![]() The fragile Republic of Armenia could not withstand the calamitous consequences of war. Modern Armenia emerged when the Republic of Armenia was established as a sovereign state in May 1918, after centuries of foreign rule but in the midst of war and the ongoing genocide by the Young Turks ruling in Constantinople (now Istanbul) against its Armenian population. They did not achieve modern statehood until 1918 as the Ottoman and Russian empires collapsed under the weight of the First World War. For centuries, therefore, Armenians experienced the various aspects and phases of modernization-the Enlightenment, the emergence of capitalism, urbanization, nationalism-as a subject people. The Persian Empire ruled Armenian lands in the east until the signing of the Treaty of Turkmenchai in 1828, which, in the aftermath of the Russo-Persian wars, fulfilled Russian imperial expansionist objectives into the Caucasus by replacing Persian rule. The latter inherited the historic Armenian lands as a successor state to the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman rule extended from the fourteenth century to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The Ottomans ruled the western and larger part, while the Persians ruled the eastern lands. The Armenian people entered the modern era with their historic lands of more than three millennia divided between two empires-the Ottoman and Persian empires. While overland Eurasian trade remains plagued by a historiographical assumption of its decline in the 18th century, Astrakhan and Orenburg were vital centers of Eurasian commerce, revealing the robust overland trade that remained outside of West European observation. This is not to suggest that increased regulation produced better control over Eurasia’s trade networks, but rather to reveal Russia’s significant investment in profiting from Asia’s trade as much as its competitors in Britain or the Netherlands did. In theory, the new outpost separated Russia’s “Asia” into separate zones for increased regulation: Astrakhan for goods arriving from the Caspian Sea, imported from Iran and India, and Orenburg for the increasing steppe traffic. A growing trade with the Central Asian Khanates of Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand led to the creation of Orenburg as the entry point for overland trade from the steppe in 1753. In the 18th century, Russia’s Asian trade increased Astrakhan’s customs fees collected from Asian trade goods surpassed the revenue generated by Russia’s Baltic ports in the first half of the century. Throughout the 17th century, trade with the Middle East and Central Asia increased, followed by an important breakthrough in relations with China culminating in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. Russia’s control of the Volga River, culminating in the conquest of Astrakhan on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the 16th century, was intended to open direct access for Russia’s merchants to reach Asia. Russia’s “Asia” was conceived broadly as the expanse of Eurasia from the Ottoman Empire to the shores of the Pacific. The capacity to adapt to changing circumstances is helpful in understanding the continuing relevance of Afghan traders to 21st-century forms of globalized capitalism, in contexts as varied as the former Soviet Union, China, and the Arabian Peninsula.Īstrakhan and Orenburg were the Russian Empire’s two “official” entrances from Asia in the early modern era. Their orientating values shift across time and space between various forms of religious, ethno-linguistic, and political identity. ![]() The trading networks Afghan traders have participated in are historically dynamic. Increasingly so too are the activities of Afghan merchants in Ottoman territories. ![]() The connective role performed by Afghan caravanners and religious minorities in the trade between India and Central Asia are especially well documented by historians. Such traders and the networks they form play a critically important role in connecting different parts of Asia with one another, including South Asia and Eurasia, as well as East and West Asia. ![]() Scholars have come to recognize that Afghan traders have long been active players in many contexts across Asia and beyond. Such connections are especially visible when viewed through the lens of the trade networks originating from the territories of modern Afghanistan. Yet scholarship produced in the 2nd decade of the 21st century suggests its multiple connections to a wide array of regions and settings. Afghanistan has long been conventionally regarded as a remote space peripheral to the wider world.
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