The last days of the emir: bukharan and russian monarchies in the inter-revolutionary period

Abstract

Between the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions, Tsar Nicholas II observed an increasingly weakened position on both the domestic and international stage, especially in Russia’s status as a colonial power in the south. Thus Nicholas II and Emirs Abdul Ahad Khan and Mohammed Alim Khan, rulers of the Bukharan Emirate (a protectorate of Russia) utilized concurrent methods of self strengthening and mutually beneficial monarchical relations to prevent the destabilizing of their respective autocratic governments. Meanwhile, reform movements in Bukhara were fuelled not only by the corruption of the Emir, but ideological rifts over the status of Russian Empire within Bukharan borders. Utilizing texts from Western travel authors, photographs from Russia’s ethnographic surveys and casual court documentation, and the works of Bukharan reformers, this thesis argues that during the inter-Revolutionary period, Nicholas II’s colonialist ideas were influenced by the decay of the Bukharan court and its ability to prop up his own weakening rule.