What is Happening to Kazakhstan?
A panel discussion with Peter Frankopan, hosted jointly with The Oxus Society, 14 January 2022, 14.00
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MAKING THE PAST SERVE THE PRESENT: THE SILK ROAD AND CHINA’S QUEST FOR IMPERIAL REJUVENATION
DR BIJAN OMRANI, EDITOR OF ASIAN AFFAIRS, THE RSAA JOURNAL, REPORTS ON THE LATEST ONLINE EXPERT DISCUSSION On 6 January, the RSAA was addressed by Eyck Freymann, a US scholar currently at Balliol College Oxford, on the Chinese presentation and ideology behind its One Belt One Road (or Belt and Road) initiative. Freymann is the author…
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Making the Past Serve the Present: The Silk Road and China’s Quest for Imperial Rejuvenation
A webinar with Eyck Freymann As Xi Jinping’s assertion of Chinese power grows, so Chinese narratives of their place in the world are changing. Eyck Freymann shows how history, and the history of the Silk Road in particular, are being put to the service of Xi’s vision. Eyck Freymann is currently at Balliol College, Oxford,…
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The Return of the Prodigal: A Turk visits Central Asia
Nagihan Haliloglu is an assistant professor at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and a resident of Istanbul. In his introduction to Mehmet Emin Efendi’s 1877 travelogue on Turkestan, Ahmet Mithat Efendi says that anyone interested in Ottoman history and culture ought to visit Central Asia ‘to appreciate how much a tribe that is originally…
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Russia and Eurasia
This month sees the launch of Black Wind, White Snow by Charles Clover, former Moscow FT Bureau chief. Bijan Omrani, Editor of the Asian Affairs Journal, attended a speech by Clover this week at Pushkin House in London to mark the book’s release. What reasons can be given for Vladimir Putin’s belligerence? How is it…
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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…
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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…
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RSAA Lecture – Flora of the Silk Road
Every now and then there is an RSAA lecture that stands out head and shoulders above the rest. In the case of Flora of the Silk Road, turning up at St Peter’s Church Hall on a particularly damp and windy night, Chris Gardner’s illustrated talk was an unexpected gem. A professional botanist with at least…
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Sufism and the State: Saints’ Shrines in Central Asia
Fitzroy Morrissey is an Oriental Studies Graduate of Oxford University. He has travelled extensively in the Islamic world, and is the author of A Sufi for a week. He is currently studying Persian as a graduate student. Here, he discusses the relationship between Sufism in Central Asia and the post-Soviet states. For over half a…
