RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA IN 1889.*
MR. GEORGE CURZON has put together a lively and in- teresting account of his journey to Bokhara and Samarcand by General Annenkoff's famous railway, supplemented by a dash upon Tashkent, to which he adds three chapters on the "Central Asian problem." He has also drawn up tables of stations and distances, a chronology of events, and a biblio- graphy of his subject. The book is profusely and capitally illustrated, and the maps are good. His object was to set forth "the present situation of affairs as modified, if not revolutionised, by the construction of the Transcaspian Rail- way," a large undertaking which has been fairly performed. Mr. Curzon frankly expounds his views on the politics of the big question, and if they are not always quite coherent, or even consistent, they are obviously temperate and sincere. It is, indeed, the candour and moderation, not less than the bright and sometimes eloquent style of the book, which make it welcome to the student jaded with the drier as well as the more impassioned aspects of Central Asian affairs.
• Russia in Centred Asia in 1889, and the Anglo-Russian Question. By the Hon. George N. Curzon, M.P., Fellow of All Souls' College,Oxford. London: Longman' and CO.
The principal interest, of course, lies in the "new thing," the railway piercing the steppe and desert, crossing the yellow Oxus, and halting for the present hard by the capital of Timour, which will surely not be its terminus. We do not mean that the interest is excited solely or mainly by a descrip- tion of the work from the engineer's point of view. We are satisfied to learn that, all things considered, the line is well built, that the pile bridge over the treacherous Oxus is a respectable makeshift, and that the rolling-stock is at lest sufficient for present needs. The drawbacks are the bad landing-place on the Caspian, the scarcity of water and fuel, and that permanent enemy, the billowy ocean of mobile sand through and over which great lengths of the iron road are perforce carried. So far, and with the present traffic, the Russians have coped with the difficulties besetting a railway in such a country, where they have to bring fuel from Baku, store water wherever they can and transport it along the line, fight an endless battle with the encroaching sand, and watch with sleepless vigilance over the Oxus bridge, which perhaps depends for its safety upon the moderation of Himalayan ice and snow. It has stood one heavy flood, but, as all know, the rivers which flow from the chine of Asia sometimes defy calculation and cap traditional and recorded expe- rience. The railway, judged by the testimony of this unprejudiced and candid observer, is a success, and will remain such, even should a mighty spate plough up the foundations of the bridge. It serves the purposes of commerce, it is used by the population, but its primary and essential object is military. The initial lengths enabled Skobeleff to beat the Turcomans, and subdue what Baron Jomini, years before a single rail crossed the Caspian, frankly called "a base of operations against India,"—the Akhal Tekke oasis. When, after the massacre of Geok Tepe, Mery was obtained so ingeniously, thither went the line, and so on across the hideous desert to Tchardjui. Mr. Curzon's animated chapters show plainly enough how great has been the effect of this important stage in the swift advance not only on the people of the north but of the south side of the Persian mountains. The grip of the invader is firmly fastened upon the savage Turcomans, and his influence has crossed the hills, in force, and extends over the much-coveted Khorassan. Beyond the Oxus the effects are equally potent. Bokhara is transformed from what it was in former days ; and the European visitor, of course under Russian protection, walks freely through its streets, and chaffers for bargains in its bazaars. There is no open display of religious hatred—at least, our author met with none in his wanderings through the city :—
" One thing impressed itself forcibly on my mind, namely, that Bokhara is not now a haunt of zealots, but a city of merchants. It contains a peaceful, industrious, artisan population utterly unfitted for war, and as wanting in martial instinct as in capacity. The hostility to strangers, and particularly to Christians, some- times degenerating into the grossest fanaticism, upon which earlier travellers have enlarged, has either disappeared from closer contact with civilisation, or is prudently disguised. I attribute it rather to the former cause, and to the temperate conduct of the Russians in dealing -with the natives ; because not even when I wandered about alone, and there was no motive for deception, did I observe the smallest indication of antagonism or repugnance. Many a face expressed that blank and haughty curiosity which the meanest Oriental can so easily assume, but I met with no rudeness or interference. On the contrary, the demeanour of the people was friendly, and no one when interrogated refused to answer a question."
And in another place he says that whether this be due to a recognition of the strength of Russia, or to skilful diplomacy, or, as General Komaroff hinted to him, the influence of the
rouble, "it must be equally set down to the credit of the con- quering power." Nor is Bokhara alone in this revolution ; it pertains throughout the sphere of the author's observation.
Most notable, however, is it in Bokhara. If it be in the grain now, and not merely on the surface, how much the greater is the power of Russia in her new position "on the road to India," as the stages in her march are called by herself. Indeed, from this book it would seem that she is solidly master, that the region contains enough stuff for a further warlike movement, provided it did not last too long, that the military indicators, as well as the projected railways, point to Northern Afghanistan, to Herat and Khorassan, and that the immediate base on both sides of the Oxus is now immensely strengthened by the making of a conquest and a railway in neither of which would the wise ones believe until they were accomplished. Except in so far as he describes the present state of affairs in Russian Central Asia, and it is a weighty contribution, Mr. Curzon does not pretend to set forth novelties on the large political and military questions, but he expounds them with prudence and clearness, though his conclusions, as it seems to us, fall far short of the direct teaching of his facts, and, as we have said, he is not always quite consistent with himself.
At Samarcand the Russians are more visible than they are in Bokhara. The native population is fewer—indeed, less than half—the bazaars are inferior, the Saris are humbly and shabbily dressed, and there are no evidences of wealth or leisure. The Russians have cut through the native town, built a new bazaar, made broad streets, and, except for the ancient monuments, the grand Rigisthan, and the rains, it is not so interesting as the city upon which the hand of innova- tion has not yet been laid. But the Russian town seems a pleasant place :—
"A broad, but dusty road, the first metalled road I had seen east of the Caspian, planted on both sides with avenues of poplars, runs for a distance of nearly three miles to the Russian town. This is a delightful quarter, completely buried in trees, from which peep out the white fronts of the low one-storied houses, and is intersected at right angles by boulevards of enormous width overshadowed by lines of poplars and acacias, and bordered by rivulets of running water. The principal street is planted with as many as twelve parallel rows of trees, on either side of the carriage-drive, the footpaths, and the brawling streams. From an elevation no buildings are visible, and the Russian town might be mistaken for a wooded park."
Here there are the Governor's house, a military club—both in fine parks—and a Russian church. The climate is charac- terised as "delicious," and "there is civilised society." The two towns are separated by a hill on which is the citadel, and beyond that, ancient Samarcand, with its dust, squalor, and fading splendour. Mr. Curzon sees in the market-place "the noblest public square in the world," with its three religious colleges. "No European spectacle, indeed, can be adequately compared to it, in our inability to point to a space in any Western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by Gothic cathedrals of the finest order." In magnificent simplicity and solemn proportions, "the edifices of Samarcand are without a rival" among Saracenic forms. But nothing is done to preserve them, and "the visitor in the twentieth century may find cause to inquire what has become of the fabled grandeurs of Samarcand." In Taskkent there are no grand buildings or ruins, but there is a tree-embowered Russian town and a populous native city. The trade and commerce, both of Transcaspia and Turkestan, are improving, but after all, the bulk is not much. Russian products naturally predominate, though Indian tea finds its way through the tariff ; for if trade follows the flag as a rule, trade, such as it is, must be Russian in an Empire walled round with rigorous protection. The Czar abolishes slavery, but he restricts intercourse and establishes commercial pro- hibition as far as he can, wherever his legions move and his banner flies.
Mr. Curzon has given a suggestive account of Merv, but he does not, at least sometimes, seem to understand that, strategically, the word does not mean a collection of Turcoman hovels, but a wide district capable, as he says, of "immense development" by means of irrigation and tree-planting, both already begun. He says that if Russia can seize Herat, it is not because she is at Merv, but because she is at Sarra,khs, forgetting that she holds the latter by virtue of being at the former. He
is contemptuously minded towards the doctrine of " keys " to India, and he is quite right ; but it is a long way from that
wholesome feeling to the declaration that "if Russia held both Herat and Candahar, she would not be much nearer to the
conquest of India." Of course, the loophole of escape is in the word "conquest," but she would be nearer even to that im- probability. How much he confesses when he points out the obvious facts that the annexation "set the seal on the absorp- tion of the Khanates," "completed the flank circumvention of Khorassan," and "rounded-off the conquest and centralised the administration of the Turcoman oases and deserts." In fact, Merv, in the large sense, is the cardinal position, and it is in that sense what people call a "key." There are large resources and already the beginning of a Turcoman Horse. But we leave on one side the political and military disquisitions of Mr. Curzon with the remark that they are well worth reading, and take leave of his bright and instructive volume by cordially recommending it to the public.
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