The history of Central Asia is marked by several millennia of dominance by the horse peoples of the steppe, who were some of the most militarily potent peoples in the world. In the sixteenth century the dominance of the nomads was ended as firearms allowed settled peoples dominate the region. Most notably Russia expanded through the region and captured the bulk of it by the end of the nineteenth century. With the collapse of the Soviet Union five countries gained their independence.

Prehistory

Recent genetic studies have identified this region of the world as the most likely source of the humans who later inhabited Europe, as Central Asians display much more genetic diversity than Europeans, but also share the same genetic markers . As such, this region may be one of the oldest sites of human habitation after Africa. However, the archeological evidence of human habitation in this region is lacking where evidence of human habitation in Africa and Australia prior to that of Central Asia is well known. Moreover, given the location of the inhabitants, and the spread of one large language group from Europe to South Asia, it may also be the source of the root of the Indo-European languages.

The domestication of the horse began in Central Asia in the fourth millennium BCE. Over time, the horses were bred for strength, and by the second millennium BCE they were strong enough to pull chariots. This paved the way for the rise of nomadism, a way of life that would dominate the region for the next several millennia.

Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats, horses, and camels and conducted annual migrations to escape the winter snows (a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in gers, tents made of hides and woods that could be disassembled and transported. Each group had several ger accommodating about five people each.

Przewalski's Horse (Equus przewalskii), also known as the Mongolian Wild Horse, or Takhi, was probably the ancestor of the first domestic horses.

The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of the early second millennium BCE was the first sedentary civilization of the region, practicing irrigation farming of wheat and barley and possibly a form of writing. Bactria-Margiana probably interacted with the contemporary Bronze Age nomads of the Andronovo culture, the originators of the spoke-wheeled chariot, who lived to their north in western Siberia, Russia and parts of Kazakhstan, and survived as a culture until the first millennium BCE. These cultures, particularly Bactria-Margiana, have been posited as possible representatives of the hypothetical Aryan culture ancestral to the speakers of the Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iranian languages. Small city-states and sedentary agrarian societies arose in the more humid, peripheral areas of Central Asia. The nomads traded with these when they could, but because in general they did not produce goods of interest to sedentary peoples, a popular alternative was to carry out raids.

Nomadic groups in Central Asia during this period included the Xiongnu (Huns) and other Turkic peoples, theYuezhi (Tocharians or Kushans), the Persians and other Indo-European peoples, and the Mongols.

External influences

The steppe peoples were conquered several times. The Median empire, Achaemenid empire, both conquered parts of Central Asia. Strong states, however, found it almost impossible to conquer the nomads as they had no cities to occupy. The nomads could simply retreat into the steppe when threatened.

Alexander the Great's conquests spread the influence of Hellenistic civilization all the way to his farthest base in modern Tajikistan, Alexandria Eschate (Lit. “Alexandria the Furthest”), established in 329 BCE. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, the Central Asian successor satraps of his domain fell to the Seleucid Empire during the Wars of the Diadochi. In 250 BCE, the Central Asian portion of the empire (Bactria) seceded as the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, which had extensive contacts with India and China till its end in 125 BCE. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, mostly based in India but controlling a fair part of Afghanistan, pioneered the development of Greco-Buddhism. The Kushan Empire thrived across a wide swath of the region from about 105 BCE - 250 BCE, and continued Hellenistic and Buddhist traditions. These states prospered from their position on the Silk Road linking China and Europe. Later external powers such as the Parthian Empire, Sassanid Empire would come to dominate this trade.

Overtime the nomadic horsemen grew in power. New technologies were introduced. The Scythians developed the saddle and by the time of the Alans the use of the stirrup had begun. Horses continued to grow larger and sturdier. Rather than just using them to pull chariots horses by the fifth century BC could carry a person with ease. This greatly increased the mobility of the nomads. It also freed their hands, allowing them to use the bow from horseback. Using small but powerful composite bows the steppe people became the most powerful military force in the world. From a young age the horsemen were trained in riding and archery and by adulthood these activities were second nature. The horse born armies were more mobile than any other, being ably to travel forty miles (60 km) per day with ease. The steppe people quickly came to dominate Central Asia, forcing the scattered city states and kingdoms to pay them tribute or face annihilation.

This martial ability was limited, however, by the lack of political structure within the tribes. Confederations of various groups would sometimes form under a charismatic ruler, known as a khan. Tradition was that any such empire should be divided among all of the khans sons and these empires thus declined as quickly as they formed. When large numbers of nomads acted in unison they could be devastating, as when the Huns arrived in Western Europe or when a number of different groups raided China.

As this time Central Asia was a diverse region that saw a mixture of the cultures and religions of the rest of Eurasia. Buddhism remained the largest religion, but around Persia Zoroastrianism became important. Nestorian Christianity entered the area, but was never more than a minority faith. More successful was Manichaeism which became the region's third largest faith. Many practiced more than one faith, and almost all of the local religions were infused with local shamanistic traditions. In the eighth century Islam began to penetrate the region. It was far less accommodating and soon Islam was the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could match militarily the nomads of the steppe and the early Arab dynasties gained control over parts of Central Asia.

Return of native rule

Soon native groups re-emerged and set up states in Central Asia, and empires that spread beyond it such as the Samanid dynasty, Seljuk Empire, Khwarezmid Empire.

The most spectacular power to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia in a formidable force. Using the standard military techniques the Mongol Empire spread from Mongolia to cover huge areas of Central Asia, as well as large parts of China, Russia and the Middle East. When Genghis' empire effectively split in four, most of Central Asia continued to be ruled by the successor Chagatai Khanate. Timur (Tamerlane), a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the Chagatai Khanate as his Timurid Empire.

While the steppe peoples of Central Asia found conquest easy, they generally found governing difficult. The diffuse political structure of the steppe confederacies was maladapted to the complex states of the settled peoples. To govern the steppe people thus relied on the local bureaucracy, a factor that lead to the rapid assimilation of the steppe peoples into the culture of those they had conquered. Moreover the armies of the nomads were based on large numbers of horses, generally three or four per warrior. Maintaining these forces required large stretches of grazing land, which was not present outside of the steppe. Thus any extended length of time away from their homeland would cause the steppe armies to gradually disintegrate. The armies, for the most part, were unable to penetrate the forested regions to the north. Thus to the north states like Novgorod and Muscovy began to grow in power.

The Conquest of the Steppes

The lifestyle that had existed largely unchanged since 500 BC began to disappear after 1500.

One important change was the development of nautical technology. Nautical transportation routes were discovered and chosen by the European traders, who could not access the "Silk Road" since the end of the Mongol Empire, when borders were reestablished - particularly by the Ottoman Empire. The "Silk Road" ceased to function as a trade route circa 1400. Thus, the trade between East Asia, India, Europe, and the Middle East, went over the seas and not through Central Asia, causing the trade that had long sustained the area to sharply decline.

A more important development was the introduction of gun powder based weapons. The gunpowder revolution for the first time allowed settled people's to defeat the steppe horsemen in open battle. These weapons required the infrastructure and economy of large societies to construct and the nomads were unable to match them. For the first time the domain of the nomads began to shrink. The Russians expanded south as the Ukraine became an agricultural heartland. The Chinese spread west and the British in India began to spread north. This set off The Great Game as the great powers schemed to capture as much of the region as possible.

The slow Russian conquest of Central Asia began in the early nineteenth century, although Peter the Great had sent an expedition against Khiva under Prince Bekovitch-Cherkassky as early as the 1720s (it ended in disaster). By the 1800s the locals could do little to resist the Russian advance, with the notable exception of the rising of the Kazakhs under Kenesary Kasimov in the 1840s. Nevertheless, until the 1870s for the most part Russian interference was minimal leaving native ways of life intact and local government structures in place. With the conquest of Turkestan after 1865 and the consequent securing of the frontier, the Russians gradually expropriated large parts of the steppe and gave these lands to Russian farmers who began to arrive in large numbers. Initially this process was limited to the Northern fringes of the Steppe, and it was only in the 1890s that significant numbers of Russians began to settle further South, especially in Semirechie .

The Conquest of Turkestan

After the fall of Tashkent to General Cherniaev in 1865, Khodjend, Djizak and Samarkand fell to the Russians in quick succession, as the Khanate of Kokand and the emirate of Bukhara were repeatedly defeated. In 1867 the Governor-Generalship of Russian Turkestan was established, with its headquarters at Tashkent, under General Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman. In 1881-5 the Transcaspian region was annexed in the course of a bloody campaign led by Generals Annenkov and Skobelev, and Ashkhabad, Merv and Pendjeh all came under Russian control. Russian expansion essentially halted in 1887 when Russia and Britain delineated the southern border with Afghanistan. Bukhara and Khiva remained quasi-independent but were essentially protectorates along the lines of the Princely States of British India. Although the conquest was prompted by almost purely military concerns, in the 1870s and 1880s Turkestan came to play a reasonably important economic role within the Russian Empire. Owing to the American Civil War cotton prices shot up in the 1860s and this became an increasingly important commodity in the region, although never approaching the intensive monoculture of the Soviet period. The cotton trade led to other improvements: the Transcaspian Railway from Krasnovodsk to Samarkand and Tashkent, and the Trans-Aral Railway from Orenburg to Tashkent were constructed. Russian rule still remained distant from the local populace, mostly concerning itself with the Russian inhabitants of the region. The local Muslims were not considered full Russian citizens, they did not have the full rights of Russians but they also did not have the same obligations, such as military service.

Traditionally the Muslims had been exempt from conscription, but during the First World War this was reversed sparking the Central Asian Revolt in 1916 that was quickly put down. When the Russian Revolution occurred the Turkestan Muslim Council met in Kokand and declared Turkestan's autonomy. This new government was quickly crushed by the Red Army and Bukhara and Khiva were also invaded. Guerrillas known as basmachi continued to fight the Communists until 1924.

Soviet domination

In 1918 the Bolsheviks set up the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Bukhara and Khiva also became SSRs. In 1919 the Conciliatory Commission for Turkestan Affairs was established to try and improve relations between the locals and the Communists. New policies were introduced respecting local customs and Islam. In 1920 the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , covering modern Kazakhstan was set up. It was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925. Turkestan was divided in 1924 into the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR. In 1929 the Tajik SSR was split from the Uzbek SSR. The Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast became its own SSR in 1936.

These borders had little to do with the ethnic makeup of the region, but the Soviets felt it important to divide the region. They saw both Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism as threats and felt that dividing Turkestan would limit them. Under the Soviets the local languages and cultures were systematized and codified and their differences clearly demarcated. New Cyrillic writing systems were introduced for the languages to break links with Turkey and Iran. Under the Soviets the southern border was almost completely closed, and all travel and trade went via Russia.

Under Stalin at least a million people died, mostly in the Kazakh SSR, during the period of forced collectivization. Islam was also attacked. In the Second World War several million refugees and hundreds of factories were moved to the relative security of Central Asia. The region remained an important part of the Soviet industrial complex. Several important military facilities were also located in the region, including nuclear testing facilities and the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Virgin Lands Campaign, starting in 1954, was a massive Soviet agricultural resettlement program that brought more than 300,000, mostly from Ukraine, to the northern Kazakh SSR and the Altai region of the Russian SFSR. This was a major change in the ethnic makeup of the region. Since the 1950s, there has also been major Han Chinese migration to Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang.

Since 1991

What Svat Soucek calls the "Central Asian Spring" was very short-lived. From 1988 to 1992 a free press and multiparty system flourished in the Central Asian republics as perestroika pressured to locals Communist parties to open up. Soon after independence this began to change as former Communist Party officials recast themselves as local strongmen. In no state is repression as great as it was in Soviet times but none of the new republics could be considered functional democracies.

Unlike the other Soviet Republics the people of the region were indifferent towards independence. Large percentages of the local populations are Russian, especially in Kazakhstan and they had no interest in independence. Aid from the Soviet Union had also been central to the economies of Central Asia with each of the republics receiving massive transfers of funds from Moscow. Independence came as the result of the small group of nationalist, mostly local intellectuals, and from no great desire in Moscow to retain the expensive region.

While never itself a part of the Soviet Union, Mongolia followed a somewhat similar path. Freed from Soviet domination it shed the communist system in 1996, but quickly ran into economic problems. See: History of independent Mongolia.

The economic performance of the region has been mixed. It contains some of the large reserves of natural resources in the world, but there are important difficulties in transporting them. Further from the ocean than anywhere else in the world and with southern borders that had been closed for decades the main trade routes run through Russia. As a result Russia still exerts a significant influence over the region, far more than in other former Soviet republics. Increasingly other powers have begun to involve themselves in Central Asia. The People's Republic of China sees the region as an essential future source of raw materials and most Central Asian nations are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The PRC also sees a potential threat of these nations supporting separatist movements among its own Turkish minorities. American businesses have also arrived in force, and American troops were in the area as part of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Turkey has also begun to look east and there a number of organizations attempting to build links between the western and eastern Turks. Iran, which for millennia had close links with the region, has also been working to build ties and the Central Asian states trade and enjoy good relations with the Islamic Republic.

One important player in the new Central Asia has been Saudi Arabia which has been bankrolling the Islamic revival in the region. Soon after independence Saudi oil money paid for massive shipments of Qur'ans to the region and the construction and repair of a large number of mosques. In Tajikistan alone it is estimated that 500 mosques per year were erected with Saudi money in the years after independence. Islam in general has become an important force in the region, and the formerly atheistic Communist Party leaders have mostly converted. Most of the Saudi organizations operating in the region are Wahhabi. Small Islamist groups have formed in several of the countries, but radical Islam has little history in the region the Central Asian societies have remained quite secular. All five states enjoy good relations with Israel. Central Asia is still home to some 200,000 Jews and important trade and business links have developed between those that have left for Israel and those remaining.

One important Soviet legacy that has only gradually been appreciated is the vast environmental destruction. Most notable is the gradual drying of the Aral Sea. During the Soviet era it was decided that the traditional crops of melons and vegetables would be replaced by the water intensive growing of cotton for Soviet textile mills. Massive irrigation efforts were launched that succeeded in diverting a considerable percentage of the annual inflow to the sea causing it to shrink each year. Other legacies include vast tracks of Kazakhstan that were used for nuclear testing and a plethora of decrepit factories and mines.

See also

• History of Kazakhstan
• History of Kyrgyzstan
• History of Tajikistan
• History of Turkmenistan
• History of Uzbekistan
• History of Afghanistan
• History of Mongolia

References & Further Reading

• Barthold, V.V. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London) 1968 (Third Edition)

• Brower, Daniel Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London) 2003

• Dani, A.H. and V.M. Masson eds. UNESCO History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Paris: UNESCO, 1992-

• Sinor, Dennis The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge) 1990 (2nd Edition)

• Soucek, Svat A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

• В.В. Бартольд История Культурной Жизни Туркестана (Москва) 1927

• Н.А. Халфин Россия и Ханства Средней Азии (Москва) 1974