Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the development of tea trade and the local tea-drinking culture in Turkestan after Russia's conquest. The ubiquitous teahouses were a distinctive cultural and social phenomenon in Turkestan, and the local tea-drinking practices reflect a fusion of Chinese, Russian, and Inner Asian cultures. At the same time, In the nineteenth century, the Central Asian tea market was a huge market within the Russian Empire. It involved complex trading routes and the competition between British and Russian Empires. Based on the primary sources, the Russian colonial rule had two major concerns regarding the tea trade: to replace British/Indian tea with Russian tea in the Central Asian market, and to integrate Turkestan more closely into the imperial economic system. This shows Russia's intention to turn Turkestan into a terminal, not a transit, of tea trade, which also implies the shifting position of Central Asia in the nineteenth century. Based on various travel accounts and published materials from Turkestanskii sbornik, this paper aims to show that the significance of the tea market and tea-drinking culture in Central Asia have been overlooked by previous studies. The Central Asian tea market evolved simultaneously along with the establishment of Russia's hegemony in the region.