Book Review - Black Dragon River by Dominic Ziegler

Black Dragon River : a Journey down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires by Dominic Ziegler

New York: Penguin Press, 2015                       ISBN 9781594203671

This fascinating book is both more and less than its cover would suggest. It is a much broader book in scope than merely looking at the Amur River itself, with the author beginning his journey in Irkutsk, far from the source of even the Onon River, the most Easterly of the Amur's tributaries. Ziegler intersperses his trip, which eventually brings him to the mouth of the Amur, with the history of the lands surrounding the river. He begins this history with Genghis Khan, who grew up in the foothills from which the Onon River springs.

However, most of Ziegler's historical writing is to do with the attempts by Russians to explore, subdue, and exploit the land around the Amur. And what an interesting history it is. Many of the people who moved there became proselytizers for development, suggesting that Southern Siberia was the Russian "West", where not only a civilization could grow, but where a new type of society could flourish. This idea was partly driven by the Russians exiled there for insurrectionist activities, and who re-discovered their Russian-ness in exile.

The Russians back in St. Petersburg were more interested in strategic and resource-getting activities. After the sable and sea-otter were hunted down, timber and caviar became the next targets. Ziegler describes how the rape of the countryside is happening to this day, with the Russian Mafia and Chinese State taking on the role of the early Cossacks in despoiling the land.

Ziegler shows how the early promise of the region - when it was thought that the Amur Basin would be a paradise, with goods flowing from it across to America from Nikolaevsk, the town at the Amur's mouth that would become a new San Francisco - gradually diminished owing to the difficulties of the terrain, the weather, and lack of investment. Even the Trans-Siberian Railway didn't help: the line back West meant that dreams of Eastern development were once again stymied.

As Ziegler travels along the river he sees old dreams that have been shattered, and much despair left in their wake. There are no good modern stories to be told along the river, although much of the past is being twisted to serve nationalistic ends. Much has been forgotten, and much remembered wrongly.
And what of China, across the river? Ziegler shows how a treaty between Russia and China signed in 1689 set a benchmark for mostly peaceful relations since. Both sides choose not to provoke the other, while trying to minimize the other's historic presence in the region by re-writing history.

So, this book, while an interesting social, historical, and political work on Southern Siberia and the relations between Russia and China, is not really a trip down the Amur River.

One more gripe with this book - while it has a good general bibliography and index, the one map provided is hopeless: more than half of the places mentioned in the text are not shown on it. There are no photographs or drawings of any kind in the book, a poor showing from the publishers, as they would have added considerably to the text.

All-in-all this book is a bit of a curate's egg: interesting in parts.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell