Russian Conquest of Sibir, 1588-1589



A.) Prehistory

The Khanate of Sibir had emerged out of the ruins of the Khanate of the Golden Horde after Timur's invasion 1395. In 1563 an Uzbek named Kuchum seized control. He undertook raids into eastern Russia, where the Stroganoff family had strong trading interests. The Stroganoffs paid the Volga Cossacks to make war on Sibir; Cossack Hetman Yermak in 1580, with 7,000 men, conquered Tyumen, in 1582 defeated the Sibir army at Mt. Chuvash, and occupied the capital of Isker the day after (Oct. 26th 1582). Then the Stroganoffs withdrew their financial support and Yermak requested such from the Czar; little came out of it.
In 1584 Yermak was assassinated, and the Cossacks lost control.


B.) The War

In 1588 another Cossack force, now in the service of the Czar, retook Sibir and in 1589 expelled Kuchum Khan from Sibir territory.


C.) The Legacy

The Russians established fortified cities and brought Russian peasants in.




EXTERNAL
FILES 		Article Siberia, from Catholic Encyclopedia
Germak - Erobereren af Sibir, by O.A. Abraham, in Norwegian
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Ludmilla Thomas, Geschichte Sibiriens (History of Siberia), Berlin (East) : Akademie, 1982



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on June 7th 2003, last revised on November 17th 2004

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