The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th Century Central Asia

225 Pages·2020·16.629 MB·English

by  Scott C. Levi

The Bukharan Crisis
CENTRAL EURASIA IN CONTEXT SERIES
Douglas Northrop, Editor
A CO N N E C T E D H I S T O RY O F
18TH–C E N T U RY C E N T R A L A S I A
S C O T T C . L E V I
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2020, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4597-0
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4597-5
Cover art: “Canonnier Persan,” from Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde,
Auguste Wahlen. Brussels: La Librairie historique-artistique, 1843.
Cover design: Joel W. Coggins
To Karen, Madeleine, and Abigail

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
NOTE ON GEOGRAPHIC TERMINOLOGY
xiii
INTRODUCTION
3
ONE
BUKHARA IN CRISIS
12
TWO
SILK ROADS, REAL AND IMAGINED
37
THREE
THE EARLY MODERN SILK ROAD
70
FOUR
THE CRISIS REVISITED
120
CONCLUSION
173
BIBLIOGRAPHY
181
INDEX
201

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book emanates from a number of questions that remained unan-
swered after I completed work on my first book in 2002. At that time,
my research on Indian merchants in Central Asia led me to conclude
that Indian commercial firms centered in and around the city of Multan
developed a network that extended into Central Asia in the mid-s ixteenth
century, grew dramatically in the seventeenth century, and remained in
place even through the end of the nineteenth century. Turning attention to
recent work in Chinese, Russian, and other related fields of history, I found
additional scholarship that chipped away at the notion that early modern
Central Asia sank into a lengthy period of isolation and decline as a prod-
uct of the collapse of the so- called Silk Road trade (which itself is a prob-
lematic concept, for reasons addressed below). Clearly, that notion needed
to be reconsidered.
At the same time, the Bukharan Khanate suffered a well- documented
crisis in the first half of the eighteenth century. This crisis was severe, so
much so that it culminated in the Bukharan Khanate’s collapse in 1747. But
if the evidence indicates that the causal factor behind this crisis was not
economic isolation from the early modern globalizing world, what was it?
It was partly with that question in mind that I turned my attention to
the history of Khoqand, a Central Asian state that began to emerge in the
Ferghana Valley during the first half of the eighteenth century, at the very
time that the Bukharan Khanate descended into crisis. In an effort to under-
stand why it was that Khoqand came into being just as Bukhara fell, I made
my way back to Tashkent to begin working in the Central Asian sources. In
the United States, I explored ways to connect early modern Central Asia
to larger discussions and debates in Eurasian and world history. What I
had initially intended to constitute a few discreet discussions peppered
throughout my book on Khoqand gradually expanded into a chapter, and
then several chapters, and then this book.
ix