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The RSAA blog publishes new posts every week, covering the whole range of Asian current affairs, culture, travel, exploration and recent history from the Levant to East Asia. Browse our recent posts!
Opinions expressed in posts are those of the contributor, not necessarily of the RSAA.
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In search of ancient Christianity: The Nestorian Caves of Tajikistan
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: The Changing Face of China
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…
Postcard from Uzbekistan: RSAA Uzbekistan Tour
Sophie Ibbotson, who sits on the RSAA Council, writes from the RSAA Uzbekistan Tour which visited the country last month. 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: Islam against “Fahish”, The obscene “Islamic State”
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…
Asian Affairs: Summer issue preview – Yemen, India and the Middle East, British in Iraq…
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…
Methods of Manipulation: an Analogy between Vietnamese Water Puppetry and State Propaganda
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 Hoàn Kiếm Lake next to the Old Quarter. Water puppetry has become an iconic representation of nation, and is now seen as an…
Deeper than Indigo: RSAA lecture by Jenny Balfour-Paul
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…
India-Bangladesh Border Settlement: a model to follow?
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…
Asian Affairs Journal 100th Anniversary: Free historic articles
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Asian Affairs Journal, we are giving free access to 25 historic articles published in the Journal by such luminaries as Sir Wilfrid Thesiger, BBC correspondents Frank Gardener and Mark Tully, Freya Stark, Frances Wood, and Bill Deedes. The articles are available here until the end of June.
The Hour of the Kurds
Manuel Martorell is a Spanish journalist and one of the founders of the national daily El Mundo, where he held the posts of Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor. He has been covering the Kurds since 1983 and has published three books on the subject and produced a number of television documentaries. 8 February 2015. This will…
Letter from Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Richard Fell is a former diplomat; he was latterly British High Commissioner in New Zealand, but served in Vietnam earlier in his career. He is the Book Review Editor of Asian Affairs. Forty years ago, in April 1975, North Vietnamese forces defeated the army of the South, captured Saigon and ousted the South Vietnamese government….
China and Hong Kong in Asian Affairs March 2015: Comment
Kenneth C. Walker, an academic and former diplomat who sits on the Editorial Board of the Asian Affairs Journal, takes issue with articles on Hong Kong and China in the March 2015 issue of Asian Affairs. He puts a different point of view here, and Dr Stephan Ortmann, author of the article on the Democracy…
The silent hand: China in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
James Willsher was until recently co-publisher of the Times of Central Asia, and has lived in Bishkek. I become an acquaintance of an Uighur student in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, a decade ago; he pronounces his ethnic nomenclature as Oi-ghur, not Wee–gerr, as news reports do at the time of Uighur riots taking place in western…
Great Game manuscript gifted to RSAA: George Hayward
Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE, RSAA Archivist, writes on the gift by Kathleen Hopkirk, widow of the author Peter Hopkirk, to the RSAA of a 19th century notebook written by George Hayward, one of the early players of the Great Game. He fell among thieves was a favourite Victorian poem by Sir Henry Newbolt, recited in drawing…
Pakistan: What lies ahead?
Dr Amit Ranjan is a Research Fellow at the Indian Council for World Affairs in New Delhi. Here, he submits a point of view on the tensions inherent in contemporary Pakistan, and what they might mean for the future. One of the most challenging questions that haunt Pakistanis and others too is: Where is the…
Landmarks, memory, and a changing Dushanbe
Anna Kellar studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Yale, where she co-founded the Yale Afghanistan Forum, and is currently finishing a Msc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics. She has conducted research on development aid in Tajikistan, studied foreign policy in Italy and worked for an anti-corruption NGO in Slovakia. She is…
Invention of a Pre-Ottoman Tradition: Diriliş
Nagihan Haliloglu is an assistant professor at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Here, she writes on Diriliş – the Game of Thrones equivalent which is currently enthralling Turkish TV audiences – and meditates on what reflections it casts on contemporary Turkey. In November 2014 the streets of Istanbul were suddenly awash with posters of bearded…
In Pursuit of the Jewels of Persia
RSAA members Max Lovell-Hoare and Sophie Ibbotson both recently were privileged to be part of a first in the history of travel – they were guides on the first private train to be permitted to cross from Iran to Europe. Here, Max Lovell-Hoare reflects on an unexpected gem he discovered in Iran during the journey….