Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 29, 2006

A Turkmen man posing with a camel

The history of Central Asia is defined primarily by the area's climate and geography. The aridity of the region made agriculture difficult and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region; instead the area was for millennia dominated by the nomadic horse peoples of the steppe. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent peoples in the world, limited primarily by their lack of internal unity. The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century as firearms allowed settled peoples to gain control of the region. Russia, China, and other powers expanded into the region, and had captured the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution, most Central Asian regions were incorporated into the Soviet Union; only Mongolia remained nominally independent. The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialization and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local cultures, hundreds of thousands of deaths from failed collectivization programs, and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental problems. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, five Central Asian countries gained independence, although none of the new republics could be considered a functional democracy. (more...)

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