Prateek Joshi, a post-graduate international relations student at the South Asian University in New Delhi, reports on the recent visit of a retired Pakistani Defence Secretary to India, and his call for South Asian co-operation against the threat of climate change. South Asian politics, whose dominant narrative is India-Pakistan relations, witnessed a unique idea of…
Robin Ackroyd is the author of Genghis: Sacred Tomb, Secret Treasure. He recently addressed the RSAA on his search for the tomb of Genghis Khan. IT is hard to imagine a more important place to the Mongols than the sacred mountain Burkhan Khaldun. I travelled there on horseback and stood at the top of the…
Huw Thomas is the co-author of Tajikistan and the High Pamirs: A Companion and Guide (Odyssey Publications). In this article, he describes a search for relics of ancient Christianity near the banks of the Oxus in the heart of Central Asia. It is especially poignant that with the turmoil in Syria and Iraq, there is the danger that…
Stephen Green (Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint) was Group Chairman of the HSBC Group from 2006-2010. He was subsequently until December 2013 a Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Investment and Skills and also the FCO. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. This is…
Sophie Ibbotson, who sits on the RSAA Council, writes from the RSAA Uzbekistan Tour which visited the country last month. Â There is no benefit in my writing to you of the wonders of Khiva, Bukhara or Samarkand. These are well enough known that each of us already has in our own mind a picture…
HRH Prince Turki Al Faisal is a member of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. Until 2001 he was the Director of the Saudi Arabia General Intelligence Directorate, and later served as Ambassador in London and Washington DC. He more recently established the King Faisal Foundation to promote education in Saudi Arabia, and is the…
The summer issue of the Asian Affairs Journal is now available online – click here for the contents page. Some articles are free to view by all visitors (as indicated); others are only available for free to RSAA memers/JSTOR/Taylor & Francis/Academic subscribers. Highlights include “Yemen and the Huthis: Genesis of the 2015 Crisis” – an…
Seb Rumsby is the holder of an RSAA Sir Peter Holmes Memorial Award. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Hanoi’s Thăng Long Water Puppet Theatre, located on the bank of Hoà n Kiếm Lake next to the Old Quarter. Water puppetry has become an iconic representation of nation, and is now seen as an…
Helen Crisp reports on a lecture to the RSAA last week by Dr Jenny Balfour-Paul. Jenny Balfour Paul gave a fascinating talk to the RSAA based on her new book, Deeper than Indigo, describing how she tracked the life of Thomas Machell, a mid-19th century indigo planter and traveller, after being directed to his journals…
Dr Amit Ranjan, Research Fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi, comments on the recent border accord between India and Bangladesh, and asks whether it could be a model for solving other boundary disputes between India and China, and India and Pakistan. With the forthcoming implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement…
