Journal of the Royal United
Service Institution
VOL. XIX. 1875. No. LXXX.
LECTURE.
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Friday, January 31, 1875.
THE RIGHT HONORABLE LORD LAWRENCE, G.C.B., G.C.S.I.,
in the Chair.
On Journeys Between Herat, and Khiva.
By Major-General Sir Frederic J. Goldsmid, C.B.,
K.C.S.I.
The late Lord Strangford, in an
interesting and elaborate paper on Vambery's Travels in Central
Asia, contributed nearly ten years ago in the
Quarterly Review, brings prominently to notice the fact
that Independent Turkestan, or the region of the three
Khanates of Khokand, Bokhara, and Khiva, was only
practically accessible to the non- accredited traveler
from Western Europe, on the southern side. Referring to
the approach from that quarter, he states that of the
Afghan routes the principal is that of Herat, converging
with the Persian route from Mashhad at Merv. I propose to
consider the information we find readily available on
this important section of the Central Asian Map; not
because it involves any very new features of political or
physical geography, but because it seems to have been
more or less ignored in the last two years' discussions
arising from an unusually direct, and, moreover, a
somewhat remarkable move of Russian diplomacy. The
journeys of Abbott and Shakespeare naturally present
themselves as affording the latest and most reliable data
for the purpose just stated. When they were undertaken,
the politics of Central Asia had suddenly become of the
deepest interest to those Englishmen who understood them;
of passing perplexity to those who, without full
comprehension of their import, were responsible for the
course pursued by this country in regard to them; but
were, upon the whole, rather caviare than strictly
congenial to the taste of the general public. In these
days, although the interest aroused at home in Central
Asia
VOL. XIX. B
JBOC Note: This was the crucial point in the
Great Game. Czarist Russia was moving ever closer
to the Indian border. The British were looking to
protect borders and the best way to protect
borders was to extend the Empire. Central Asia
was awash in spies and adventurers. In fact
Vambery cited above was recently the subject of a
press release by the British Government:
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One of the secret service's first
foreign agents - before MI6 was
established - was Arminius Vambery,
professor of oriental languages at the
Budapest university at the end of the
19th century. Traveler, translator and
adventurer, he is said to have introduced
Stoker to the Dracula legend during a
dinner at London's Beefsteak Club in
1890.
His putative usefulness for the British
was that he had the ear of the sultan of
Turkey, "your friend in
Constantinople", as his controller
in London described him. |
He provided information
about the weakening Ottoman empire and its
relations with the Austro-Hungarian empire and
Russia at the time of what Keith Hamilton, a
Foreign Office historian, yesterday called a
"new round in the Great Game, the
Anglo-Russian struggle for power in Asia".
The papers include letters to Vambery from his
Foreign Office handlers, though none of his
replies. One, dated 1893, refers to concern in
the Commons about the Turkish treatment of
Armenians. "Our humanitarian zealots, like
our missionaries, are politically inconvenient,
but they are not to be suppressed", Vambery
was told.
In 1897, the Foreign Office expressed concern
about the sultan's "manoeuvres for the
encouragement of Musselman [Muslim] agitation in
India and Afghanistan".
Vambery was always after money and most of the
Foreign Office's messages to him refer to
arrangements for sending him batches of £50, or
£120 in bank notes. Eventually he was given a
fixed annuity of £140 plus a pension, despite
the view of Lord Salisbury, the Conservative
foreign secretary, that a lot of what Vambery had
to say was "alarmist" and "had
done us more harm than good". Gill Bennett,
the Foreign Office chief historian, described him
yesterday as "a sort of near eastern
pimp".
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