Pashkova, L.A.: French and English Colonies in the Far and Middle East

Title

Frantsuzkie i angliiskie kolonii na Krainem Vostoke i na Vostoke, Odessa 1886

French and English Colonies in the Far and Middle East

Keywords

Summary

In this book, Pashkova shares her perspective on French and British colonialism in various Eastern regions, drawing on her travel experiences. Overall, she seems to sympathise with the French, despite acknowledging their shortcomings as colonisers, while remaining critical of the British, despite the effectiveness of their colonial approach. As well as offering insights into European colonialism, Pashkova also focuses on exotic environments and the locals, whom she describes in vivid detail using colonial language. For instance, when she mentions Dakar in passing, she writes: “As in Aden, there are black women of the amphibious race there; they can live as freely in the water as on land and climb onto steamboats like monkeys. For a few pennies, they dive under the boat and reappear on the other side. They catch the coins before they can sink to the bottom of the sea” (p. 61).

Bio

Lidiia Pashkova (née Glinskaia) was a Russian writer and traveller. She visited North Africa, the Middle East, China and Japan, among other places, documenting her experiences in travelogues and articles. Having lived in France for a long time, where she also worked as a correspondent for Le Figaro, she published several novels, plays and articles in French under the name Lydie Paschkoff. A member of the French Geographical Society, she was a theosophist and a friend of Helena Blavatsky, whom she met in the Middle East in the early 1870s. Her second husband was Ippolit Pashkov (1847-1889), a Russian diplomat and journalist who served in the Middle East for many years. After an attempted suicide in Brussels in 1896, traces of her were lost.

Sources

H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, I, Madras-London 1966, p. 521;

B. Hodgson, No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers, Berkeley 2002;

E. Moiseeva, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russko-frantsuzskoi pisatel’nitsy i puteshestvennitsy kniagini Lidii Pashkovoi na Blizhnem Vostoke v 70-80-e gg. XIX v., “Istoriia povsednevnosti”, 2019, 9 (1), p. 131-141;

E. Moiseeva, Vostok v proizvedeniiakh russko-frantsuzskoi puteshestvennitsy, kniagini Lidii Pashkovoi: razdvigaia granitsy orientalistskogo diskursa, “Gumanitarnye i iuridicheskie issledovaniia”, 2019, 1, p. 136-142.

A.F.

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