Yermak.

This is coolbert:

Military conquest has had a profound effect upon the world. We are familiar with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire. And we of course are familiar with the American settlers conquest of much of North America.

We are less familiar with the Russian conquest of Siberia. A conquest that established Russia as a world power. As much as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec was amazing [this has been touched upon in a prior blog entry], the Russian conquest of Siberia was perhaps even more so. A Cossack force of only five hundred musketeers [streltsy] defeated a much larger force of the Sibir Khanate, and established Russian claims, rule, and dominion over one of the world's greatest land masses.

In the 1500's, the Principality of Moscow governed only a small area, rule having been only recently consolidated by the famous Ivan, who proclaimed himself Czar.

Wealth within the principality was measured mainly in the value of furs traded with western Europeans. Furs such as European beaver, mink, ermine, and sable all returned a great value to the Moscovites. Depleted fur resources during this period meant the Muscovites had to look eastward of the Ural mountains for sources of pelts.

The family Stroganov was the principal movers and shakers in the fur trade. A trade that was now impeded by the Sibir Khanate, who ruled eastward of the Urals and controlled the fur trade in this area. This Khanate, ruled by Khan Kuchun, a descendant of the now gone Golden Horde, was hostile to the Stroganovs and the Russians and forbade trapping of furs from their domain.

In the year 1582, in response to the intransigence and hostility of the Khanate, the Stroganovs employed the services of a Cossack freebooter, Yermak, to bring the Sibir Khanate to heel. Freebooter means plunderer or pirate. It would be perhaps wrong to think of Yermak is being a pirate as we understand a pirate today.

Yermak probably engaged in what we would call genial extortion. Pay a tax in merchandise or I will make life miserable for you.

The name of Yermak should be as well known as is Cortez, Pizarro, etc., but it is not. Leading his band of five hundred cossack muskeeters [streltsy], by boat, to the capitol of the Khanate, Isker [the city of Tobolsk now exists approximately where Isker was once located], the cossacks engaged in battle and defeated the forces of the Khan [click here to see a famous painting of the battle where the Khan's forces were defeated].

This is another example of how superior firepower can be used by a numerically inferior force to defeat a numerically superior but technologically inferior enemy [forces of the Khanate were armed with bows and arrows and swords]. Read about the conquest from the Russian view point by clicking here.

The results of this battle were profound. Yermak relayed word to the Czar that he was victorious. And that the Czar could now justifiably lay claim to the Khanate and contiguous lands. These lands of course stretched from the Urals eastward to the Pacific!!! And of course, obligingly so, the Czar did claim the lands east of the Urals, all the way to the Pacific.

In the subsequent decades and centuries to follow, the Russians settled this claimed land in a fashion similar to what was done in the American conquest of the western part of North America.  

First a fort, manned by Cossacks, with a trading post co-located. Then settlers to farm. Then a village, a town, or a city. All the while receiving resistance from the "indigenous" population. And this progress spread from west to east with amazing rapidity until the Pacific Ocean was reached. Click here and here to see an interesting time lines for Russian expansion eastward. This process has had a tremendous impact on the Russian psyche:

"The joining of Siberia is the most important, happiest and greatest event in the history of Russia, after the overthrow of the Tatar yoke and the reforms of Peter the Great." (V.G. Rasputin) [This Rasputin is a modern Russian writer. I am not sure if he is related to the infamous Father Gregory Rasputin of one hundred years ago?].

The conclusion was a Russian Siberia of prodigious wealth and space. A wealth that was not even realized by the Stroganovs, the Czar, or Yermak. Furs, timber, oil, precious metals, etc. Great wealth that has not been fully exploited, even to this day. And all this acquired by five hundred men using superior firepower, and being led by a superior and determined individual [so much like Cortez, is it not??].

coolbert.