During Shaybanid rule, and even more under the Ashtarkhanids (also known as Astrakhanids, Tuquy-Timurids, or Janids) who succeeded them during the 1600s, Central Asia experienced a decline in prosperity compared with the preceding Timurid period, in part because of a marked reduction in the transcontinental caravan trade following the opening of new oceanic trade routes. In the 1700s the basins of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya passed under the control of three Uzbek khanates claiming legitimacy in their descent from Genghis Khan. These were, from west to east, the Qungrāts based on Khiva in Khwārezm (1717–1920), the Mangits in Bukhara (1753–1920), and the Mings in Kokand (c. 1710–1876), in the upper valley of the Syr Darya. During this same period, east of the Pamirs, Kashgaria was torn apart by the rivalries of Khwājahs and Kyrgyz; in the Semirechye the Kazakhs were locked in conflict with the Mongol Oirat and Dzungars; while between the Aral and Caspian seas the Turkmen roamed the northern borders of Iran, enslaving the sedentary peoples there and transporting them to Bukhara to labour in the oases. The time was ripe for Russian intervention, made easier by the intruders’ possession of cannon and firearms. The modern period: the age of decadence
From the beginnings of recorded history, pastoral nomadism, practiced on a grandiose scale, was the economic basis of the great Central Asian empires. Once the domestication of the horse was sufficiently advanced to allow for its use in warfare, the superiority of the mounted archer over the foot soldier or the war chariot was never effectively challenged. The waning of nomadic military power
When headed by capable leaders, well-trained and disciplined mounted troops were almost invincible. The sedentary civilizations could not, by their very nature, put aside for breeding purposes pastures sufficiently large to sustain a cavalry force that could equal that of the pastoral nomads. Hence the military superiority of the nomads remained a constant for about 2,000 years of Eurasian history.
At its highest degree of development, Central Asian nomad society constituted a very sophisticated and highly specialized social and economic structure, advanced but also highly vulnerable because of its specialization and the lack of diversification of its economy. Geared almost entirely to the production of war matériel—i.e., the horse—when not engaged in warfare, it was unable to provide the people with anything but the barest necessities of life. To ensure their very existence, Central Asian empires had to wage war and obtain through raids or tribute the commodities they could not produce. When, owing to circumstances such as severe weather decimating the horse herds or inept leadership, raids against other peoples became impossible, the typical Central Asian nomad state had to disintegrate to allow its population to fend for itself and secure the necessities for a subsistence. Hunting and pastoral nomadism both needed vast expanses to support a thinly scattered population that did not naturally lend itself to strong, centralized political control. The skill of a Central Asian leader consisted precisely in the gathering of such dispersed populations and in providing for them on a level higher than they had been accustomed to. There was but one way to achieve this: successful raids on other, preferably richer, peoples. The military machinery was dependent on numbers, which then precluded self-sufficiency. In case of prolonged military reverses, the nomadic aggregation of warriors had to disband because it was only in dispersion that they could be economically autonomous without recourse to war.
In the course of the 15th century, the steppe territory suitable for great horse herds began to shrink. In the east the Yongle emperor of the Ming led five major campaigns against the Mongols (1410–24), all successful but none decisive. Yet when, under the leadership of Esen Taiji (1439–55), the Mongol Oirat pushed as far as Beijing, they found the city defended by cannon, and they withdrew. In the Middle East, as noted above, the Ottoman and Ṣafavid gunpowder empires barred the road to the no-longer-invincible nomad cavalry, and, along the western borders of Central Asia, the Russians were soon to start on their decisive and irresistible march across Central Asia to the borders of China, India, and Iran. The Russian conquests
The most spectacular advance of the Russians into Central Asia carried them eastward through the forest belt, where the hunting and fishing populations offered little resistance and where the much-coveted furs of Siberia could be found in abundance. Acting on behalf of the Stroganov family of entrepreneurs, in 1578 or 1581 the Cossack Yermak Timofeyevich crossed the Urals and defeated the Shaybanid prince Kuchum, who alone represented organized political power in Siberia.
The Russian advance from west to east across Siberia, motivated by commercial rather than political considerations, remains unparalleled in history for its rapidity. The native Finno-Ugrians—Samoyed or Tungus hunters accustomed to paying their fur tribute—were little concerned with the nationality of the tax collectors and found it no more unpleasant to deal with the Russians than with Turks or Mongols. Russian penetration was marked by the building of small forts, such as Tobolsk (1587) near the former capital of Kuchum, Tara (1594) on the Irtysh River, and Narym (1596) on the upper Ob River. The Yenisey was reached in 1619, and the town of Yakutsk on the Lena River was founded in 1632. About 1639 the first small group of Russians reached the Pacific Ocean in the neighbourhood of present-day Okhotsk. About 10 years later, Anadyrsk was founded on the shores of the Bering Sea, and, by the end of the century, the Kamchatka Peninsula was annexed. When advanced Russian parties reached the Amur River about the mid-17th century, they entered the Chinese sphere of interest. Although some clashes occurred, restraint on both sides led to the signing of the treaties of Nerchinsk (1689) and Kyakhta (1727), which remained in force until 1858. To this day, the border delineated at Kyakhta has not been altered substantially.
The thorniest question to be dealt with in the early Russo-Chinese negotiations concerned the Mongols—wedged between the two Great Powers—who, in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, reasserted their control over most of the steppe belt. In the 15th century the western Mongols, or Oirat, had become quite powerful under Esen Taiji, but, under the strong leadership of Dayan Khan (ruled 1470–1543) and his grandson Altan Khan (1543–83), the eastern Mongols—more precisely the Khalkha tribe—gained ascendancy. In 1552 Altan took possession of what was left of Karakorum, the old Mongol capital. Altan’s reign saw the conversion of a great many Mongols to the tenets of the Dge-lugs-pa (Yellow Hat) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, a religion that, until the 1920s, played a major role in Mongol life. The attempts of Ligdan Khan (1604–34) to unite the various Mongol tribes failed not only because of internal dissensions but also on account of the rising power of the Manchu, to whom he was forced to surrender. The active Central Asian policy of China’s Qing dynasty brought a lasting transformation in the political structure of the region.
More distant from China, the Oirat could pursue a more independent course. One of their tribes, the Dzungars, under the leadership of Galdan (Dga’-ldan; 1676–97), created a powerful state that remained a serious menace to China until 1757, when the Qianlong emperor defeated their last ruler, Amursana, and thus put an end to the last independent Mongol state prior to the creation, in 1921, of Outer Mongolia (the Khalkha princes had submitted to the Manchu in 1691).
The treaties of Nerchinsk and Kyakhta established the northern border of the Chinese zone of influence, which included Mongolia. In the wars against the Dzungars, the Chinese established their rule over East Turkistan and Dzungaria. China’s western boundary remained undefined, but it ran farther west than it does in the present day and included Lake Balkhash and parts of the Kazakh steppe.