptionally helpful bibliography and serves as a resource for future scholars. The book delivers a comprehensive and much-needed analysis of the conquest of Central Asia and its place in the history of nineteenth-century global expansions.