Uzbekistan: Russian troops approaching Khiva across the 'Death Sands' to the wells of Adam-Krylgan. Nikolay Karazin, 1888

As soon as the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was completed in the late 1850s, the Russian Ministry of War began to send military forces against the Central Asian khanates. Three major population centers of the khanates—Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand—were captured in 1865, 1867, and 1868, respectively. In 1868 the Khanate of Bukhara signed a treaty with Russia making Bukhara a Russian protectorate. Khiva became a Russian protectorate in 1873, and the Khokand Khanate finally was incorporated into the Russian Empire, also as a protectorate, in 1876.

By 1876 the entire territory comprising present-day Uzbekistan either had fallen under direct Russian rule or had become a protectorate of Russia. The treaties establishing the protectorates over Bukhara and Khiva gave Russia control of the foreign relations of these states and gave Russian merchants important concessions in foreign trade; the khanates retained control of their own internal affairs. Tashkent and Khokand fell directly under a Russian governor general.

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