First published in 1973. This book describes the career of Sir George Macartney, who spent twenty-eight years at the turn of the nineteenth century as British representative in Sinkiang, China's most westerly province. Macartney was in a unique position to observe political and diplomatic manoeuvres by the key players trying to establish a sphere of influence in China's strategically vital hinterland before and during the Chinese revolution.
The subject of this biography, Sir George Macartney, was of mixed Scottish-Chinese parentage. Based in remote Kashgar on the famous Silk Road, he was caught up in the great 19th and early 20th century power-struggle between Britain, China and Russia over control of Central Asia in what came to be known as 'The Great Game'. Here he met the scheming Russian Consul Nicolai Petrovsky who was to prove a cunning adversary in the political contest for control in this turbulent region. Much of the book is concerned with Petrovsky's devious machinations to outflank the British agent. Macartney's wife, Catherine, has provided intimate descriptions of their domestic life and some of the hazardous journeys they made with their family when travelling to and from the United Kingdom on leave. Her very few visitors were unstinting in their praise for her courage and adaptability, not least when seriously threatened by revolutionaries. They also recognised that only George Macartney, with his renowned tact and diplomacy, allied to steely determination, could have maintained the British position with so little external support. His dangerous encounter leading a mission to the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Tashkent made for a dramatic finale to his extraordinary career in a restive region now causing concern to the Chinese government.
In 1898 Cather Borland married George Macartney and, as a bride of 21, journeyed with him to one of the least accessible places on earth - Kashgar in Turkestan, on the remote borders of India, Russia and China.George Macartney represented Britain at Kashgar from 1890 to 1918. Officially he was responsible for looking after the interests of the small British Indian community there, but unofficially he kept a watch on the activities of the Russians. For at that time Kashgar was Britain's most advancedposition in the Great Game, the long and shadowy struggle with the Tsarist Russia for political and economic supremacy in Asia.Lady Macartney spent seventeen years in Kashgar and extended her hospitality to many famous travellers, among them Sir Aurel Stein, Albert von Le Coq and Dr G.E.Morrison. This book, first published in 1931, is a charming account of her life there and of the sometimes exotic customs of Turkestan.This edition is now reprinted with the addition of an Introduction by Peter Hopkirk, the author of three books on the Central Asian travellers. "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road", "Trespassers on the Roof of the World", and "Setting the East Ablaze".
The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasures and guarded by demons. In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to investigate these legends, and very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings, sculptures and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who, at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids, incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.
This gorgeously illustrated oversized book brings the history and cultures of the Silk Road alive -- from its beginnings to the present day -- covering more than 5000 years.
"The Hungarian born Aurel Stein was a British archaeologist and geographer noted for his pioneering exploration of Central Asia. This is an account of his second major expedition, from 1906-8. Returning to Khotan, Stein extended his original explorations farther eastwards for nearly a thousand miles. It was on this expedition that Stein explored the western end of the Great Wall of China and discovered the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-Huang, where he made his greatest discovery of a vast library in a cave sealed since the 10th century. He removed thousands of documents including a copy of the Diamond Sutra whose date makes it the earliest printed book."--abebooks website.
