11 ATLASES
History of Uzbekistan in maps
Uzbekistan as it appears in 11 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 2000: Transoxiana, Turkestan, Uzbekistan, Russian Turkestan, Soviet Central Asia, the Uzbek SSR, Soviet Uzbekistan. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Uzbekistan before it was Uzbekistan? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
Transoxiana (mod. Uzbekistan) · Mongol Empire
Bukhara and Samarkand, Islam’s eastern lamps, lay in Transoxiana when the region took the first full force of the war in 1220. “I am the punishment of God” was spoken from Bukhara’s pulpit. The region was rebuilt under the loose rule of the Chagatai khanate. A century later it produced Timur, who claimed the Chinggisid mantle from Samarkand.
| The Islamic powers — the opening position | |
| The Mongol Empire |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Turkestan (Russian Empire) · Industrial Revolution
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Colony or dependency |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Uzbekistan · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian republic, lay at the heart of Soviet cotton production. The irrigation canals that supplied the crop drained the Aral Sea. In the 1980s an investigation into falsified cotton figures led to thousands of prosecutions. The party leader, Islam Karimov, became president of independent Uzbekistan in 1991 and kept much of the old system of control until his death in 2016.
| The USSR, then Russia — the opening position | |
| Independent neighbours |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Russian Turkestan (mod. Uzbekistan) · Russian Revolution
Between 1865 and 1876 Russia conquered these lands, the heart of Russian Turkestan and home to the ancient cities of the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara. It stormed Tashkent in 1865 and annexed Samarkand in 1868. Bukhara became a protectorate: its emir remained in place but obeyed Russia. Russia subdued Khiva in 1873 and abolished Kokand in 1876. The Tashkent Soviet held on in isolation from 1917 until Frunze’s Turkestan Front reconnected and reconquered the region in 1920, ending the khanates. Muslim resistance, the Basmachi, continued fighting for years.
| Neutral or independent — the opening position | |
| The Tsarist empire | |
| Provisional Government, then the Whites | |
| Contested / peasant war | |
| Soviet power |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Russian Turkestan (mod. Uzbekistan) · Indian independence
Bukhara and Samarkand stood at the heart of Russian Turkestan, under tsarist rule from the 1860s. The emirate of Bukhara remained a princely state in all but name until the Red Army ended it in 1920. Four years later Soviet power redrew the region into national republics: this was Moscow’s answer to an empire-and-nation question the Raj was failing to answer farther south. Indirect rule, cotton extraction, and engineered borders made Central Asia an unheeded mirror of the subcontinent.
| Beyond the Raj · Portuguese & French India — the opening position |
INDIAN INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Uzbekistan · WWI
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| Russia in revolution |
Soviet Central Asia (mod. Uzbekistan) · Chinese Revolution
| Foreign empires — British, French, Russian, American — the opening position |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Uzbek SSR · Stalin’s Soviet Union
The Uzbek republic emerged in October 1924, when Moscow redrew Central Asia along national lines and dissolved the Bukhara and Khorezm republics. Its capital moved from Samarkand to Tashkent in 1930. Stalin’s plans made the republic the Union’s cotton field; that dependence later drained the Aral Sea. The campaign against the veil began here in 1927, and most deported Crimean Tatars were sent here in 1944.
| The Soviet Union — the opening position |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Soviet Uzbekistan · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position | |
| Aggressor clients & partners | |
| Democracies & powers fighting them |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Uzbekistan · Cold War
| USSR & Warsaw Pact — the opening position | |
| Non-aligned & neutral |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Soviet Central Asia (mod. Uzbekistan) · Mao’s China
| Beijing’s allies and friends — the opening position | |
| Beijing’s adversaries |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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