

@mastersthesis {6508,
	title = {Russian rule in {Samarkand}, 1868{\textendash}1910: {A} comparison with {British} {India}},
	year = {2005},
	note = {3216818},
	school = {University of Oxford (United Kingdom)},
	type = {phdD.{Phil}.},
	address = {Ann Arbor},
	abstract = {This thesis examines Russian rule in Turkestan in the Tsarist period, with a particular focus on the city and province of Samarkand. Throughout, comparisons are made with the methods used by the British in India when confronted with similar colonial dilemmas. The thesis is based largely on primary sources from archives in Tashkent, Moscow and St. Petersburg, together with little-known published material. The introduction gives an overview of the historiography, and the reasons why new research is necessary, together with a brief overview of the chronology and background of the Russian conquest. Subsequent chapters deal with Russian imperial ideologies and contemporary attitudes towards British India; the relationship with Islam; the earliest attempts to create a colonial administration in the region after 1868; the military bureaucracy and its personnel; the native administration; irrigation and the control of water and the Islamic judiciary and its relationship with the colonial regime. The arguments of the {\textquoteright}Cambridge School{\textquoteright} of South Asian history have had a considerable influence on my approach. The broad conclusion is that despite military and technological superiority the Russians were far from all-powerful in Turkestan, owing to a lack of trained personnel, finance and, perhaps most importantly, knowledge, whether of languages, irrigation customs or the workings of the devolved revenue collection and judicial systems. The military regime was characterised by corruption, inefficiency and a failure to modernise and reform, leading officials to despair of ever bringing Turkestan closer to the heartlands of the Empire, whether in cultural or administrative terms. Although native clerical and aristocratic elites lost some of their power and significance, urban, mercantile and village elites exploited Russian power for their own purposes, and controlled important elements of the administration. However, compared with India the regime was not particularly violent, and taxed lightly. Turkestan{\textquoteright}s peasants did not have to finance imperial defence like their counterparts in India. Both imperial regimes acted as catalysts for social and intellectual change in the societies they ruled over, but in neither case was such change always intended, or always on the rulers{\textquoteright} terms.},
	keywords = {0332:History, 0335:European history, 0582:History, British India, European history, History, Imperialism, India, Russian Empire, Samarkand, Social sciences, Turkestan},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com/docview/305380479?accountid=14270},
	author = {Morrison, Alexander Stephen}
}
