NAVAL INTELLIGENCE DIVISION. A manual on the Turanians and Pan-Turanianism. Compiled by the Geographical Section of the Naval Intelligence Division, Naval Staff, Admiralty. I.D. 1199. London, His Majesty's Stationery Office, [November, 1918].
8vo. Original dark blue pebble-grained cloth, spine lettered in gilt; pp. [3]-256, large colour-printed folding map of Eurasia in rear pocket; apart from light fading to cloth and offsetting from paste-downs (as usual), a near-fine copy of a scarce and important work.
First edition, issued by the spy-masters of the British Empire, this probably restricted handbook examines the peoples of Mongolian, Hun, Turcic and Finno-Ugric origin, their languages, way of life and culture. Background was the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Revolution, ferment in China, and the end of the First World War in Europe. The volume covers Eurasia from Scandinavia to Eastern Siberia, from the Arctic Circle to the Balkans and and Syria, Afghanistan and Tibet. 'During the years 1913–18, when Turkey was involved in a bitter struggle with Russia, Pan-Turkish propaganda was officially promoted by the Ottoman government. In the 1920s and '30s, Kemal Atatürk de-emphasized Pan-Turkism, instead encouraging Turkish nationalism within Turkey' (Encyclopaedia Britannica, online). Most of the information presented here very thoroughly and well-indexed, and is based on Central European, French and Russian sources.
One interesting appendix is on reports that Werner Otto von Hentig (1886-1984), a German player of the Great Game and traveller in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan and China had probably been behind violent Anti-Russian uprisings of the Turkic population in Siberia near the Chinese border, and the crushing of it led by General Kuropatkin.
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