Ubashi Khan

Depiction of Ubaschi Chan in the Reiss Museum in Mannheim - attributed to Ai Qimeng (face) and Chinese court painter, around 1771

Ubashi Khan or Ubaschi Chan (other name variants: Ubasha , Obis ) was the last Khan of the Kalmyks on the Volga (ruled 1761–1771; † 1774/5 in Beijing ). The Russians abolished the khanate after it left the Volga region with most of its people and moved to the Ili (1771).

government

Like his immediate predecessors, the Khan was a vassal of the Tsarist empire in the 18th century. However, he got into trouble through the colonization policy of Catherine II (ruled 1762–1796), which resulted in over a hundred Russian and German settlements on the lower Volga in just four years. Because of this he complained to the Russian government in 1765/6, and attacked a German settlement near Tsaritsyn . The pastureland of the Kalmyks was threatened, and with it their livelihood: the herds of cattle, because only a few Kalmyks were interested in farming. The settlers and the Cossacks pushed their flocks from the water points and their official representatives forbade the Kalmyks from continuing to use the acquired land. In addition, several Russian fortification lines delimited the pastureland in the north, south and west (the last was not completed until 1770) and prevented the Kalmyks from taking possession of new land. Furthermore, the Russian government ordered Ubashi's son to be held hostage, in addition to the 300 or so noble hostages who were already living with the Russians in the capital or in Astrakhan.

The Russian government understood the need to keep the Kalmyks as cavalry troops for war, insurrection and border protection in the undeveloped areas of the tsarist empire, but it was absolutely unable to empathize with the principles of pasture farming . Catherine II brushed aside all concerns as unfounded. In addition, it demanded more troops for the Russo-Ottoman War , which broke out in 1768 , than the Kalmyks were prepared to provide in view of their threat from possible raids by the Kazakhs ( Small Horde , formally also vassals of the Tsarist Empire). Ubashi took part in the war in 1769, but provided only half of the required troops.

The emigration in 1771

At that time there were still connections between the Kalmyks and their old home country (see Oirats ). In the 1950s, refugees from Inner Asia who had fled from there due to the internal conflicts in the jungle and the Chinese massacre of 1757/8 , repeatedly arrived . The Russian authorities tried unsuccessfully to convert them to Christianity and (despite Chinese protests demanding their repatriation) then resettled them with the Kalmyks. There they pleaded z. T. for a return to the Ili. Sometime between 1767 and 1770, the Kalmuck leaders (and their clergy under Louzang Jalchin) decided to return home in view of the deteriorating living conditions. The Dalai Lama set the date of withdrawal to January 5, 1771 and the majority of the Kalmyks moved to the eastern bank of the river in 1770 with the pretended establishment of exhausted pastures. At the appointed time, depending on the source, around 31,000 tents or 169,000 men withdrew, but the 11,000 tents west of the Volga remained behind that spring because of the impassability of the river. Measures by the governors of Astrakhan and Orenburg to prevent emigration (hostage-taking, persecution by Dragoons, Cossacks and Bashkirs) came too late.

The refugees moved through the Urals to the Turgai region with great deprivation of food and food. The rest of the way they were attacked one after the other by the Kazakhs under Nurali (Small Horde) and Ablai Khan (r. 1731 / 71–81, Middle and Great Horde) as well as the Kyrgyz and their flocks, many starved and thirsty, were killed or enslaved. Only 66,000 survivors made it to the Ili , where they received support from the Qing-China administration and were assigned four grazing areas. The Kalmuck leaders were ordered to Jehol and received there by the Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1796; † 1799). Around 1774 and 1790 they (including Ubashi's son) made plans to return to the Volga, but these were never carried out.

Remarks

1. ↑ His ancestry was as follows: Ayuki (ruled 1669–1724) - Chakdorjab - Donduk-Dashi (ruled 1741–1761) - Ubashi.

literature

• M. Khodarkovsky: Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771 . Ithaca 1992.
• M. Khodarkovsky: Russia's Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 . Bloomington / Indianapolis 2002.

Web links

• The Hero Coming to the East ---- Wobaxi - English