The Khiva campaign and the Gandimian treaty (1873)

Russia prepared for five years for the campaign against Khiva: earlier expeditions – Bekovich-Cherkassky in 1717 and Perovsky in 1839 – had failed. Taking the khanate meant gaining the Amu Darya, its water, trade routes and fertile lower reaches. In February 1873 columns set out from Tashkent, Orenburg, Mangyshlak and Krasnovodsk with over 12 thousand soldiers, thousands of horses and nearly 20 thousand camels under K. P. von Kaufman. Winter cold, then desert heat, lack of water and disease thinned the force; the Krasnovodsk column turned back, while the other three reached Khiva (the textbook says the Mangyshlak column also turned back, but it joined the Orenburg column and reached Khiva). Khiva’s defenders resisted in several places in May, but the better-armed army took the city on 29 May (Old Style). On 12 August 1873 (Old Style) in the village of Gandimian Khan Muhammad Rahimkhan II signed the treaty: the khan called himself the emperor’s “loyal servant”, lost the right to foreign relations, the right bank of the Amu Darya passed to Russia, Russian vessels gained the right to sail freely and build piers, merchants traded without customs duty, and the khanate had to pay an indemnity of 2 million 200 thousand rubles over 20 years. According to the textbook, the khanate’s territory shrank by about three times and it became a protectorate.