10. Why did it take so long for the Russian army to subdue the Caucasus in the first parts of the nineteenth century?
The Russian conquest of the Caucasus was a long and bloody process, which cost Russia enormous number of its soldiers’ lives. The war against the mountaineers in the 19th century lasted almost fifty years and ended in 1859 with the last Caucasian imam Shamil’s surrender to the Russian army at the aoul of Gunib in Dagestan. Actually, the struggle continued until 1864, but it was rather an agony of a dying “mountain eagle” than its full-scale attack. Overall, it was an incredibly long period if we consider that even Napoleon was beaten by the Russian army within one year. There were many reasons of why the Russian conquest of the Caucasus took so much time, and some of them will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
First of all, it should be said that neither in the 19th, nor in the previous centuries Russia was not the sole would-be conqueror of the Caucasus. There have always been other competitors for the presence in that region. In the nineteenth century there were two main rivals for Russia – Persia and the Ottoman Empire. So, rather than concentrate fully on the mountaineers, Russia had to deal with these two belligerent states first, which certainly made the Russian conquest longer. Neither Persia nor the Ottoman Empire were glad to see how Russia slowly but deliberately occupied their former territories and tried their best to put a stop to this. The Russian conquest of the Caucasus entailed two Russo-Persian wars (1806-1813 and 1826-1828) and one Russo-Ottoman war (1828-1829). In addition to that, Britain with its global political interests became disturbed by the Russian advance as well. That was the so-called "Great Game" - the Anglo-Russian competition for land and influence across Asia. Caucasus was the place where the Great Game met the Eastern Question, the multipower struggle over the eastern Mediterranean and...