The demographic and agricultural development of the Kokand oasis during the Russian Imperial era: nomad immigration and cotton monoculture

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study investigates oasis expansion in the precolonial period and agricultural evolution in the colonial period using village-level statistics from the early twentieth century. This survey illustrates that the Kokand oasis in the Ferghana Valley initially appeared in the central part, where the Sart population settled by the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Uzbek and Karakalpak tribes migrated to the valley peripheries, while the Kyrgyz semi-nomads settled in the alluvial fan. It is not surprising that such a migratory process created a mosaic-like ethnic distribution. Furthermore, this study suggests that the pattern coincided with a variety of agricultural practices, and presents two contrasting models of cotton monoculture under the Russian Empire. The main area occupied by the Sarts presents a general model of canal-irrigated cotton planting in Central Asia, while the Karakalpaks’ cotton planting using groundwater in the periphery suggests multiple courses of nomad sedentarization.