Hugh Leach - Strolling about on the roof of the world : the first hundred years of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs (formerly Royal Central Asian Society)

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STROLLING ABOUT ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

This volume covers the first one hundred years of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, formerly the Royal Central Asian Society. It traces its fons et origo within the Central Asian Question, and continues through the two World Wars to the present day. Throughout its pages are glimpses and vignettes of some of its extraordinary, even eccentric, members and their astonishing adventures. The wealth of historic, and often amusing, detail makes it a lively account. With its considerable factual content it will become a work of reference for all interested in Asia. This book is generously illustrated and includes many of the Societys unique archival photographs not previously published.

[Frontispiece] [RSAA Archives]

STROLLING ABOUT ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

The First Hundred Years of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs
(Formerly Royal Central Asian Society)

Hugh Leach
with
Susan Maria Farrington

First published in 2003
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

2003 Royal Society for Asian Affairs
2 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PJ
Email:

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-22293-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27723-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-29857-1 (Print Edition)

Those who founded this Society used to take their recreational walks strolling about on the Roof of the World instead of going to the Downs

Admiral Sir Howard Kelly, Chairman
Golden Jubilee Dinner 1951

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece: Tibetan Boy with head of Ovis Poli

The map of Asia on the inside covers is that used in the Societys Journals until 1969

FOREWORD

by The Rt Hon. Lord Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE

As the wheel of history turns images familiar from the past reappear. As I write this foreword a handful of British troops are camped outside Kabul. Our newspapers day after day carry photographs of bearded warriors who rule Herat and Kandahar. Many of us have been re-reading Kim.

Behind the news of the day lie themes which go deeper than entertainment or immediate information. Successful policy making, in Asia as elsewhere, depends on informed opinion. We British have been fortunate in the last two centuries, in the number of our countrymen who have studied and travelled through Asia. To be fully valuable such experiences should be shared. That in brief was the purpose of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs when it was founded one hundred years ago. It is timely in Hugh Leachs History to remind ourselves how this came about. Then the focus was on Central Asia, but Lord Curzon quickly endorsed a wide definition of that phrase. At the Societys second Annual Dinner he said that: Central Asia is not merely a geographical formula, but a comprehensive phrase opening up a political problem of the first magnitude. These countries... form a part of what seems the most complex and intricate, and also the most important political mosaic to be seen on the face of the globe. Few of us would write in such grandiloquent prose, but the thought remains valid, even though the Indian Empire which Curzon ruled has gone. Through the years the Society and its Journal have brought experience to bear on many of the problems which still vex us, for example Kashmir, Palestine and now again Afghanistan.

As in the past we have to wrestle not just with geographical issues, but with problems of principle. A hundred years ago a question mark began to gather over the principle of empire. Members of this Society asked what would be the outcome of the rivalries between the empires which had taken shape in the nineteenth century, and what would happen if these empires relinquished their grip. That grip was indeed relinquished in the twentieth century, but a new problem now arises. In a world of post-imperial nation states in what circumstances are more orderly and successful countries entitled to intervene when particular states decay and fail? This is the old imperial problem in a new guise. Professor Yapp told the Society nearly ten years ago the delusion that one can bring about a just order through international intervention in the internal affairs of states is one of the most dangerous follies of our times. Our present Prime Minister proclaims and acts on the opposite view, both in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. History suggest s that there is no absolute answer to this question. The empirical solutions on which we fall back depend on the kind of accumulated and shared wisdom of which this Society and its Journal provide such a strong example.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first shall be first and these few words are insufficient to record my debt to Sue Farrington for all her help. The book could not have been written without her and is as much hers as mine. She has typed up innumerable drafts, deciphering my dreadful hand with astonishing patience, made numerous sound suggestions and shown an uncanny and determined nose for research.

My kind neighbour, Miss Averil Hughes, has been the first to wield the red pen on my initial drafts. Miss Marinel FitzSimons, MBE, has read and checked all the chapters, drawing on her retentive memory of twenty-seven years of service as Secretary to the Society. The Hon. Ivor Lucas, CMG, has laboured through the whole work, tightening it as necessary; Ms Carol Gardiner has given it the final necessary polish with her professional editing and Mrs Merilyn Hywel-Jones has helped in more ways than there is space to record. To these my especial thanks.

I am grateful for the assistance with specific chapters received from Mr Michael Pollock and Mr Murray Graham (The Library); Mr St John Armitage, CBE, the Societys acknowledged expert on matters Lawrentian (The Lawrence of Arabia Medal); Dr Ina Russell, OBE, and Sir James Craig, GCMG (A Role in Education); Colonel Tony Fowle, MC, (The Dinner Club); Mr Adrian Steger (The Junior Membership); The Hon. Ivor Lucas, Ms Susan Pares and Mrs Kay Beckett (The Journal). Mr John Shipman has checked the historical accuracy of external events in the first three chapters and written that on The Archives.

Sir Denis Wright, GCMG, and Mr Michael Nol-Clark of the Iran Society have made some helpful contributions, especially relating to Sir Percy Sykes. Colonel Gordon Neilson and Mr Antony Wynn have also assisted over the Sykes material.

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