Paul’s Great Game: The Tsarist Plot to Invade British India
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Professor of Russian history at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Date 22 February 2018 Time 15:15 - 17:00 hrs.
Universiteit Leiden
Lipsius Building
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden
Room 147
The lecture examines Paul I’s ill-fated expedition to India of 1801. It describes the preparations and execution of Ataman Orlov-Denisov’s mission in January of that year in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, as well as previous French schemes to conquer the subcontinent. Historians have described Paul’s scheme as “vaguely prepared and ill-conceived,” and “a wild adventure.” What did Russians know about the lands that separated Russia’s steppe frontier from British India at the turn of the nineteenth century? I address this question with a brief discussion of the state of military Orientology at the time. At the same time, I consider the place of India in Russian geopolitical thought in Catherinian and Pauline Russia.