The Oirats constituted the left wing tumen (zun gar) of the Mongol army.
In the middle of the XVII century nomadic Mongolian-speaking tribes of Oirats (Dzungars), in response to the creation of a powerful power by more sedentary Manchu tribes led by Nurhatsi, were able to unite in a confederation under the leadership of Erdeni-Bator-Khuntayshi Khan. From then on, the Oirats and Manchus became deadly rivals, in an attempt to establish their hegemony in East and Central Asia.
The expansive Oirats, who in Genghis Khan’s time constituted the tumen of the left wing (zun gar, dzun gar) of the Mongolian army, became the last nomads in world history who, having united a number of Mongolian tribes into a strong khanate, tried again to reach the rich agricultural states of the East in order to plunder them and establish control over them (according to Bartold V.V.). But only in the face of even more expansive and witty Manchus, the Dzungars met the most serious opponent.
Having conquered the Han Chinese, using unlimited human and huge economic resources of China, the Manchus gradually displaced the Oirats from their ancestral nomads in the Mongol Altai, and also subjugated the tribes in the bend of the Huang He — Ordos, in Qinghai and Tibet. The headquarters of Dzungar khans under Tsewen Rabdan (reign 1697-1727) moved to the tract of Kulja, which is in the valley of the Ili River (now the territory of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous District of XUAR of the PRC). The Qing Empire built a fortress at the Kobdo River (Mong. Khovd-gol — a river in the west of Mongolia), pushed the Dzungars from their ancestral nomads. This led to the fact that the Dzungars, seeking to secure their capital, began to make campaigns in the western direction against the Kazakhs.
The rivalry for pasture territories constantly confronted nomadic Dzungars and Kazakhs bordering each other. Moreover, the Kazakhs fell victim to the aggression of the more expansive Dzungars back in the XVII century. The main difference between the Kazakhs and Dzungars was not only that the Turkic Kazakhs were Islamized and mestizized, and the Mongols — Dzungars were Buddhized. Both of them were more nomads and besides, the Kazakhs’ nobility had their genealogy (mostly legendary) from Genghis Khan. However, the Dzungars, knowing the Kazakhs well, never recognized this.
Here the main difference was that numerous Kazakh tribes, poorly connected with each other, unlike ethnically unitary Dzungars of East Asia, could not create a centralized power under a single scepter, even during the reign of all-Kazakh Khan Tauke in 1680-1718. Especially when they were divided into three nomadic zhuzes: the Elder, Middle and Younger, between which there was an internecine struggle for power, for pastures and cattle. And so independently Kazakhs could not resist the most dangerous enemy in the Steppe — the Dzungars.
Hence, the Kazakhs, as the weakest geopolitical player in Central Asia, had a choice of three geopolitical alternatives of allegiance:
1. The Chinese model, which meant rigid assimilation along Chinese civilizational lines (the Chinese later demonstrated this with the Oirats and other Mongolian tribes) and the introduction of an East Asian developmental structure.
2. Dzungarian — nomadic, threatening almost complete disappearance of the Kazakh ethnos as a result of its complete assimilation by the Oirats.
3. Russian, associated with the incorporation into the multicultural and multiconfessional Eurasian empire, in which the power and elite were Europeanized. But the last option provided for the softest by means and the longest by time acculturation of the Kazakh ethnos and its entry into a qualitatively higher stage of civilizational and cultural development from the position of European historiography. As the historical experience has shown, it was the Russian model, despite all the hardest costs (the transition from nomadism to sedentary economy is always painful), that allowed Kazakhs to preserve their ethno-confessional identity and further reach a higher level of civilization (according to Klyashtorny S.G.).
Hence, of all the three geopolitical forces (Manchus, Dzungars and Russians), it was the Dzungars who were the greatest danger to the Kazakhs. Since even the constant threat from the Chinese did not prevent the invasive policy of the Dzungar noyons (khuntayshi) against the Kazakhs. Since the end of the XVII century a whole series of Dzungar invasions (1681-1684, 1694, 1711-1712, 1714-1717) started and then followed on the Kazakh nomads. After which in 1717 the all-Kazakh khan Tauke for the first time addressed Peter I with a request to accept Kazakhs into Russian subjection, but without paying yasak, without performing duties and with preservation of the khan’s authority over Kazakhs.
But the death of Tauke in 1718 and the subsequent disintegration of more or less unified Kazakh horde into three parts (three zhuzes), prevented this from happening. That immediately led to grave consequences. The most terrible for the Kazakh nomads were the invasions of the Dzungars led by Huntayshi Tsevan-Rabdan in 1723-1727. Subsequently, this period in the history of the Kazakh people was called «Aktaban shubyryndy», which translates as «fleeing until the whitening of the heels» (according to A.Y. Bykov).
As a result of these invasions, the best lands of Kazakhs — pastures of Semirechye, became nomads of Dzungars. And up to the end of the 50s of the XVIII century Kazakh zhuzes: Middle and Senior zhuzes paid tribute from the Dzungars, thus recognizing the Dzungar subjection, there was an intensive process of mutual influence, interaction and ethnic interpenetration.
Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk region. 1879
The most difficult was the situation of the Younger Juz, which was pushed to the north and in addition was attacked by Bashkirs, Karakalpaks, Bukharans, Volga Kalmyks and Yatsk Cossacks, who were dissatisfied with the migration of the Juz to the Urals.
The Kazakh batyr (military leader) Bukenbai in a conversation with the Russian diplomat A. Tevkelev in 1748 said figuratively about the situation of the Kazakhs before their accession to Russia:
«When the Kirghiz-Kaisak (Kazakh) horde was not accepted as a subject of the Russian Empire, did not they… from all sides… running everywhere like hares from greyhound dogs, were ruined and their livestock, running, abandoned themselves, and sometimes it happens in the most necessary need of wives and children abandoning, only left…. When the Zyungor (Dzungarian) Kalmyks attacked, they would run to the side, and the Bashkirs would attack, then they would go to the other side, and the Volga Kalmyks and the Ovatsk Cossacks and the Siberian army would attack, then they would already run and find no place for themselves» (quoted in Bekmakhanova N.E.). by Bekmakhanova N.E. — eloquent testimony).
And although the Kazakhs sometimes won rare victories over the Dzungars (in 1728 and 1729), they could not hold back the onslaught of the persistent Dzungars with their own forces, this was well understood by the Sultan of the Younger Juz Abulkhair, who began to send new embassies to Russia with a request for allegiance. It was not cowardice, as they say now, it was the realities of the time, without any modern context. On February 19, 1731, the official registration of Russian citizenship of the Kazakhs of the Younger Juz was carried out. A little later there were separate oaths of allegiance to Russia of sultans and elders of the Middle zhuz. Thus, the 30s and 40s of the XVIII century became the years when the tribal nobility of the two zhuzes (the Younger and Middle zhuzes) made a historical choice in favor of Russia. However, for many reasons, the process of joining the Kazakhs to Russia stretched for a whole century.
The point is that the degree of Russia’s influence on the Kazakhs during this period should not be exaggerated. And if Russia considered the Kazakhs’ acceptance of Russian citizenship as evidence that this territory was under the Russian crown, the Kazakh leaders themselves regarded this act as a kind of patronage and protection of the powerful «white tsar» over the quite independent Kazakh people, oppressed by the same Mongols from the east.
However, the Dzungars, who had established a truce with China, completely ignored the new Russian «protection» of the Kazakh nomads and in 1741-1742 resumed their raids on the Kazakh zhuzes. Kazakhs had a very «tight», they had to concentrate and huddle along the Russian military fortifications in order to escape the Dzungarian massacre. Moreover, the Russian authorities allowed the Kazakh population to enter the Russian fortresses in case of Dzungarian raids. Russia had a conflict with Dzungaria because of Kazakhs.
Kazakh sultans with representatives of Russian officialdom. St. Petersburg, second half of the XIX century. From the collection of B. L. Modzalevsky. L. Modzalevsky
In 1742 the Senate sent Colonel G.F. Miller to Dzungaria in order to stop military attacks on «Russian subjects» — Kazakhs. Miller’s mission was successful. The Dzungars then had a good exchange with the Russians. At the request of the Russians, the Dzungars released from captivity the authoritative Sultan Ablai and a number of influential Kazakh beks and assured the Russian authorities that there would be no new attacks on «Russian subjects». The Dzungars were quite aware of what a war with the empire, which had modern Western weapons and resources unavailable to them, could lead to.
But the main thing was that at that time, the mortal enemy for the Dzungars was Qing China, not a distant northern power. And a war on two fronts with them was deadly for the Dzungars. At the same time, the Dzungars did not abandon attempts to exert political pressure on the Kazakh zhuzes in order to force them to recognize the Dzungar subjection. And they succeeded. Middle zhuz unconditionally recognized their subjection from Dzungar Huntayshi, while being in Russian subjection, and even paid tribute to the Dzungars, including young men (Bichurin N.Ya.). This was a period of rather forced and sometimes even desperate maneuvering of the Kazakhs between three powerful actors: China (Qing Empire), Dzungaria and Russia. Later, it was China that liberated the Kazakhs from the Dzungarian yoke.