Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868-1910: A Comparison with British India

Alexander Morrison

Sep 2008 · OUP Oxford

About this ebook

Russian Rule in Samarkand examines the structures, personnel, and ideologies of Russian imperialism in Turkestan, taking Samarkand and the surrounding region as a case-study. The creation of a colonial administration in Central Asia presented Russia with similar problems to those faced by the British in India, but different approaches to governance meant that the two regimes often stood in stark contrast to one another. While the Russian administration was characterised by corruption and inefficiency, British rule in India was often more violent, and its subjects much more heavily taxed. Opening with the background to the political situation in Central Asia and a narrative of the Russian conquest itself, the book moves on to analyse official attitudes to Islam and to pre-colonial elites, and the earliest attempts to establish a functioning system of revenue collection. Uncovering the religious and ethnic composition of the military bureaucracy, and the social background, education and training of its personnel, Alexander Morrison assesses the competence of these officers vis-à-vis their Anglo-Indian counterparts. Subsequent chapters look at the role of the so-called 'native administration' in governing the countryside and collecting taxes, the attempt to administer the complex systems of irrigation leading from the Zarafshan and Syr-Darya rivers, and the nature and functions of the Islamic judiciary under colonial rule. Based on extensive archival research in Russia, India, and Uzbekistan, and containing much rare source material translated from the original Russian, Russian Rule in Samarkand will be of interest to all those interested in the history of the Russian Empire and European Imperialism more generally.

About the author

Alexander Morrison was born in 1978 in the Hague, the Netherlands, where his father was working as a foreign correspondent, and grew up in Moscow, Paris, Harare and Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was educated at Borrowdale Primary School, Harare, Sevenoaks School in Kent and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he read Modern History and won the Gibbs prize for the highest First-class degree in his year. He was elected to a seven-year Prize Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2000, and began the research for his doctoral thesis the following year, working in archives and libraries in Moscow, St Petersburg, Tashkent, Dushanbe and Delhi. He was awarded his D.Phil at Oxford in 2005, and in September 2007 took up the post of Lecturer in Imperial History at the University of Liverpool. Russian Rule in Samarkand is his first book.