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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uzbekistan
Index
The following period was one of weakness and disruption, with continuous
invasions from Iran and from the north. In this period, a new group, the
Russians, began to appear on the Central Asian scene. As Russian merchants
began to expand into the grasslands of present-day Kazakstan, they built
strong trade relations with their counterparts in Tashkent and, to some
extent, in Khiva. For the Russians, this trade was not rich enough to
replace the former transcontinental trade, but it made the Russians aware
of the potential of Central Asia. Russian attention also was drawn by the
sale of increasingly large numbers of Russian slaves to the Central Asians
by Kazak and Turkmen tribes. Russians kidnapped by nomads in the border
regions and Russian sailors shipwrecked on the shores of the Caspian Sea
usually ended up in the slave markets of Bukhoro or Khiva. Beginning in
the eighteenth century, this situation evoked increasing Russian hostility
toward the Central Asian khanates.
Meanwhile, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries new
dynasties led the khanates to a period of recovery. Those dynasties were
the Qongrats in Khiva, the Manghits in Bukhoro, and the Mins in Quqon.
These new dynasties established centralized states with standing armies
and new irrigation works. But their rise coincided with the ascendance of
Russian power in the Kazak steppes and the establishment of a British
position in Afghanistan. By the early nineteenth century, the region was
caught between these two powerful European competitors, each of which
tried to add Central Asia to its empire in what came to be known as the
Great Game. The Central Asians, who did not realize the dangerous position
they were in, continued to waste their strength in wars among themselves
and in pointless campaigns of conquest.
Data as of March 1996
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