Empire and Enterprise: Russian Trade and Industry in Tsarist Turkestan

• In Event: Commerce, Empire, and Difference in Eurasia

Abstract

Achieved piecemeal between the 1860s and 1880s, the tsarist conquest of Central Asia was motivated largely by Russia's rivalry with Britain. Though historians have described the region as the one whose governance most resembled the colonialism practiced overseas by Russia's West European rivals in the 19th-century, little has been written about the economic roles Turkestan was expected to play as a new source of raw materials and consumer demand for Russian industry. This paper will characterize the experiences, attitudes, and behavior of Russians who set up trade, industrial, and retail enterprises in Turkestan -- some on their own initiative, others nudged by a government that aspired to stimulate the region's economy and make it into a major trade hub under Russian control by establishing new institutions and marginalizing native trading communities. Some ethnic Russian entrepreneurs, from Moscow and elsewhere, relocated to Turkestan for extended periods while others preferred to send intermediaries (usually Tatars) whom they deemed better equipped for the cultural challenge of interacting with Central Asians. The less than impressive results reflected, in part, ill-conceived strategies and insufficient commitment, but also the limited time span between Turkestan's conquest and the collapse of the entire Russian empire. Sources will include memoirs, diaries, trade reports, and literary works.

Author

• Robert Paul Geraci, U of Virginia