History Book Club
Wednesday,
June 28, 2017
British
Colonialism
Wednesday,
June 28, 2017: History of English/British Colonialism
It started in the latter part of the 15th Century with plantations
in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in
the history of the world. If you wish,
home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World,
bringing slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Then Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s
seizure of French Colonies. America and Canada.
Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand,
India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Richard Heuser]
Sergeev,
Evgeny, The Great Game, 1856-1907 : Russo-British Relations in Central and
East Asia; Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013. w/index.
530pp.
I’m very grateful for the
opportunity ---and the peer pressure --- to explore history like we have for
the past decade and a half. Thanks to
Rockport Public Library, and William Tobin, who originated the Rockport History
Book Club, and thanks also to Beverly and Dick Verrengia, Richard Heuser, Janos
Posfai, Walt Frederick and Bill Owen, along with several earlier members, we’ve
ranged far and wide over time and space.
We’ve studied the history of Russia
and China, Africa; we’ve studied the history of religion, of music, art,
journalism, food in America, exploration and colonization of America, the
American family, industrialization in America, history of World War II, history
of inequality, the Cold War, Spies and Spy Agencies, of Cape Ann, of early
exploration, history of capitalism, of germs and plagues, of political parties,
American Indians, Women’s Suffrage, Middle Eastern politics, and even the
history of the future!
The book I read for this month is The Great Game, and it is a
comprehensive study of the efforts of the British and Russian empires “to change
the destinies of the tribes of Central and South Asia, from turmoil, violence,
ignorance and poverty to peace, enlightenment and varied happiness.” That aspiration
belonged to Arthur Conolly, who is credited with naming this effort “The Great
Game”.
This “Great Game” was played by
many, from kings, isars, pashas and shahs, to generals and military attachés,
ambassadors, scholars, adventurers and scoundrels of all types.
Author Evgeny Sergeev, who is Professor of History and Head of the Center
for the Study of 20th-Century Socio-Political and Economic Problems within the
Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, has
delved into diaries, journals, official documents, telegrams, letters in
Russian, British archives, and documents from archives of Iran, India and the
post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, some that have only recently been made
available.
Since I was once a military advisor to the Shah of Iran,
and traveled in the Turkoman region of Iran, then a decade later, as naval
attaché to the USSR, traveled in Soviet Asian republics, it is exciting to see
that places I visited figured so heavily in this “Game”.
Author Sergeev makes a special point that this
competition for national wealth and influence between Great Britain and Russia,
which began after Britain had defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853-56), was
not a precursor to the Cold War, but “it deserves to be remembered as making a
significant contribution not only to the development of Russo-British relations
but also to a general contour of world politics in the twentieth century.”
Rudyard Kipling, that great chronicler of Queen
Victoria’s adventure in India, gave “The Great Game” more publicity and fame
when he characterized it as a secret war against the Russians, and later
against the French, who allied with the tsar in the 1890s.
Throughout the entire period of “the
Game”, Britain’s primary objective remained safeguarding the ‘jewel in her
crown’, India, while Russia kept ever in view possession of an ice-free port,
and access to strategic oceanic waterways.
During the 51 years of “the Game”
relations varied between the two empires. Tense in the late 1850s, “peaceful
coexistence” in the 1870s, edging toward war (1877-88), peaceful easing in the
1890s, and brink of war in the early 1900s, climaxing with a rapprochement in
1907. There were plans by the Russians to attack India, to seize Tibet,
Mongolia, and Persia. The Russians
acquired Turkmenia, which later became a Soviet republic; they also acquired
Khiva, Bokhara and Khokand, which later became Uzbekistan.
Russia’s seizure of Khiva alarmed
the British and forced them to stiffen up their defenses for Russian invasion
of India.
Russian advances on Tibet were aimed
at Russian incursion into Qing China, but the British feared that Russians would use Tibet as an entryway into
India. Russian efforts succeeded in acquiring territory north of the Amur River
in the Far East,
The Sepoy Uprising (1857-58), seen
by Indians as their first war for independence, shocked the British and made
many Englishmen realize how Indians really felt toward them, encouraged Indians
of the vulnerability of Britain, and encouraged Russians to seize the
opportunity to invade and replace the British. The uprising was suppressed, and
Queen Victoria granted British citizen rights to Indians.
For us today, after years of modern
conflict with radical Islamists, it is interesting to see how the British and
the Russians coped with Muslims bitter over infidel intrusions in the
nineteenth century.
Dr. R. Charles Weller of Washington
State University, in reviewing Sergeev’s book, has pointed out that in the Sepoy
uprising Britain called upon the debt owed them by Ottomans in the Crimean War
(1853-56) to gain permission for troops to travel through Egypt and Suez to
reinforce troops fighting in India, and the Ottoman Sultan provided remarkably
effective help in urging Indian Muslims not to fight against the British.
Weller goes on to point out that the Ottoman Sultan’s influence at this time
led to the “dethroning of Muslim power in India”, so that Indian Muslims looked
to the Ottoman leader as the sole Caliph of the Muslim world, so that
discussion of “jihad” against the British as infidels was considered
unnecessary.
The whole period of the Great Game
involved countless contacts between British, Russian and Islamic forces.
Christianity vs. Islam thus was always a dominant theme in these interactions,
sometimes working to the advantage of the Russians, sometimes to the advantage
of the British.
There were often sinister “helpers”
to agitate either side, such as the Japanese intelligence officer who is
alleged to have helped Russian Muslims to start the 1905 Russian Revolution.
The “Great Game” came to an end when
Russia, buffeted by an uprising in St. Petersburg, lost the Russo-Japanese
war. Although there was considerable
anti-Russian sentiment in London, the British began to realize that Japan, an
emerging Asian power, needed no encouragement, and further, in order to prevent
the French from aligning with Germany, Britain, in August 1907, signed the
Anglo-Russian Convention. The convention assigned spheres of influence in
Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Britain recognized Russia’s right to pass
through the Turkish Straits, and Russia agreed not to interfere with the
Sheikhs around the Persian Gulf.
One thing that has concerned me is
that during the whole Cold War of 1945-91, it seems as if most conflicts that
involved the Russians or the Americans were related to our conflict with each
other. Where were the Taliban, al Qaeda,
or the Islamic State of that time? There
were always Islamists, fighting the Israelis, high-jacking aircraft. There were the Palestinian groups, Yasser
Arafat. But is it simply that our media,
and we, were not paying attention? Did
the Cold War simply suppress Muslim unrest, or were we just not paying
attention?
Sergeev’s study of “The Great Game”
doubtless found freshly uncovered and declassified Russian records from tsarist
times, but it is interesting to see how he defends the Russian side in the
“Game”, and calls attention to the somewhat superior
British attitude toward Her Majesty’s colonial subjects.
Working with senior British military
officers in Tehran gave me a sense that attitudes had not changed much, The feeling
of British superiority over Persians, Indians, etc. was very apparent. I am sure many overseas Americans exhibit those
same attitudes, however.
It was refreshing to feel the
connection between this nineteenth century “Game” and the “Game” we played in
some of the same places a century later.
-end-
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2017
Wednesday, July 26, 2017:
Treasure Hunts in History. This is your opportunity to find a
treasure and discover the hunt for it, whether it is the quest for gold in
California, diamonds in Africa, the hunt for the pharaohs buried in the
pyramids, the hunt to discover a cure for polio or yellow fever, the terracotta
army buried with Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, the search for the
source of the Nile, the discovery of Neanderthal man… This topic is for you to
imagine! [Suggested by Walt Frederick]
Wednesday, August 31, 2017:
Gloucester and the Sea.
Gloucester has
throughout four centuries cast its lot with the North Atlantic, remaining a
maritime port for better or worse. The maritime culture of Cape Ann is the mix
of a noble maritime heritage; ubiquitous sea influences that reach as far as
the quarries behind Rockport and into the haunted tracks of Dogtown Common;
seductive but capricious natural splendors; and untidy independence that repels
some but converts other visitors into lifetime devotees. We plan to invite
Chester Brigham, author of Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea, to join
us. Read this or any other book about
the maritime history of Gloucester.
[Suggested by Richard Verrengia]
Wednesday, September 28, 2017: The
History of History.
Read any book about Historiography, or methods of recording history, from
Herodotus and Thucydides to Saint Augustine to Ibn Khaldun. You might want to
read about ways people have used history as propaganda, or to build up the
image of a leader, or focus upon a particular kind of history. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, October 25, 2017: The
Industrial Revolution in New England. Development of mills, the textile
industry in Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester and elsewhere. Life in the mills,
quality of life in the cities. Advent of the steam engine. Railroads. Banking
and commerce in the Industrial age. Labor problems and unionization. Iron and
steel production. Coal mining. Communications. [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, November 29, 2017: The
Decline of Major Powers. How does it happen, that a nation
that has been calling all the shots suddenly finds out that it’s not the Big
Cheese any longer? Read about Athens and Sparta, or look at Rome, or the Arab
Caliphate, Spain, Great Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union. Do we see
China coming to take the mace away from the United States of America? [Suggested
by Beverly Verrengia]
No
meeting in December
Wednesday,
February 28, 2018: WHAT TOPIC DO YOU SUGGEST?
Wednesday,
March 28, 2018: WHAT TOPIC DO YOU SUGGEST?
Wednesday,
April 25, 2018: WHAT TOPIC DO YOU SUGGEST?
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