Dr Alexander Morrison

Dr Alexander Morrison
Fellow & Tutor in History
New College
alexander.morrison@new.ox.ac.uk

I am a historian of empire and of colonial warfare, with a particular focus on the Russians in Central Asia. My background is in South Asian History, and much of my work compares Russian and British Imperial  and military history. I read Modern History at Oriel College, and was then elected to a Prize Fellowship at All Souls College, which I held from 2000 – 2007. From 2007 - 2013 I was Lecturer in Imperial History at the University of Liverpool, and from 2014 – 2017 Professor of History at Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan, before returning to Oxford as Fellow and Tutor in History at New College, which I hold in conjunction with a Faculty post in the History of Modern War. I teach undergraduate papers in European and Asian history, Global and Imperial history, and the history of warfare from ca.1800.

 

Featured Publication
The Central Asian Revolt of 1916

The Central Asian Revolt of 1916. A collapsing empire in the age of war and revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019)

https://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526129420/

The 1916 Revolt was a key event in the history of Central Asia, and of the Russian Empire in the First World War. This volume is the first comprehensive re-assessment of its causes, course and consequences in English for over sixty years. It draws together a new generation of leading historians from North America, Japan, Europe, Russia and Central Asia, working with Russian archival sources, oral narratives, poetry and song in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. These illuminate in unprecedented detail the origins and causes of the revolt, and the immense human suffering which it entailed. They also situate the revolt in a global perspective as part of a chain of rebellions and disturbances that shook the world's empires, as they crumbled under the pressures of total war.

Research
‘Infantry of the Orenburg Line Battalions in winter garb on the Russian expedition to Khiva in 1839-40.’

‘Infantry of the Orenburg Line Battalions in winter garb on the Russian expedition to Khiva in 1839-40.’

  • Russian Military History
  • Russian Colonialism
  • History of Central Asia

Much of my research to date has concentrated on understanding the nuts and bolts of how Russian imperial rule functioned (or failed to do so) in 19th and early 20th-century Central Asia, which is best described as  the political and administrative history of Russian colonialism. In Russian Central Asia this means a considerable focus on the social background and institutional culture of the military, who administered the region. I also interested in the ways in which the local population engaged with, exploited and suffered from these new structures of power, and in Russian imperial ideologies.

I am currently completing a History of the Russian Conquest of Central Asia in which I seek to avoid the grand narrative of the 'Great Game' and return the British in India to the margins of the story, where they belong. Instead I will focus on the processes of decision-making which prompted the Russian advances, their entanglement with the politics of the steppe and of the Central Asian khanates, the logistical challenges of Inner Asian warfare and (to some extent) the local response, at least as far as this is revealed in Persian-language chronicles. British and Anglo-Indian sources and perspectives will only feature on the rare occasions where they were relevant or well-informed. Instead my book, though a series of micro-historical studies of the different phases of the advance, will place Central Asia itself at the heart of the narrative.

Future research projects include a comparative history of Semirechie as  Russian settler colony, an exploration of the literary culture of the Russian Imperial officer corps, a study of Soviet novels and films about the ‘Basmachi’ rebellion in Central Asia in 1917 – 1924,  and a microhistorical biography of General Alexei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin (1848-1925).

https://oxford.academia.edu/AlexanderMorrison 

Publications

  • The Russian Conquest of Central Asia.

    2020
    |
    Book
    The Russian conquest of Central Asia was the 19th century's most dramatic and successful example of European imperial expansion, adding 1.5 million square miles of territory and at least 6 million people - most of them Muslims - to the Tsar's domains. This book is the first comprehensive military and diplomatic history of the conquest to be published for over a hundred years. From the earliest conflicts on the steppe frontier in the 1830s, to the annexation of the Pamirs in the early 1900s, it gives a detailed account of the logistics and operational history of Russian wars against Khoqand, Bukhara and Khiva, the capture of Tashkent and Samarkand, the bloody subjection of the Turkmen, and the decision-making processes that launched these campaigns. It also explores in depth Russian diplomatic relations with Central Asian states and peoples, China, Persia and the British Empire. Based on ten years of archival research in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and India, on Persianate chronicles and an abundance of campaign memoirs, this book explains how Russia acquired and governed a colonial empire in Central Asia, with consequences that still resonate today.
    Turkestan, Central Asia, Russian Empire, Colonialism, Military History

  • Settler Bolsheviks in the Soviet “Eastern”

    2020
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film
    The Revolutionary and Civil War period in Central Asia became a popular subject for novels and films in the USSR. Portraying Russians as the main agents of progress in Central Asia against the villainous Basmachi, bandits who resisted the new Soviet order. In the 1960s these stories developed into a hugely popular genre of film, the Soviet “Eastern” that was strongly influenced by American “Westerns,” with the Basmachi playing the role of American Indians, and Bolshevik commissars and soldiers the cowboys and cavalry. This paper will explore the extent to which Soviet Easterns reflect settler colonial narratives, and the degree to which the Bolshevik claim to be bringing enlightenment and progress to a backward region has commonalities with settler colonialism elsewhere. It will focus on Semirechie, the main Russian settler colony in southern Central Asia, and in particular the film Alye Maki Issyk-Kulya (The Scarlet Poppies of Issyk-Kul, Bolotbek Shamshiev, 1972) and the novel on which it was based, Alexander Sytin’s Kontrabandisty Tian’-Shanya (The Smugglers of the Tian-Shan, 1930). It argues that while Sytin’s writing certainly does touch on settler colonial themes, these are muted in the film, which is instead suffused with Kyrgyz national narratives and symbolism.

  • The Central Asian Revolt of 1916.

    2019
    |
    c-book
    The 1916 Revolt was a key event in the history of Central Asia, and of the Russian Empire in the First World War. This volume is the first comprehensive re-assessment of its causes, course and consequences in English for over sixty years. It draws together a new generation of leading historians from North America, Japan, Europe, Russia and Central Asia, working with Russian archival sources, oral narratives, poetry and song in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. These illuminate in unprecedented detail the origins and causes of the revolt, and the immense human suffering which it entailed. They also situate the revolt in a global perspective as part of a chain of rebellions and disturbances that shook the world’s empires, as they crumbled under the pressures of total war.

  • "The extraordinary successes which the Russians have achieved". The Conquest of Central Asia in Callwell's 'Small Wars'.

    2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Small Wars and Insurgencies
    Charles Callwell’s Small Wars (1896, 1899, 1906) is widely considered both an ur-text for modern counter-insurgency studies, and a primer for the racialized late-Victorian approach to war against ‘savages’: either way it is usually only considered within a British context. Alongside the numerous examples Callwell used from British colonial campaigns, he frequently referred to those of other European powers – notably the Russian conquest of Central Asia. This article will seek to analyse Callwell’s views of Russian colonial warfare, establish the sources on which he relied, and evaluate his accuracy and the effect which the Russian example had on his thinking.

  • Convicts and Concentration Camps

    2019
    |
    Other
    |
    Kritika (Bloomington): explorations in Russian and Eurasian history
    Review Article on Clare Anderson, ed., A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies and Aidan Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903.
    • More
Teaching

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding European Military History; History of the Russian Empire; Imperial  & Colonial History; Central Asian History          .

I currently teach:

Prelims: FHS:

Approaches to History

EWH VII Eurasian Empires 1450 - 1800

EWH IV: 1815-1914 (Society, Nation, and Empire). 

EWH X The European Century, 1820-1925

Foreign Texts: Trotsky

EWH XI Global and Imperial History 1750 - 1930
 

EWH XIII Europe Divided 1914 – 1989
  EWH XIV The Global 20th Century, 1930 – 2003
 

Theme Paper C: Waging War in Eurasia, 1200-1945
 

SS 23 Empire and Nation in Russia and the USSR, ca. 1890-1924
 

Disciplines of History
 

 
   
   
In the Media

 ‘The Conquest of Central Asia through the Turkestan Album’ Voices on Central Asia 02/05/2018 (https://voicesoncentralasia.org/the-conquest-of-central-asia-through-the-turkestan-album/)

I write regularly for the website eurasianet.org, where my articles can be found here:

https://eurasianet.org/people/alexander-morrison

BBC World Service - Witness, 1916: Central Asia Rebels Against the Russian Empire 14/07/2016 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p040p1bh)

with Berny Sèbe, University of Birmingham: ‘Empires of Emptiness: fortresses of the Sahara and the Steppe’ Photographic exhibition, University of Birmingham 15/02/2016 – 15/05/2016 & Jackfield Tile Museum, Ironbridge, 23/05/2016 – 17/12/2016

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/lcahm/departments/languages/sections/french/events/2016/empires-emptiness.aspx

http://www.ironbridge.org.uk/plan-your-visit/events-and-exhibitions-calendar/empires-of-emptiness-fortresses-of-the-sahara-and-the-steppe/