In the Boundless and Inaccessible Mountains: The Study of the Afghan Frontier by the Staff of the Separate Caucasus Corps in the Third Decade of the 19th Century

Abstract

The paper studies an episode of the Afghanistan survey performed by the officers of the Caucasus corpus’ Headquarters. The backcloth of the research is the history of the diplomatic Afghan embassy that arrived in the Caucasus in 1835. The primary sources are kept in Russian central archives and museums such as RSMHA, SISM RSL, SM RNL, and DM SHM. The purpose of the study was to analyze the problem of the formation of ideas about the so-called “imperial geography” of frontier territories that developed in Russia as well as in other European countries in the 19th century. The article analyzes the contents of two secret notes compiled by officers of the General Staff according to the canons of military-statistical descriptions of territories as well as materials from the investigation conducted into the identities of the Afghan ambassadors. We use the “post-colonial criticism” approach widely practiced by the foreign researchers, primarily the concept of E. Said’s Orientalism conception and also methodology of the Malay historian Farish A. Noor focused on the Europeans data-gathering in the East regions. The author also took into account a systematic approach to the study of international relations, which allows considering the analytical work of the officers of the Separate Caucasian Corps in the context of the influence of the information they collected on the development of the course of diplomatic relations between the Russian Empire and the countries of its South-Eastern borderland. The paper headlines that, despite the adventurism of the embassy, the Headquarters was able to derive maximum benefit from the fact that people from Afghanistan arrived in the region. The actions of the commanding stuff indicate that it understood the connection between power, the need to expand the borders of the empire and the need to study the near, as well as remote Caucasus vicinity. The article is addressed to a wide range of researchers and all those who are interested in Russian intellectual acquisition of the East, as well as the history of the 19th century diplomacy.