Keppel arnold joost william (1 Ergebnisse)

First and only contemporary edition, an unusually bright and well-preserved copy of this interesting and engaging work, which, as a "narrative on the arms traffic in this region continues to yield valuable primary source material" (Chew, p. 247); this copy in a remainder binding, with the top edge plain and the stamp on the front cover in blind. Keppel (1884-1964), second son of the eighth earl of Albermarle, went to India as an aspiring journalist in 1910, possibly with the patronage of his distant relative Sir George Roos-Keppel who was then chief commissioner of the North-West Frontier and agent to the governor-general, to whom the book is dedicated. His study focuses on the Gulf arms manufacturers and gun-runners arming dissident tribes on the Frontier - naturally a major concern to British interest in the region - with two chapters entitled "A cruise in the Persian Gulf" and "Gun-running in the Persian Gulf". As a background, Keppel provides an account of the Zhakka Khel and Mohmand Expeditions of 1908, and of recent Gulf history. He spent some time on the North-West Frontier and was appointed special correspondent to The Times, covering the operations of the Mekran (or Makran) Field Force in 1911-12. This was an anti-gun-running expedition to the Makran coast of the Gulf of Oman, where elements of the Poona Division of the Indian Army marched inland some 65 miles from Galag to Bint in order to "choke the arms trade between Muscat and the Pathan tribal areas" (Morton-Jack, p. 98). Historian Emrys Chew notes that "to Arnold Keppel, another British observer who monitored gun-running in the Gulf, it was apparent that 'the fiery exhortations of the mullas' and the 'revived activity of the Hundustani fanatics' were crucial in galvanising anti-colonial resistance, and the rest of the arms trade with it" (ibid., 135). Keppel also served as honorary attaché in Bucharest and Tehran and as Times correspondent in Tehran 1912-14, with a special interest in Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs; during the First World War he served with the RFC/RAF and later dabbled in politics, standing as a Labour parliamentary candidate. Emrys Chew, Arming the Periphery: The Arms Trade in the Indian Ocean during the Age of Global Empire, 2012; George Morton-Jack, The Indian Army on the Western Front: India's Expeditionary Force to France and Belgium in the First World War, 2014. Octavo. Tissue-guarded half-tone frontispiece and 12 other similar plates from photographs by the author, title-page vignette of Fort Jellali, Muscat, 2 folding sketch maps (North-West Frontier districts and Persian Mekran and Biyabai, the latter showing the route of Mekran Field Force from Galag to Bint), and "The Frontier Fingerpost", a "handy" folding mnemonic of the region and its tribal areas. Original dark yellowish green cloth, gilt-lettered spine, front board with gilt stamp of an Omani khanjar and belt. Clean and bright, endpapers browned, foxing to fore-edge, front and back few leaves, and just marginally encroaching on text block. A very good copy.…