Central Beach

The Russian conquest of Central Asia took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land that became Russian Turkestan and later Soviet Central Asia is now divided between Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan across the center, Kyrgyzstan in the east, Tajikistan in the southeast and Turkmenistan in the southwest. The area was called Turkestan because most of its inhabitants spoke Turkic languages with the exception of Tajikistan, which speaks an Iranian language. Outline: In the eighteenth century Russia gained increasing control over the Kazakh steppe. In 1839 they failed to conquer the Khanate of Khiva south of the Aral Sea. In 1847-53 they built a line of forts from the north side of the Aral Sea eastward up the Syr Darya river. In 1847-1864 they crossed the eastern Kazakh steppe and built a line of forts along the northern border of Kyrgyzstan. 1864-1868 they moved south from Kyrgyzstan, captured Tashkent and Samarkand and dominated the Khanates of Kokand and Bokhara. They now held a triangle whose southern point was 1000 miles south of Siberia and 1200 miles southeast of their supply bases on the Volga. The next step was to turn this triangle into a rectangle by crossing the Caspian Sea. In 1873 they conquered Khiva. In 1881 they took western Turkmenistan. In 1884 the Merv oasis and eastern Turkmenistan were taken. In 1885 expansion south toward Afghanistan was blocked by the British. In 1893-95 they occupied the high Pamirs in the southeast.
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