The Turkestan Statute and the Reorganization of Administrative Divisions in Central Asia, 1886-1917: a Case Study of Jizzakh District

Abstract

For both political and economic reasons, the Russian Empire sought to establish administrative units in Central Asia based on taxonomic principles relating to governmental control, taxation, and land use. From the first years after the conquest, the colonial authorities introduced various new types of political divisions in the region. But the most foundational step in this process was the Turkestan Statute of 1886, which formally enumerated the requirements and naming conventions for establishing official administrative units. It is clear from the available sources that, before the 1886 statute, colonial efforts to establish administrative control, taxation, and regulated land use were sporadic and imprecise at best. For this reason, the Turkestan statute pressured colonial administrators to reconstitute administrative units that did not meet the requirements of the new Russian statutes. In this respect, the colonial officials tried to find a balance between the law and political-economic interests in reorganizing political divisions. This paper examines the reasons for the rearrangement of administrative units and the differences between the law and the bureaucratic views of colonial officials in this process. Its primary objective is to delineate ways in which colonial administrators used laws to consolidate administrative control, taxation, and land use in the process of redistribution of administrative-territorial units. My argument is that colonial officials implemented reorganization in some administrative units but not in others: in some cases, redistribution took place in administrative units that did not meet the political and economic interests of the colonial authorities, or colonial officials flouted the law altogether. In other cases, the colonial administration did not engage in redistribution of administrative units that did not pose a problem in governance and tax collection despite the fact that they were in violation of the requirements of the Turkestan statute.