| This is an analysis of the foundation and growth of the Kalmyk khanate from the early XVIIth century to the death of Aiuka Khan. Researched in the Soviet Union and the United States, it places the khanate within the context of a changing Inner Asia and emphasizes Kalmyk relations with Russia, their most powerful sedentary neighbor. The Kalmyks, a West Mongol people, settled in the Iaik (Ural)-Volga steppe of the north Caspian littoral after leaving Djungharia and crossing southern Siberia. In order to insure their peoples' existence and secure their power over the Kalmyks and other Turko-Tatar tribes of the region, the princes of the Torghud tribe reached an accord with the Russians, titular rulers of the area. The nomads, whose leaders considered themselves allies of Russia, were allowed pasturage, trade, military supplies, subsidies, and significant political independence. Russia gained help in securing its southern frontier and significant numbers of irregular cavalry to support its imperial expansion in the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Europe. The Kalmyk rulers continually angered Russia by allowing raids on Russian settlements and by establishing independent relations with other Mongols, China, Tibet, Central Asia, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire and its clients. The Russians, who considered the Kalmyks vassals, endeavored to curtail these exchanges and stop the raids by a series of oaths of allegiance. When such oaths failed, the Russians increasingly manipulated internal political divisions, encouraged the sedentarization of nomads, and threatened the very foundations of the khanate by accelerated colonization of the Volga steppe. By 1724, despite growing resentment of the Kalmyk khan, Russia had established mechanisms for the subversion of the khanate and its eventual absorption into the empire. |
