Foreign Devils on the Silk Road

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192802118
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
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 treasurees and guarded by demons. In the early years of the 20th 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.

Foreign Devils on the Silk Road

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848546327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
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.

The Great Game

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848544774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Book Description
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.

The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction

Author: James A. Millward
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199782865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Book Description
The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction is a new look at an ancient subject: the silk road that linked China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean across the expanses of Central Asia. James A. Millward highlights unusual but important biological, technological and cultural exchanges over the silk roads that stimulated development across Eurasia and underpin civilization in our modern, globalized world.

Quest for Kim

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848547277
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here retraces Kim's footsteps across Kipling's India to see how much of it remains. To attempt this with a fictional hero would normally be pointless. But Kim is different. For much of this Great Game classic was inspired by actual people and places, thus blurring the line between the real and the imaginary. Less a travel book than a literary detective story, this is the intriguing story of Peter Hopkirk's quest for Kim and a host of other shadowy figures.

Ghost Ship

Author: Andrew Cartmel
Publisher: TELOS
ISBN: 9781903889336
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

The Compensations of Plunder

Author: Justin M. Jacobs
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022671201X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.

On Secret Service East of Constantinople

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848546335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Under the banner of a Holy War, masterminded in Berlin and unleashed from Constantinople, the Germans and the Turks set out in 1914 to foment violent revolutionary uprisings against the British in India and the Russians in Central Asia. It was a new and more sinister version of the old Great Game, with world domination as its ultimate aim. Here, told in epic detail and for the first time, is the true story behind John Buchan's classic wartime thriller Greenmantle, recounted through the adventures and misadventures of the secret agents and others who took part in it. It is an ominously topical tale today in view of the continuing turmoil in this volatile region where the Great Game has never really ceased.

Like Hidden Fire

Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: Kodansha
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
A GRIPPING STORY OF IMPERIAL AMBITION, SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE, AND THE KAISER'S OWN JIHAD. An acclaimed historian tells, for the first time, the full story of the conspiracy between the Germans and the Turks to unleash a Muslim holy war against the British in India and the Russians in the Caucasus. Drawing on recently opened intelligence files and rare personal accounts, Peter Hopkirkskillfully reconstructs the Kaiser's bold plan and describes the exploits of the secret agents on both sides-disguised variously as archaeologists, traders, and circus performers-as they sought to foment or foil the uprising and determine the outcome of World War I.

Mission to Tashkent

Author: F.M. Bailey
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192803875
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
Accused by Moscow of being a British master-spy, Colonel F.M. Bailey recounts the 16-month game of cat-and-mouse he played with the Bolshevik secret police. At one point, with a false identity, he joined the ranks of the latter, who unsuspectingly sent him to Bokhara to arrest himself.