In the 1840s and 1850s the Russians notionally extended their control much deeper into the steppe, where, after the capture of the Khoqandi fortress of Aq Masjid in 1853, they attempted to consolidate a new frontier along the line of the Syr-Darya, to the east of the Aral Sea. The new fortresses at Raim, Kazalinsk, Karmakchi and Perovsk were islands of Russian sovereignty in an inhospitable landscape of salt-flats, marshland and desert, subject to extremes of cold and heat. Supplying their garrisons was difficult and expensive, and threw the Russians into dependence on Bukharan grain-traders and Qazaq pastoralists. Soldiers were bored out of their minds, and deliberately wounded themselves or deserted to the Khoqandi outposts to the south. While the Syr-Darya frontier was reasonably effective as a listening-post for Russian intelligence and resisted attacks from Khoqand, neither Cossacks nor peasants could be persuaded to settle there, and the costs of occupation far outweighed any revenue. By the late 1850s some voices were calling for a retreat to the Orenburg line, but a familiar argument – that of prestige – won the day, and instead an advance to Tashkent began to seem like the best way of escaping this ‘particularly painful place’.

For some historians the conquest of Central Asia begins in 1865 with the fall of Tashkent to General M. G. Chernyaev. In fact this was the culmination of a series of steppe campaigns which had begun in the 1840s, but it did mark the point at which the Russian empire moved from the steppe to the settled zone of Southern Central Asia. Tashkent was Central Asia’s largest city and a major trading entrepôt, but it has long been argued that Chernyaev disobeyed orders when he captured the city. This chapter demonstrates that Chernyaev’s apparent disobedience was really a product of the ambiguity of his instructions, and above all of Russian ignorance of the geography of the region, which meant the War Ministry was convinced a ‘natural frontier’ would somehow present itself when it was needed. After Aulie-Ata, Chimkent and Turkestan had fallen to Russian forces, Chernyaev was instructed to separate Tashkent from the influence of Khoqand. While not quite the daring coup de main of legend, Chernyaev’s assault was risky, and resulted in two days of fighting in the streets before he reached an accommodation with the Tashkent ‘ulama. However, it was still unclear whether Tashkent would remain in Russian hands, or be turned into a city-state under Russian protection.

The conquest of the Ferghana valley and the final destruction of the Khoqand khanate are often overlooked in histories of the conquest. Having survived in uneasy limbo as a protectorate from 1866 until 1875, Khoqand was rocked by a series of rebellions against its unpopular Khan, Khudoyar, prompting a Russian military intervention. Attempts to preserve Khoqand as a protectorate by putting Khudoyar’s son on the throne failed, and further rebellions broke out in Andijan and other cities of this rich and fertile region. General M. D. Skobelev led a series of vicious punitive expeditions against the Sart, Qipchaq and Kyrgyz inhabitants of Ferghana, which saw Russian forces deliberately making war on women, children and non-combatants. The last resistance to the Russians in Khoqand’s name came from the Kyrgyz of the mountainous Alai region, who did not made peace until 1876. Ferghana would become the richest province of Russian Turkestan, while Khoqand’s demise would be mourned by a whole generation of intellectuals and commemorated in an extraordinarily rich historiography.