A review by orchardoriole
The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus by Charles King
2.0
I got it in my head it would be fun to read a book set in every country in the world. My first step was to decide what I would treat as a country for my project, since, though I know very little about international politics, I know that what is and is not a country is often a point of considerable contention. In the end, I decided that if Wikipedia says that a place is considered by a country by itself and at least one other country, it’s a country.
Yes, I realize that definition would cause international incidents, but, whatever. I’m not a governing body; I’m a person in her pajamas reading some books.
So, that means, alphabetically, my first country is...Abkhazia!
The original plan was to read fiction books set in each country, but it turns out there is not much fiction to be found about Abkhazia. Not much recreational nonfiction either, so this one about the Caucasus region generally was the best I could do.
The majority of this book was not for me. Most of it was taken up with accounts of military and political maneuvers, in which various regions were transferred to and from various powers, sometimes briefly becoming independent between the transfers. I imagine this is well written, but, at least for me, it’s often very dry reading.
I did learn that, for most of modern history, being an average resident of the Caucasus would be a very, very bad deal. There were often forced mass migrations and genocides, which were, of course, gruesome and tragic. In some cases, the people being forcibly moved away from a location were the same people whose grandparents had been forcibly moved to the same location by a different power a few generations before.
Also, the environment itself took a considerable beating. At one point in the 1800s, the Russian army was at a disadvantage against local forces who were familiar with the landscape of the forests, so the Russian army just clearcut huge swaths of land.
The middle third of the book focused more on culture, so that was more interesting for me. I learned about the fate of women who were kidnapped to be slaves, and about literature written about the Caucasus, and about the time in the 1890s when the Caucasus mountains became the trendy place to travel for wealthy European sportsmen.
Also, randomly, the book contained this sentence about the Caucasus people: “They were also extremely sexy.” Say what now? But yes, apparently, “Circassian women” were a popular draw at PT Barnum shows, where they would tell about their daring adventures. They were supposed to be the epitome of female beauty. At the shows, the quotes around “Circassian” were very much of the ironic variety. The women were generally American actors, but the popular perception about women of the Caucasus remained.
Typing all of these things, I’m realizing that even the chapter on culture is about what other people said and did about the Caucasus. The sections on the mountains are about the Europeans, and the sections on the captured slave women are mostly about the captors, and one of the most popular pieces of literature was an tragic romantic epic poem, written by a guy who had only kinda sorta been to the region. And the accounts of political and military maneuvering are mostly about the powers who claimed the land, not the people who lived in the land that was claimed.
So, hmmm. I guess this is mostly a book about what people outside the Caucasus have said and done about the Caucasus.
Yes, I realize that definition would cause international incidents, but, whatever. I’m not a governing body; I’m a person in her pajamas reading some books.
So, that means, alphabetically, my first country is...Abkhazia!
The original plan was to read fiction books set in each country, but it turns out there is not much fiction to be found about Abkhazia. Not much recreational nonfiction either, so this one about the Caucasus region generally was the best I could do.
The majority of this book was not for me. Most of it was taken up with accounts of military and political maneuvers, in which various regions were transferred to and from various powers, sometimes briefly becoming independent between the transfers. I imagine this is well written, but, at least for me, it’s often very dry reading.
I did learn that, for most of modern history, being an average resident of the Caucasus would be a very, very bad deal. There were often forced mass migrations and genocides, which were, of course, gruesome and tragic. In some cases, the people being forcibly moved away from a location were the same people whose grandparents had been forcibly moved to the same location by a different power a few generations before.
Also, the environment itself took a considerable beating. At one point in the 1800s, the Russian army was at a disadvantage against local forces who were familiar with the landscape of the forests, so the Russian army just clearcut huge swaths of land.
The middle third of the book focused more on culture, so that was more interesting for me. I learned about the fate of women who were kidnapped to be slaves, and about literature written about the Caucasus, and about the time in the 1890s when the Caucasus mountains became the trendy place to travel for wealthy European sportsmen.
Also, randomly, the book contained this sentence about the Caucasus people: “They were also extremely sexy.” Say what now? But yes, apparently, “Circassian women” were a popular draw at PT Barnum shows, where they would tell about their daring adventures. They were supposed to be the epitome of female beauty. At the shows, the quotes around “Circassian” were very much of the ironic variety. The women were generally American actors, but the popular perception about women of the Caucasus remained.
Typing all of these things, I’m realizing that even the chapter on culture is about what other people said and did about the Caucasus. The sections on the mountains are about the Europeans, and the sections on the captured slave women are mostly about the captors, and one of the most popular pieces of literature was an tragic romantic epic poem, written by a guy who had only kinda sorta been to the region. And the accounts of political and military maneuvering are mostly about the powers who claimed the land, not the people who lived in the land that was claimed.
So, hmmm. I guess this is mostly a book about what people outside the Caucasus have said and done about the Caucasus.