Bognor it ain’t


Russian Frontiers: eighteenth-century travellers in the


Caspian, Caucasus and Central Asia Beatrice Teissier (ed.)


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prisoners two Orientals in German uniform who understood no known language and could speak only a tongue no one else understood. An increasingly desperate translator


A


finally tried them in Tibetan. They understood him and explained their situation. They were herdsmen who had drifted across the border into Soviet territory by mistake, been conscripted into the Russian army, been captured, and put into German uniform. They had no idea where they were, what the war was about, or what they were supposed to be doing. Moscow lies east of Damascus, and Astrakhan, Russia’s port at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian, is east of Baghdad –Russia is, in fact, a largely oriental country, bordering on Cinoa and Mongolia in the far east. In the eighteenth century, Astrakhan was about the furthest point in this vast region known as Tartary that British travellers could reach, with any degree of safety. To the south-west lay the Caucasus with Chechen, Circassian, Georgian and other mountain tribesmen, often pagan or Muslim, mostly warlike and hostile. To the south lay Shia Persia, permanently at odds and often at war to the east with Sunni Central Asia or “Independent Tartary” as it was called. Here, the Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara, protected by deserts on all sides, were governed by suspicious,


fter the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, the British found they held as


xenophobic rulers who murdered, enslaved or tortured at whim. Beatrice Teissier’s anthology of British travellers’ descriptions of these unpromising regions is accompanied by explanatory comments and narrative. This is essential as there are a bewildering array of Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Mongol, Kalmyk and other tribes forming Greaters, Lesser and Middle hordes; these mostly nomadic, often unruly herdsmen mostly paid merely notional, if any, allegiance to the Tsar. John Bell, Peter Henry Bruce, John Cook, John Elton, George Forster, Mungo Graeme, Jonas Hanway, Reginald Hogg, John Perry, John Parkinson, James Spilman, George Thompson and Thomas Woodroofe are the travellers quoted, of whom it is safe to say almost no one today has ever heard, and with good reason. None of them is what we would call a good or interesting travel writer and it is impossible to tell the writings of one from another. They were merchants, diplomats,


Thomas Merton


A preparation for Advent based around the writings of Thomas Merton led by Revd Jane Eastell Spiritual Advisor for the Diocese of Bath & Wells


Saturday 26 November 10.30am to 3.00pm


The Milner Hall, St Peter Street Winchester SO23 8BW


Tickets: £17


Please send a cheque payable to The Thomas Merton Society to:


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Further details at: www.thomasmertonsociety.org 22 | THE TABLET | 24 September 2011


doctors, soldiers of fortune, engineers or East India Company officers for the most part. None of them appears to speak any of the local languages, and if they communicate with Tartar tribesmen it is through Russian interpreters. None of them finds these regions exotic or romantic, as their nineteenth-century successors were to do. The natives are seen as barbarians at best, savages at worst. The Kalmyks, around Astrakhan, who were Tibetan Buddhists, were believed “to worship an idol called the Dalay Lama” so little did Europeans of the time know of the supreme Tibetan pontiff. There was even a small community of Hindu traders from India in Astrakhan who managed to get permission for a ritual sati, or widow-burning. One traveller reports eating curry, drinking fermented mares’ milk and English pale ale, and using English cutlery in a nomad’s tent. In 1717 the Tsar sent Prince Cherkassky with about 4,000 troops on a mission to Khiva to persuade the khan to give up slave raiding and adhere to Moscow’s rule. The khan lured the prince into a trap, killed his troops, cut off the prince’s head, had it stuffed and sent as a present to the Khan of Bokhara. John Bell, merchant, doctor and diplomat, who reported this, commented that there was nothing the tsar could do: Khiva was simply too remote for any response. There are almost no voices in these travel


narratives, rather a repetition of topography, tribes, hordes, and their costumes and customs. British travellers had barely started to talk to and report the speech of these peoples. In the nineteenth century, the writers Lermontov and Tolstoy were to find these regions pregnant with romance and adventure, and nineteenth-century English travellers like Alexander “Bokhara” Burnes were to ride to


A Cheremi woman, illustrated in the memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce, c. 1783


Khiva and Bokhara and report back in true Orientalist style. It is not very romantic to risk being captured and sold into slavery, or else simply beheaded: this was the reality during the eighteenth century. British travellers were understandably


cautious, reluctant to go far without a large armed escort. Peter Henry Bruce manages to get inside a Muslim household in Tarku on the Caspian coast with the owner’s reluctant permission. His eight concubines and four wives are ordered to show themselves at a modest distance, but “they advanced with one accord and sat upon a sofa opposite us and … put many questions to us, by our interpreter”. On being told that men in Britain were only allowed one woman each, “they clapped their hands, and cried out, ‘Oh happy, happy country!’ Our host, not being at all happy with their conduct, ordered them immediately to their apartments, and they obeyed with much reluctance,” concludes Bruce. A far cry indeed from Bognor Regis. Robert Carver


OUR REVIEWERS


Julia Langdonis an author and broadcaster who has written about politics for 40 years.


Robert Carver travelled extensively in Russia in 1991.


John Joliffe is the author of English Catholic Heroes.


Emma Kleinwrites about Jewish affairs for The Tablet.


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