History of Central Asia

by Christoph Baumer

For more than a hundred years, Central Asia was the heartland of the mightiest military power on the planet. But after the fragmentation of the all-conquering Mongol polity, the region began a steep decline which rendered this former domain of horse lords peripheral to world affairs. The process of deterioration reached its nadir in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the former territories and sweeping steppes of the great khans were overrun by Tsarist Russia. In the concluding volume of his acclaimed Central Asia quartet, Christoph Baumer shows how China in the east, and Russia in the northwest, succeeded in throwing off the Mongol yoke to become the masters of their own previous rulers. He suggests that, as traditional transcontinental trade routes declined in importance, it was the `Great Game' - or cold war between Imperial Russia and Great Britain - which finally brought Central Asia back into play as a region of strategic importance. This epic history concludes with an assessment of the transition to modern independence of the Central Asian states and their struggle to contain radical Islamism.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2018

Reviews

[Dmitri]

Christoph Baumer completed his series with a fourth and final volume on Central Asia, covering roughly from the fifteenth century to the present day. The architecture you can still see in places like Uzbekistan was built during this period. Vol. 1 covered prehistory and people who developed the super weapon of the time, the horse drawn chariot. Vol. 2 delved into the culture of the middlemen who handled trade along the Silk Road routes from China to Rome, while Vol. 3 explored the coming of Islam from the west and Genghis Khan’s Mongols from the east. It’s difficult to compete with this earlier history.

As with his previous books it is is a lavish production, with in depth research and illustrations displayed in a nearly 400 page glossy 9 x 12 format. Baumer is a specialist in the region’s archeological, artistic and architectural history. He has traveled there extensively and made some major cultural discoveries of his own. The area encompasses the Caucasus mountains in the west to the Xinjiang deserts in the east, the frozen Siberian steppe in the north to the Hindu Kush and Himalaya mountains in the south. Ruins of ghost cities along the Taklamakan and Karakum wastelands bear witness to the passage of time.

This volume investigates the Khanates that built Bukhara and Samarkand, and the Great Game between Russia and Britain which vied for influence and control of the passes into India. Timur (Tamerlane), the 14th century scourge of Central Asia and patron of the Persian poet Hafez and the polymath ibn-Khaldun, and Babur, 16th century founder of India’s Islamic Mughal Dynasty both play outsized roles as the descendants of Genghis Khan. Also included is the Soviet period after Lenin in 1917, continuing intrigue with Britain over India and Iran, and the making of a cotton monoculture that drained the Aral Sea.