The Rise and Fall of Khoqand: Central Asia in the Global Age, 1709–1876 by Scott C. Levi (review)

The Khoqand polity emerged in the early 18^th century in the Ferghana Valley in the territory now called Uzbekistan. In the mid-19^th century, it was conquered by the Russian Empire during a war that lasted a decade and a half. The Khoqand khanate is often mentioned in literature when it comes to the expansion of Russia and “the Great Game” in Central Asia. This represents a longstanding tradition of tying the history of imperial peripheries and colonies to the history of their metropoles, which also often implies borrowing clich'es from the imperial narrative that condones expansion and presents it as legitimate. As a result, Khoqand has remained no more than a small episode in the Eurocentric or Russia-centric world history.

Scott Levi brings down the established tradition of describing the history of the Khoqand khanate as a history of isolation and demise, where internal conflicts, volatility and archaism led to the inevitable downfall and forcible inclusion in the Russian Empire as well as peace, order, development and modernity. The author suggests considering the history of pre-Russian Khoqand as a process of integration into global trade and political networks, as a set of dynamic interactions with various local polities and world powers, as the first attempts of modernization, as a search for balanced stability. Levi argues that the economic and cultural development of Khoqand was interrupted not by internal ineptitude but by the aggressive interference of rivaling neighbors. Levi disconnects the history of Khoqand from the history of the Russian Empire and shows it as a separate narrative with its own logic arising from a collision of multiple forces and factors. Instead of demonstrating the inevitable demise of smaller polities in the era of mighty empires, Scott Levi depicts a new field of opportunities that opened for the smaller states in that era, even if an imperial offensive eventually brought them down.

The author structures his narrative chronologically. Each of the seven chapters covers a separate stage—the formation of the ruling dynasty, the subsequent consolidation of the state as an independent khanate, the zenith of its prosperity and power, which then gave way to crisis and civil war, and the final defeat by 5,000 well-armed and disciplined Russian troops led by the generals von Kaufman and Skobelev. The khanate was dismantled in accordance with the decision of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia.

Shah Rukh Biy and his descendants from the Ming tribe, albeit having no Chinghizid ancestry, managed to rally the elite groups of the Ferghana Valley around themselves. The rise of Shah Rukh Biy was a reaction to the internal instability of the Ashtarkhanid state that suffered one defeat after another from external rivals, including the Kazakhs and Nadir Shah Afshar. Partly due to the fact that the Ferghana valley was an extreme periphery situated far from the main battles and disputes, the Shahrukhids managed to survive. However, as argued by Levi, it was much later that this formation transitioned from a protostate to a state proper—to a certain extent, this was the result of patronage on the part of the Manchurian Chinese Qing dynasty. Having destroyed the main destabilizing force, the Dzungar khanate, the Qing dynasty offered the Shahrukhids advantageous trade preferences and conferred upon them a status of a party to agreements in exchange for their symbolic vassalage. The rule of the Shahrukhids was also reinforced by the rapid development of irrigation, as well as the immigration and settlement of nomads. This tendency was ended by Alim, a brutal ruler who modernized the army, recruiting mercenaries, and initiated a successful expansion. Alim subjugated a large trading center in the Tashkent region, which was under the rule of Yunus Khoja; interestingly, the latter was not a Kazakh Chinghizid as stated in the book, but belonged to an influential religious dynasty of Shaykh Hovandi...