British Central Asia

While waiting for the contractor to show up for some work in my basement this morning, I came up with this, based on my yearly re-reading of The Great Game and a random brainfart. Naturally, the guy called at 11 to say he won't be here today after all, but ah well. My confinement is your gain, I hope!

British Central Asia

British Central Asia (also known as British Turkestan) was an area of Central Asia controlled by the British from the mid 19th century through 1955, when it became the short-lived Central Asian Federation (now the independent nations of Bokhara, Kokand and Tekkestan). It was established as part of the Great Game between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia.

History

British merchants and explorers first entered British Central Asia from India (via Afghanistan and Persia) in the 1810s. In 1825, William Moorcraft and his companions became the second group of Europeans to visit the holy city of Bokhara, while Arthur Conolly reached Khiva late in 1829. In 1843, buoyed by their success in the Anglo-Afghan War and driven by fears of Russian expansion towards India, the British compelled the Khan of Khiva and the Emir of Bokhara to accept trade agreements and British consuls in the cities of Bokhara, Merv, Khiva and Samarkand. This was soon followed by defensive pacts and the stationing of British troops, and in 1856, the annexation of Khiva and Bokhara. The Khanate of Kokand followed in 1862 and British Central Asia took on its final borders.

During the First World War, forces from British Central Asia took part in both the occupation of Persia and the Lake Van campaign. The heavy casualties inflicted on the Central Asian regiments stirred up nationalist sentiment, and Bolshevik propaganda spread along the Ural'sk-Tashkent Railroad after the September Revolution inspired numerous uprisings among the Turkic peoples of British Central Asia. The most serious revolt was that of Bokharan imam Ali al-Gijduvani, which lasted from 1919 through 1922 and greatly weakened British attempts to intervene in the Central Asian front of the Russian Civil War.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Khiva was a major center of anti-Soviet espionage and intrigue. There were numerous border clashes and incursions, Soviet agents continued to support Turkic resistance movements up until the German invasion of the USSR, and British forces nearly triggered war with the Soviet Union in February 1940. In the spring of 1942, the Ural'sk-Tashkent and Krasnovodsk-Merv railroards became a vital method of supplying the Soviet Union with Lend Lease material.

Weakened by the Second World War, Britain began to withdraw from its colonial empire in the late 1940s. When India gained independence in 1948, British Central Asia was cut off and vulnerable to Soviet influence. The NKVD-backed Young Turkic Movement grew from a student activist group to a guerilla army. Beginning in August 1950, British forces found themselves under serious pressure in the rural districts of the colony. Howard Montague's Conservative government was determined to preserve British influence in the region as Britain's contribution to the Cold War and greatly increased both the size of the British garrisons and training and arming of local militias as the nucleus of an independent and pro-British Central Asian state's army.

From 1950 until 1954, the Central Asian War drew in more and more British (and Commonwealth) troops, American volunteers and Soviet advisors to the Turkic Liberation Army. After the TLA surrounded and defeated Britain's Royal Samarkand Regiment and the Central Asian 1st and 5th Divisions outside Vabkent in February 1955, public pressure forced Montague to begin to withdraw British troops. The withdrawal was complete by the fall of 1955, and British Central Asia was replaced by the Central Asian Federation on October 1.

See Also

  • Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
  • List of Governors-General of British Central Asia
  • Central Asian Campaign (World War I)
  • Central Asian Campaign (Russian Civil War)
  • The King's Own Central Asian Rifles
  • Operation Genie
  • Soviet Invasion of Kokand
  • Sir Thomas White

Further Reading

  • 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
  • Map of British Central Asia in 1905
  • Yevgeniy Golovanov, My War Against the Bolsheviks (Paris, 1927)
  • Dennis Selkirk, Red Star and British Lion: the Central Asian War in a Cold War Perspective (Oxford, 1997)

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Whaddaya think, sirs?
 
So a more successful Great Game, from the British POV?
Mind you, not having Central Asia might affect WW1 (is likely to, even, as the Russians would be far less willing to an Entente Cordiale with Britain).
And then there is the Winter War to consider. Yes, the Soviets took large part of the attacking force from Central Asia.
So, hmm, maybe it goes a little bit too much like OTL?
 
So a more successful Great Game, from the British POV?

Precisely.

Mind you, not having Central Asia might affect WW1 (is likely to, even, as the Russians would be far less willing to an Entente Cordiale with Britain).
And then there is the Winter War to consider. Yes, the Soviets took large part of the attacking force from Central Asia.
So, hmm, maybe it goes a little bit too much like OTL?

Probably. I wondered about omitting the WW2 and Cold War stuff entirely, but I erred on the side of familiarity.

Regarding specific points, I think it's vague enough to allow for entirely different courses of WW1, the Winter War (that's what the near war in 1940 refered to - Britain came much closer to intervening on Finland's behalf in TTL because of the common border between the USSR and the Empire) and WW2, but I don't think the change is great enough to overcome the very existence of WW1 and WW2. Although Hitler - anybody born after 1820 or so, really - is butterflied away in TTL, so who knows?
 
Nice idea using the Wikipedia style! I don't know that much about rhe history of Central Asia, but it seems as if it's OTL Uzbekistan and surrounding areas, with Russia getting OTL northern Kazakhstan? I assume Afghanistan is also formally incorporated into the British Empire ITTL.

Also, it would be nice if you could post a map of the area now.
 
very interesting, the wikipedia style is very interesting..

what exactly is Tekkestan?

maps and flags are what I'd like to see, but a pro-British state in the area is very interesting and different.
 
Nice idea using the Wikipedia style! I don't know that much about rhe history of Central Asia, but it seems as if it's OTL Uzbekistan and surrounding areas, with Russia getting OTL northern Kazakhstan? I assume Afghanistan is also formally incorporated into the British Empire ITTL.

Also, it would be nice if you could post a map of the area now.

My map-making skills are, shall we say, not so good. I'd give shiny gold to anybody who came up with one, though!

As for the borders of Central Asia, it's roughly the area south of a line connecting Askhabad, Khiva, Chimkent, Bishkek and Issyk Kul. I'm not sure what the boundaries of the successor states look like, although Bokhara, Kokand and Tekkestan roughly parallel OTL central and southern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan and southern Turkmenistan, respectively.

what exactly is Tekkestan?

Southern Turkmenistan, named after the Tekke tribe who dominate the area in TTL.

maps and flags are what I'd like to see, but a pro-British state in the area is very interesting and different.

Thanks!
 
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