Nikolay Przhevalsky | |
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Born | Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky April 12, 1839 |
Died | November 1, 1888 49) | (aged
Nationality | Russian [1] |
Known for | Exploration of Central Asia. |
Awards | Vega Medal (1884) |
Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky (or Prjevalsky; [note 1] 12 April [ O.S. 31 March] 1839 – 1 November [ O.S. 20 October] 1888) was a Russian geographer [1] and a renowned explorer of Central and East Asia. Although he never reached his ultimate goal, the city of Lhasa in Tibet, he still travelled through regions then unknown to Westerners, such as northern Tibet (modern Tibet Autonomous Region), Amdo (now Qinghai) and Dzungaria (now northern Xinjiang). [5] He contributed substantially to European knowledge of Central Asian geography.
Przhevalsky described several species previously unknown to European science, such as Przewalski's horse, Przewalski's gazelle, and the wild Bactrian camel, all of which are now endangered. He was also a mentor of the explorer Pyotr Kozlov.
Przhevalsky was born in the Kimborovo family estate (in the Smolensky Uyezd of the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire) which belonged to his grandfather from his mother's side, a Russian nobleman Aleksei Stepanovich Karetnikov, and his wife Ksenia Davydovna Karetnikova who came from local merchants, both natives of the Tula Governorate. Nikolay's mother, Elena Alekseevna Karetnikova, married poruchick Mikhail Kuzmitch Przhevalsky whose Cossack ancestors inherited the noble szlachta state from Stephen Báthory, and his grandfather converted from Catholicism to Orthodoxy. [6] According to the latest research by Liudmila K. Przhevalskaia, their earliest known ancestor Onisim (Anisim) Pereval (Perevalka, Perevalskii) belonged to the horse-owning middle class of Vitebsk. [7]
Przhevalsky studied in the military academy in St. Petersburg. In 1864, he became a geography teacher at the military school in Warsaw. In 1867, he successfully petitioned the Russian Geographical Society to be dispatched to Irkutsk, in central Siberia. His intention was to explore the basin of the Ussuri River, a major tributary of the Amur on the Russian–Chinese frontier. This was his first important expedition. It lasted two years, after which Przhevalsky published a diary of his expedition under the title, Travels in the Ussuri Region, 1867–69.
His most well-known follower and student was Pyotr Kozlov, who discovered the ruins of the Tangut city Khara-Khoto in the Ejin Banner of Alxa League in western Inner Mongolia near the Juyan Lake Basin.
In the following years he made four journeys to Central Asia:
During his expedition, the Dungan Revolt (1862–77) was raging in China. [9] The journey provided the General Staff with important intelligence on a Muslim uprising in the kingdom of Yaqub Beg in western China, and his lecture to the Russian Imperial Geographical Society was received with "thunderous applause" from an overflow audience. The Russian newspaper Golos Prikazchika called the journey "one of the most daring of our time". [10]
The results of these expanded journeys opened a new era for the study of Central Asian geography as well as studies of the fauna and flora of this immense region that were relatively unknown to his Western contemporaries. Among other things, he described Przewalski's horse and Przewalski's gazelle, which were both named after him. He also described what was then considered to be a wild population of Bactrian camel. In the 21st century, the Wild Bactrian camel was shown to be a separate species from the domestic Bactrian camel. Przhevalsky's writings include five major books written in Russian and two English translations: Mongolia, the Tangut Country, and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet (1875) and From Kulja, Across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879). The Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder's Medal in 1879 for his work. [12]
Przhevalsky died of typhus not long before the beginning of his fifth journey, at Karakol on the shore of Issyk Kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan. He contracted typhoid from the Chu River, which was acknowledged as being infected with the disease. [13] [14] The Tsar immediately changed the name of the town to Przhevalsk. There are monuments to him, and a museum about his life and work there and another monument in St. Petersburg.
Less than a year after his premature death, Mikhail Pevtsov succeeded Przhevalsky at the head of his expedition into the remote parts of Central Asia. Przhevalsky's work also inspired the career of Pyotr Kozlov.
There is another place named after Przhevalsky: he had lived in a small village called Sloboda, Smolensk Oblast, Russia from 1881 to 1887 (except the period of his travels) and he apparently loved it. The village was renamed after him in 1964 and is now called Przhevalskoye. There is a memorial complex there that includes the old and new houses of Nikolay Przhevalsky, his bust, pond, garden, birch alleys, and khatka (a lodge, watch-house). This is the only museum of the famous traveler in Russia.
Przhevalsky is commemorated by Maxim. in the naming of Przewalskia , a genus of flowering plants from Asia, belonging to the family Solanaceae. [15]
His name is eponymic with more than 80 plant species as well.[ citation needed ]
Przhevalsky is honoured in the scientific names of five species of lizards: Alsophylax przewalskii , Eremias przewalskii , Phrynocephalus przewalskii , Scincella przewalskii , and Teratoscincus przewalskii . [16]
According to David Schimmelpenninck Van Der Oye's assessment, Przhevalsky's books on Central Asia feature his disdain for the "Oriental"— particularly Chinese civilization. Przhevalsky explicitly portrayed Chinese people as cowardly, dirty and lazy in his metaphor, "the blend of a mean Moscow pilferer and a kike", in all respects inferior to Western culture. [17] [ verification needed ] He purportedly argued that imperial China's hold on its northern territories, in particular Xinjiang and Mongolia, was tenuous and uncertain, and Przhevalsky openly called for Russia's annexation of bits and pieces of China's territory. [18] Przhevalsky said one should explore Asia "with a carbine in one hand, a whip in the other." [19]
Przhevalsky, as well as other contemporary explorers including Sven Hedin, Francis Younghusband, and Aurel Stein, were active players in the British–Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, the so-called Great Game. [19]
Here you can penetrate anywhere, only not with the Gospels under your arm, but with money in your pocket, a carbine in one hand and a whip in the other. Europeans must use these to come and bear away in the name of civilisation all these dregs of the human race. A thousand of our soldiers would be enough to subdue all Asia from Lake Baykal to the Himalayas....Here the exploits of Cortez can still be repeated.
— Nikolay Przhevalsky on Asia
Przhevalsky's prejudice extended to non-Chinese Asians as well, describing the Tajik Yaqub Beg in a letter as follows, "Yakub Beg is the same shit as all feckless Asiatics. The Kashgarian empire isn't worth a kopek." [20] [21] [22] Przhevalsky also claimed Yaqub was "Nothing more than a political impostor," and also disdained the Muslim subjects of Yaqub Beg in Kashgar, claiming that they "constantly cursed their government and expressed their desire to become Russian subjects. [...] The savage Asiatic clearly understands Russian power is the guarantee for prosperity." These statements were made in a report in which Przhevalsky recommended that Russian troops occupy the Kashgarian emirate, but the Russian government took no action, and China recaptured Kashgar. Przhevalsky's dreams of taking land from China did not materialize. [23]
Przhevalsky not only disdained Chinese ethnic groups, he also viewed the eight million non-Chinese peoples of Tibet, Turkestan, and Mongolia as uncivilized, evolutionarily backwards people who needed to be freed from Chinese rule. [24]
Przhevalsky proposed Russia provoke rebellions of the Buddhist and Muslim peoples in these areas of China against the Chinese regime, start a war with China, and, with a small number of Russian troops, wrest control of Turkestan from China. [25]
Przhevalsky is known to have had a personal relationship with Tasya Nuromskaya, whom he met in Smolensk. According to one legend, during their last meeting Nuromskaya cut off her braid and gave it to him, saying that the braid would travel with him until their marriage. She died of a sunstroke while Przhevalsky was on an expedition. [26]
Another woman in Przhevalsky's life was a mysterious young lady whose portrait, along with a fragment of poetry, was found in Przhevalsky's album. In the poem, she asks him to stay with her and not to go to Tibet, to which he responded in his diary: "I will never betray the ideal, to which is dedicated all of my life. As soon as I write everything necessary, I will return to the desert...where I will be much happier than in the gilded salons that can be acquired by marriage". [26] [27]
There is an urban legend that Joseph Stalin was an illegitimate son of Nikolay Przhevalsky. [28] [29] The legend is based on the facial similarity of both men, Stalin's official birthdate controversy (claims that he was born on 6 December 1878 instead of 21 December 1879), and that the late Stalin era saw a resurrection of interest to the personality of Przhevalsky. Numerous books and monographs were published in the Soviet Union and satellite Communist countries, which was a rare occurrence in regard to the Tsarist-era scientists, and Soviet encyclopedias portrayed Przhevalsky in sharp similarity to Stalin, which was rumored that in such a discrete manner Stalin was paying a homage to his alleged biological father. M. Khachaturova, a Tbilisi resident, who happened to know an unnamed old lady, the original bearer of the secret, was considered to be a whistleblower of the myth about Stalin's mother's alleged promiscuity. Przhevalsky's diary, if it ever existed, was rumored to disappear from archives during the early days of Stalin's ascent to power as the Communist party career, especially in its highest echelon, was troublesome for the noble blood people, who claimed a hoi polloi origin. There were unsubstantiated claims that certain 1881 paycheck ledger contained brief notes on money transfer from Przhevalsky to Stalin's mother; however, Przhevalsky's visits to Georgia are not recorded, and G. Egnatashvili, a family friend of the Jughashvilis, did not recollect anything which could possibly substantiate those claims. [30] During the Stalin era, any talk concerning his ancestry and childhood was a public taboo; the ferocity, with which the legend was debunked after the Stalin's death with the entire monographs written in order to disprove the myth up until the 2010s, also was considered by some as a further proof of veracity of the Przhevalsky's alleged one-night-stand theory. A humorously developed version of this legend appears in The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (Book Three) by Vladimir Voinovich.
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, was a British Army officer, explorer and spiritual writer. He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, led by himself, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and president of the Royal Geographical Society.
Karakol, formerly Przhevalsk, is the fourth-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, near the eastern tip of Lake Issyk-Kul, about 150 kilometres (93 mi) from the Kyrgyzstan–China border and 380 kilometres (240 mi) from the capital Bishkek. It is the administrative capital of Issyk-Kul Region. Its area is 44 square kilometres (17 sq mi), and its resident population was 84,351 in 2021. To the north, on highway A363, is Tüp, and to the southwest Jeti-Ögüz resort.
Qinghai Lake is the largest lake in China. Located in an endorheic basin in Qinghai Province, to which it gave its name, Qinghai Lake is classified as an alkaline salt lake. The lake has fluctuated in size, shrinking over much of the 20th century but increasing since 2004. It had a surface area of 4,317 km2 (1,667 sq mi), an average depth of 21 m (69 ft), and a maximum depth of 25.5 m (84 ft) in 2008.
The foreign relations of Tibet are documented from the 7th century onward, when Buddhism was introduced by missionaries from India and Nepal. The Tibetan Empire fought with the Tang dynasty for control over territory dozens of times, despite peace marriage twice. Tibet was conquered by the Mongol Empire and that changed its internal system of government, introducing the Dalai Lamas, as well as subjecting Tibet to political rule under the Yuan dynasty. Tibetan foreign relations during the Ming dynasty are opaque, with Tibet being either a tributary state or under full Chinese sovereignty. But by the 18th century, the Qing dynasty indisputably made Tibet a subject. In the early 20th century, after a successful invasion, Britain established a trading relationship with Tibet and was permitted limited diplomatic access to "Outer Tibet", basically Shigatse and Lhasa. Britain supported Tibetan autonomy under the 13th Dalai Lama but did not contest Chinese suzerainty; while "Inner Tibet", areas such as Amdo and Kham with mixed Chinese and Tibetan populations to the east and north, remained nominally under the control of the Republic of China although that control was seldom effective. Although the sovereignty of Tibet was unrecognized, Tibet was courted in unofficial visits from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the United States during and after World War II. The foreign relations of Tibet ended with the Seventeen Point Agreement that formalized Chinese sovereignty over most all of political Tibet in 1951.
Kham is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Domey also known as Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The official name of this Tibetan region/province is Dotoe. The original residents of Kham are called Khampas, and were governed locally by chieftains and monasteries. Kham covers a land area distributed in multiple province-level administrative divisions in present-day China, most of it in Tibet Autonomous Region and Sichuan, with smaller portions located within Qinghai and Yunnan.
The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso was the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, enthroned during a turbulent modern era. He presided during the Collapse of the Qing Dynasty, and is referred to as "the Great Thirteenth", responsible for redeclaring Tibet's national independence, and for his national reform and modernization initiatives.
Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov was a Russian and Soviet traveller and explorer who continued the studies of Nikolai Przhevalsky in Mongolia and Tibet.
The wild horse is a species of the genus Equus, which includes as subspecies the modern domesticated horse as well as the endangered Przewalski's horse. The European wild horse, also known as the tarpan, that went extinct in the late 19th or early 20th century has previously been treated as the nominate subspecies of wild horse, Equus ferus ferus, but more recent studies have cast doubt on whether tarpans were truly wild or if they actually were feral horses or hybrids.
Przewalski's gazelle is a member of the family Bovidae, and in the wild, is found only in China. Once widespread, its range has declined to six populations near Qinghai Lake. The gazelle was named after Nikolai Przhevalsky, a Russian explorer who collected a specimen and brought it back to St. Petersburg in 1875.
The location of Tibet, deep in the Himalaya mountains, made travel to Tibet extraordinarily difficult at any time, in addition to the fact that it traditionally was forbidden to all western foreigners. The internal and external politics of Tibet, China, Bhutan, Assam, and the northern Indian kingdoms combined rendered entry into Tibet politically difficult for all Europeans. The combination of inaccessibility and political sensitivity made Tibet a mystery and a challenge for Europeans well into the 20th century.
Ligularia przewalskii, also called Przewalski's leopardplant and Przewalski's golden ray, is a species of perennial herbaceous plant in the genus Ligularia and the family Asteraceae, native to damp places in Mongolia and Northern China. Named after the Russian explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky, it used to be called Senecio przewalskiiMaxim.
Gombojab Tsybikov was a Russian explorer of Tibet from 1899 to 1902. Tsybikov specialized in ethnography, Buddhist Studies, and after 1917 was an important educator and statesman in Siberia and Mongolia.
Tibet was a de facto independent state in East Asia that lasted from the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 until its annexation by the People's Republic of China in 1951.
The Ma clique fought a series of military campaigns between 1917 and 1949 against unconquered Amchok and Ngolok (Golok) tribal Tibetan areas of Qinghai (Amdo), undertaken by two Hui commanders, Gen. Ma Qi and Gen. Ma Bufang, on behalf of the Beiyang and Kuomintang governments of the Republic of China. The campaigns lasted between 1917 and 1949. The conflict was spurred by multiple factors, notably for economic and socio-political reasons rather than by any racial or religious enmity.
Schizopygopsis przewalskii is a species of cyprinid that is endemic to the Lake Qinghai basin in China, where it is the dominant fish species. S. przewalskii is a planktivore with a main population that migrates from the lake to rivers to spawn and another that lives its entire life in the nearby Ganzi River. The species is listed as endangered on the China Species Red List due to overfishing and habitat loss, which has led to suspension of its commercial fishery four times since 1989.
Przevalski's nuthatch, originally given the nomen nudumSitta eckloni, is a bird species in the family Sittidae, collectively known as nuthatches. Long regarded as a subspecies of the white-cheeked nuthatch, it nevertheless differs significantly in morphology and vocalizations. Both S. przewalskii and S. leucopsis have been regarded as closely related to the North American white-breasted nuthatch. It is a medium-sized nuthatch, measuring about 13 cm (5 in) in length. Its upper body is a dark gray-blue or slate color, becoming dark blue-black at the crown. The cheeks and throat are a white buff-orange, turning to a rich cinnamon on the underparts that intensifies in color on the sides of the breast. Vocalizations consist of alternating series of ascending whistles and short notes.
The Qing dynasty in Inner Asia was the expansion of the Qing dynasty's realm in Inner Asia in the 17th and the 18th century AD, including both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, both Manchuria and Outer Manchuria, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
Chengguan, also known as Huangyuan and by other names, is a town on the Huangshui River in Qinghai, China. It serves as the seat of Huangyuan County, lying about 45 km (28 mi) upstream (west) from the provincial capital of Xining and approximately 45 km (28 mi) east of Qinghai Lake. Chengguan has a 600-year history as a frontier trading post between the Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan cultural spheres.
Eremias przewalskii, commonly known as the Gobi racerunner, is a species of lizard in the family Lacertidae. The species is endemic to Asia.
Przewalski's toadhead agama, also known as Tsarewsky's toadhead agama, or Steindachner's toadhead agama, is a species of agamid lizard found in China and Mongolia. This species was named after Nikolay Przhevalsky, a Russian Imperial geographer and explorer of Central and East Asia.