The Trade Communication in the Kyrgyz Steppe (first half of the XIX century): Some Characteristic Features

This paper examines the features of trade and communication in the Kyrgyz steppe during the first half of the XIX century. The attention is paid to measures to protect trade routes from nomad attacks, to the means of communication, as well as to the slave trade and its main driving forces. There were used as materials the sources of personal origin of travelers and emissaries who visited Central Asia in the XIX century. The another source for our research was collections of documents. When solving research problems, we used general scientific traditional methods of analysis, synthesis, concretization and generalization. The historical-comparative method is of great importance in the study, which made it possible to look at the events in Central Asia through comparison with similar events at this time in the Caucasus. The authors concluded that in the first half of the XIX century in the Kyrgyz steppe (in Central Asia), trade was a very important source of income for the indigenous population. Due to the regional characteristics (the presence of nomads), trade routes were constantly under threat of blocking, and trade caravans were under threat of looting. The intrigues of the rulers of the Bukhara and Khiva khanates played an important role in curbing the region's trade relations with other countries. In an effort to prevent each other from strengthening, they created terms for looting trade caravans, as well as carrying out raids on neighboring countries in order to capture people. Subsequently, the captured prisoners became one of the most important goods on the territory of the Kyrgyz steppe, which encouraged the capture of slaves, the slave trade and the use of slave labor in agriculture. It is also important to emphasize that many socio-economic processes in Central Asia were identical to those in the Caucasus (Circassia and Abkhazia). Copyright © 2020 by International Network Center for Fundamental and Applied Research.