wards, including honorific appointments as military officers. The
peasantry certainly did not gain as a result of Russian policy and
seem to have become worse off in many cases. Before the conquest,
the ra'yats, the larger category of peasants, were in a better position
than Russian peasants in that the ra'yats were not bound to the land
and owned their own homes and other property. However, Russian
authorities brought practices in the conquered territory closer to what
existed in the heart of the empire by converting local peasants into the
equivalent of state peasants who were bound to the land but not to a
landlord, or, with the widespread distribution of land grants to begs,
into serfs of the grants' recipients.
4
The early years of the nineteenth century were a time of impor-
tant demographic changes in the eastern Caucasus. Apart from the
death in battle of combatants and civilians (probably fewer than
3,000), tens of thousands of the region's inhabitants migrated away
from their home districts. They were motivated by the dangers of
war and famine as well as by political discontent. Still others were re-
located by force. Some migrated to more remote parts of their own
khanates and away from government control, most notably in Qobbeh
and Qarabagh, but more often they left their khanates altogether.
Sometimes they moved to another part of the region, like the Qara-
baghis who moved to Shirvan or the Shirvanis who moved to Talesh.
While these areas remained under the separate authority of their
khans, the population shifts, with the consequent changes in the tax
base, were cause for bitter disputes among the khans. Even more
people left the area subject to Russia and settled in districts under
Iranian control. In Qarabagh, Ganjeh, Yerevan, and the Muslim bor-
der districts of Georgia, people often emigrated in large groups, for
example when members of a tribe or inhabitants of a particular vil-
lage were led across the border by their chief or local administrator.
Some emigration was involuntary, especially in the case of Qarabaghi
Armenians captured by raiding Iranian soldiers. There was also a cer-
tain amount of reverse migration. Even during the wars, some nota-
bles and their followers reached an understanding with the Russians
and returned to their former homes. After the treaties of Golestan
and Torkmanchai still more people returned. However, the total
number of Muslims who emigrated exceeded by far the number who
returned. The situation with the Armenians was strikingly different.
There was a noticeable influx of Armenians into the area under Rus-
sian control, at first primarily to Tbilisi. These immigrants came from
various Muslim-ruled places, including Yerevan, where Armenians
were subject to harassment for their pro-Russian sympathies. Later,
The Consequences of the Struggle 149