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Curzon
Author

Curzon

Date

July 18th, 2008

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Sacrilege against Bacon

In January 1832, British diplomat Alexander Burnes set out from India for Afghanistan to make diplomatic overtures towards the Amir of Kabul.

Going native was the watchword for Burnes, who also had skills as a keen Central Asian linguist. He shaved his head and dyed his blonde beard black, wore native dress, and did not bring any of the typical comforts such as a tent, table, bed, or even silverware. His easy-going manner was apparently very successful in winning him friends, although his “close attention” to the Afghan ladies resulted in some hostility (he wrote that the covered women of Kabul “made ample amends when indoors for all their sombre exhibitions in public.”)

Writing of the Afghans to his brother, Burnes wrote the following passage:

When they ask me if I eat pork, I of course shudder and say it is only outcasts who commit such outrages. God forgive me! for I am very fond of bacon, and my mouth waters as I write the word. I wish I had some of it for breakfast, to which I am now about to sit down.

Taken from The Savage Frontier by D.S. Richards.

Comments to this entry

Fabius.Maximus.Cunctator
July 19, 2008
7:57 am
Sir,

Didn`t Burnes come to a rather nasty end in the end ? There are limits to the usefulness of going native I suppose. Care to let uns have a short review of the book the quote is from ?
Curzon
July 20, 2008
9:14 am
It was a good book, and I'll post a review of it later in a separate post. It was written pretty recently, about 15 years ago, by a British person in his early 60s, so it is neither from the times the events took place nor modern. It also is an appropriately neutral narrative, with no influence of modern events on the nature of the storytelling.
fabius.maximus.cunctator
July 20, 2008
11:52 am
THX. Looking forward to the review. The info is sufficient for my "should be looked at more closely" list.
Josh SN
July 21, 2008
5:02 pm
I enjoyed the Savage Frontier, although it is much more of a campaign history than is generally useful. The timing, as Curzon says, was ideal, but the second edition, which I read, was "updated" after America invaded Afghanistan. I don't know how much. I thought parallels could be drawn when he was discussing, at the very end, Soviet pilots.

Much longer, but far more complete, is The Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk. It covers 100 years of British and Russian involvement in the whole region, from Iran to the Aral Sea to Pakistan. For my money, a truth is that for 100 years hawks in Britain were saying Russia was going to invade India overland through Afghanistan. Did Russians ever dream up plans to do so? Sure. Did they ever come close? No. I have to wonder how possible it even was.

And then, after that, Grousset's The Empires of the Steppes goes another 1000 years back, although the area of interest stretches all the way from Hungary to Korea.
Josh SN
July 21, 2008
5:09 pm
Oh, a couple things on the Empire of the Steppes. It is focussed on Mongol and Turkic rulers, and so doesn't really get into, for example, when the Delhi Sultanate ruled Afghanistan.

Another thing is that the book is almost a reference, with thousands of place names and hundreds of people listed. I have to admit losing some interest when hearing about how (made up example) some cadet branch of the Ogadai line ruled the Issyk Kul region. Although there are maps, there isn't nearly enough correspondence with the place names listed.
Lexington Green
July 21, 2008
5:23 pm
By Jove, I am currently reading a book which also features Alexander Burnes! Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947, by Robert Johnson -- which is excellent.
von Kaufman-Turkestansky
July 21, 2008
7:28 pm
Readers may also find "A Ride to Khiva" by Captain Frederick Burnaby recounting a trip through Russia and Central Asia in 1875-76 to the Khanate of Khiva a fascinating read.