In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Russian Empire sent "several government commissions" to survey the "quantity of arable land" for "prospective settlers," which concluded that "the steppe nomads possessed surplus land, which could be allocated to Slavic settlers." The "appropriation of 'Kazakh' surplus land" was perceived by officials as "legally justifiable" following "the 'Kazakh' Khans submission to the Russian throne" which transferred control over their land to "the property of the Russian monarch." The migration of Slavic settlers into Central Asia peaked between 1906 and 1912, "when approximately 1.5 million new Slav migrants poured into the region." By 1916, it was estimated that there were 3 million European settlers in the region. Since settlers were privileged by the Russian Empire, they were "given larger and more fertile tracts of land" while "farming plots allocated to [Kazakhs] were often useless for cultivation." The loss of access to the fertile lands was "a devastating blow to the 'Kazakh' nomadic economy" and forced many Kazakhs "to adapt to the sedentary lifestyle, or to move southward in search of new grazing lands for their herds."Ubiria 2015, p. 58-59.
