The time, manner, and purpose of this conquest can be divided into two stages: in the first, Russia acquired the greater part of Kazakhstan except its Semireche and Syr Darya – thus southernmost – segments; in the second, the latter two and all the rest, thus territories of present-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The earlier stage was longer and more gradual (1730–1848), and at certain points structurally resembled the preceding acquisition of Siberia (which in turn could be viewed as an analogy to the “winning of the West” by the United States); the later stage was relatively brief – lasting from 1864 to 1884, the decisive move, however, being compressed into several campaigns between 1865 and 1868 – and stood squarely in the psychological context of Europe's contemporary “scramble for the colonies.”

By 1730 the Kazakhs, as we have seen, had asserted themselves as a distinct group of nomadic tribes living in the eastern part of the Dasht-i Kipchak, speaking a distinctive Kipchak Turkic idiom, but lacking overall political unity. As a somewhat peculiar substitute for the latter, though, the tribes had coalesced into three confederations, the aforementioned Greater, Middle, and Lesser Hordes. Geography as much as tribal politics no doubt played a role in their formation: the Greater Horde occupied a territory roughly coterminous with Semireche, the Middle Horde that of central Kazakhstan, and the Lesser Horde that of western Kazakhstan.