St Petersburg: V.S. Blalashyov for the Imperial Russian Geographical Society,, 1879. Kashgaria - at the crossroads of the Great Game First edition thus, the first five chapters having been published the previous year under the title Ocherki Kashgarii ("Sketches of Kashgaria"). Highly important piece of the literature of the Great Game from the Russian perspective, compiled by General Alexey Kuropatkin, an active participant of the military campaigns against the Khanate of Kokand, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Tekke Turkomans in the 1860s and 1870s; military Governor of Transcaspia (1890-5), Russian Military Minister (1898-1904), and commander-in-chief of the Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-5). The book contains an account of Kuropatkin's diplomatic mission to Muhammad Yakub Beg (1820-1877), the Uzbek ruler of Kashgaria or Tarim Basin. As a result of the Dungan Revolt in the 1860s the principality gained its independence from China, and its ruler Yakub Beg became a pivotal figure in the Great Game, negotiating with both British and Russians over access to his lands. In 1876, General von Kaufman, governor-general of Russian Turkestan put Kuropatkin at the head of a mission to establish a firm defensible border between Kashgaria and the newly formed Fergana Region of Russian Turkestan. The party left Tashkent in May 1876 and proceeded to Kashgar via Khudjand, Kokand, and Osh. In the Tarim Basin they visited Aksu, Kuqa, and Korla, where they stayed for a month and where the negotiations with Muhammad Yakub Bek took place. Officers from the mission made side trips surveying the route from Aksu to Karakol and area around Karasahr and Baghrash Koli Lake (Bosten). The mission returned to Osh in March 1877. The book offers a highly detailed narrative of the expedition and describes events after Yakub Beg's death in 1877, when the region was retaken by the Chinese; "by December Kashgar was safely back in the Emperor's hands, and three powerful empires - those of Britain, Russia and China - now faced one another across the Pamirs" (Hopkirk, p.388). The meticulously compiled appendices, which occupy over a hundred pages, include the detailed routes of the mission from Osh to Kashgar, Aksu, and Korla; between Aksu and Karakol, routes to Karasahr and Baghrash Koli Lake; statistical tables showing the volume of trade between Russia and Kashgaria - import and export to and from Kashgar, the number of caravans departing and returning Issyk-kul to Kashgar and Uqturpan, types of goods being traded on the markets of Aksu and Kashgar; notes about sources used to compile the map of Eastern Turkestan and a list of the key astronomical references. The map was published by the Depot of Military Topography of the General Staff and is based on material gathered by the survey conducted by the mission together with extant Russian maps, and covers the area from Osh (present-day Kyrgyzstan) and Lake Karakul (Tajikistan) in the west, Bosten Lake (Xinjiang) in the east, Issyk-kul (Kyrgyzstan) in the north, and Yarkent on the edge of the Taklamakan in the south. The book was awarded with the gold medal of the Russian Geographical Society. An English edition was published in Calcutta in 1882 but without the superb map. Key account of the region during its brief period of independence in the 1870s, an attractive copy in the original wrappers, skilfully restored. Octavo. Large folding tinted lithographic map at the rear, opens 489 x 860 mm. Original printed wrappers. Spine sunned, wrappers a little soiled and with some chips and splits to both panels, now overall skilfully restored, pale toning to the text with sporadic light foxing, fairly frequent pencilled notes to the text, short closed tear to the map now professionally repaired, very good, a tall and handsome copy. Hopkirk, The Great Game, 1990.
