Under Catherine the Great, Russia’s expansion gained pace again. Access to
the Baltic had not resolved the problem that Russia had with maritime
transport, and this was limiting economic expansion. Low temperatures
left the northern ports unusable for many months of the year. To a great
extent this drawback would direct Russia’s foreign policy throughout the
nineteenth century. The only solution was to conquer ports of warm sea
waters either to the west, through Poland, to the south, towards the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean, orWnally to the east, towards the Sea of Japan.
Regarding the West, Russia agreed with Prussia and Austria to divide up
Poland among them in the treaties of 1772, 1793 and 1795. Ukraine suVered
a similar fate: at the end of the eighteenth century western Ukraine (Galicia)
was taken over by Austria, while eastern Ukraine was increasingly assimilated
into the Russian Empire. With respect to the south, the RussiansWrst invaded
the Crimea in 1736 and in 1783 Catherine the Great annexed it (receiving
international approval in 1792). In 1795 Russian troops took Shemakha and
vast territories in northern Azerbaijan. Finally, in 1828 the Russians split
Azerbaijan’s territory with Persia and incorporated Eastern Armenia into
the Russian Empire. The occupation of the several regions of western Georgia
took from 1810 to 1864. Despite its dominance of the area, the lack of success
in the Crimean War (1853–6) against the Ottoman Empire meant that access
to the Mediterranean remained restricted.
During the nineteenth century Russia also attempted to control Central
Asia, an eVort that the British endeavoured to ruin. The duel between Britain
and Russia became known as the ‘Great Game’, which, as we saw in Chapter 7,
also strongly inXuenced the archaeology of China and neighbouring territor-
ies in the eastern part of Central Asia. The Great Game led Britain to
involvement in the politics of Afghanistan in the Anglo-Afghan Wars
(1839–42, 1878–80, 1919), resulting in the establishment of the Durand
Line which separated Afghanistan from British India. British territories in
Asia thus became protected from Russian expansionism. Yet, by the end of the
nineteenth century Russia had managed to impose her rule over most of
Central Asia: major parts of the northeast and central Kazakh territories had
been incorporated into the Russian Empire by 1840 and in 1855 Kazakhstan
became fully Russian. In 1865, Russia occupied Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
Turkmenistan became annexed by Russia between 1865 and 1885. By 1895
the southern Russian frontier became stable. In addition to the southern
push, Russia strove to secure Eastern Asian ports, but this led to defeat
in the Russo-Japanese war over Korea and Manchuria in 1905. Rivalry
between Russia and the United States also emerged over the development of
Manchuria.
Russian Empire and French North Africa 249