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Foreign Devils on the Silk Road Reprint Edition

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Peter Hopkirk (Author)
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Peter Hopkirk (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 45 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0870234354
ISBN-10: 0870234358
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press; Reprint edition (January 30, 1984)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0870234358
  • ISBN-13: 978-0870234354
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,440,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 109 people found the following review helpful
So where was Indiana Jones?
By Tig Pocock on May 6, 2000
Format: Paperback
A mesmerising book, Hopkirk writes with a flair and passion that is infectious. The stories told by Hopkirk in 'Foreign Devils on the Silk Road' read like they belong in an Indiana Jones movie: Russian, French, Chinese, British and even Swedish(!) adventurers - heroes and villans both - competing to find the treasures of legendary cities buried for centuries beneath the trecherous sands of the Taklamakan desert. Exotic locations (still largely unknown to the Western world), rumours of supernatural forces protecting the buried cities - even the Indiana Jones-esque link to early Christian sects (the Nestorians) - it's all there! But it's more than just a "boy's own" adventure story: Hopkirk provides fascinating insights into the history of the ancient Silk Road as well as its latter intersection with the Great Game. I've been trying to figure out how to get to the Taklamakan ever since reading the book, which is now several years ago. This is history at its most readable.
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76 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Fulfills the promise of its title. Recommended.
By Eric Balkan on August 12, 1998
Format: Paperback
Excellent coverage of the first outside researchers to visit Chinese Turkestan (Xinkiang) in hundreds of years. These were men who braved extreme hardships to explore one of the world's most desolate places, the Taklamakan Desert. Hopkirk avoids a blanket condemnation of those who removed to other countries the old Buddhist wall paintings/manuscripts/etc., noting that at least some of it would have been ruined had it stayed -- and had been ruined. Hopkirk also follows up on some of the interesting side issues: were the Japanese "archeologists" really spies, for instance. And he brings the reader up to date on what happened to the old treasures and where they are now, noting that much of what was once buried in the Taklamakan is now buried in storage at the British Museum. This is not a large book but I suspect a lot of research went into it. Concise, informative, and entertaining.
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106 of 112 people found the following review helpful
Burglary in the back of beyond
By M. Mcfarland on January 20, 2002
Format: Paperback
What can you say about Peter Hopkirk that really sums up why he's the guru of the Great Game and derring-do in Central Asia. It's quite hard to put it down to anything in particular, but I find myself gripped with a longing for adventure every time I lift his tales and start to read. The Raj, the Russians, wild holy men and camel trains in Gobi sands - it's all there and I just can't get enough of it.
Is it being British and longing to know how a nation of bunglers can ever come so close to ruling the universe? Or is it the sheer romantic lust for wide open spaces and seeing things no one has ever seen before - except of course the ones who live here? I don't know, but By Jings Foreign Devils on the Silk Road is about as romantic as you can get.
It's about the race to steal the treasures of north-western China at the turn of the twentieth century. Sir Aurel Stein, a Brit. of Hungarian birth, and Sven Hedin, a Swede with a bit of thing for dictators, began a thirty year competition to find and save for posterity the ninth century Buddhist art work that had lain under the sands of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts for the best part of a millennium. It would change the West's understanding of Central Asian history and their linguistics for ever.
After Stein and Hedin there came the ever-brilliant French, the determined Germans and a very strange bunch of Japanese 'holy men' come spies. A Russian or two arrived a little late and the final curtain came down on an headstrong Yank who didn't quite get what he'd bargained for when the Chinese decided enough was enough.
All set off from Kashgar and travelled by camel into no man's land in search of cities long forgotten and swallowed up in sand dunes.Read more ›
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Yes Virginia, there really was an Indiana Jones
By lector avidus on July 21, 2006
Format: Paperback
This book is about the first explorers and archaeologists to make it to the most remote parts of Central Asia, where, in areas like Taklamakan, once upon a time before climatic changes, prosperous Buddhist, Nestorian Christian, Chinese, Greek and Hindu civilizations thrived along the trade routes between Cathay and ancient Rome. Taklamakan was surrounded on three sides by vast mountain ranges almost twice as high as the European alps; on the last side was the vast Gobi desert. A hundred years ago, there were no roads, cars, airplanes, radios, or GPS and few water sources to make travel easier, but rather hostile natives, wolves, 130F heat, and -25F cold to make travel there even less inviting. It was so remote that its name in Turki means that "If you go in, you won't come out."

As the British approached Central Asia from India, and the Russians from the North, and rumors of lost civilizations, treasure palaces and pleasure domes made their way to Europe and Japan; intrepid adventurers explored - and carted off by camel caravan - the remains of these civilizations.

The explorers were larger than life: Sir Aurel Stein, an Anglo-Hungarian, Sven Hedin, a Swede, Albert von Le Coq, a German of Huguenot origin, Paul Pelliot a French philologist with a photographic memory, Count Otani, a Japanese Buddhist monk, close relative of the Emperor and probable spy, and Professor Langdon Warner of Harvard. Last but far from least, is a semi-literate tribesman whose endeavors as an artful forger in a Central Asian oasis made fools of Oxford's best philologists. All this makes for an incomparable read.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

Excellent preparation for trip to Xinjiang.

Published 4 days ago by Big Dog
Hopkirk is a wonderful story teller

This is a fascinating story of how several archeologists found and removed the rich art treasures of China's ancient Silk Road, including huge wall paintings, sculptures, and... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Joseph Koppi
A good insight into those times.

An excellent account of the early archaeologists who travelled the Silk Road to unearth the hidden villages and rescue/plunder (?) the works of art they found. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Rose Sevastopulo
I enjoyed it while feeling a bit like I was slumming ...

Lively, well-written, I enjoyed it while feeling a bit like I was slumming because it is "popular". Read more

Published 13 months ago by James Kenney
This book has caused me to Google Earth the Tarim Basin and see what...

What an interesting book! I am too old to go to visit the Silk Road but I plan to see what is in the museums in London, Paris, Berlin and St. Read more

Published 13 months ago by David Jorgensen
Interesting and Informative

Hopkirk's book focuses primarily on the men who travelled the Silk Road in search of ancient treasures. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Kit M
Four Stars

Hopkirk's books are always engaging. A difficult task when navigating so many unfamiliar places, names, and events.

Published 15 months ago by Bill
The race for Silk Road artifacts from the "Desert of Death"

For hundreds of years goods passed back and forth across Central Asia: silk, medicines, spices, jewels and other luxury goods passed east and west. Read more

Published 23 months ago by James D. Crabtree
A thought-provoking history of scholars and skullduggery on the Silk...

Peter Hopkirk's books consistently succeed in highlighting fascinating episodes of 19th-20th century history in ways that are accurate, well written, and highly readable. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Gil J. Stein
Its okay if you want to drag out a read.

Hopkirk is a good author and can tell a story well, however, in this book he did not capture what his other books have, and that was your interest to stay with it..

Published on November 22, 2013 by TBL

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