Black Dragon River
by Dominic Ziegler
Penguin, £19.99
The author, Asian editor of The Economist, relates his journey down the Amur River “at the borderlands of empires” – the Russian and the Chinese. This makes for an enthralling read: 2,826 miles of a river which marks a natural boundary between two proud and prickly countries, and where the history of Russian expansion into the Far East involved Cossack adventurers, bloodshed and decline.
In 1854, looking eastward rather than towards the West – always a tussle when debating Russia’s identity – the country took over land from China that was as large as France and Germany combined. This had followed centuries of pushing further and further into Siberia during which, as Ziegler ironically puts it, “the blessings of Russian civilisation began to be bestowed upon one sixth of the face of the earth”.
