62 Orientalism and EmpireThey also drew on the general thirst for colonial travel and explora-
tion beyond the boundaries of “civilization” that informed European
colonial expansion. “I was still very young,” recalled A.P. Berzhe,
“when the desire to travel to the most remote places arose within
me.”^20 He studied Farsi in Tehran and hoped to serve in the diplo-
matic corps in places such as Persia, Arabia, Turkey, or Egypt, but in-
stead landed in Tbilisi. The Russian ambassador to Persia,D.I
Dolgorukov, was an active member of the Caucasus Department of
the Imperial Russian Geographic Society and frequently sent news of
European travel expeditions in Iran that he thought would be of in-
terest to department members.^21 Their library included a ready sup-
ply of numerous classics of European exploration and adventure,
such as An Account of the Mission to the Court of Persia in 18 07 by
Harfourd Brydges, Wilhelm Heine’s work on Commodore Perry in
Japan, Thevenot’s Reisen in Europa, Asien und Africa, Sir Gore
Ouseley’s Epitome of the Ancient History of Persia, and numerous other
works.^22 In 1862 the department library began permanent subscrip-
tions to Nouvelles annales des voyages and Journal asiatique.^23 Members
of this Orientalist and colonial community centred in Tbilisi thought
of themselves as participants in a general global process of coloniza-
tion, and they followed with particular interest the policies and expe-
riences of the French in North Africa.
A Russian readership for the drama of discovery and exploration
gathered strength throughout the nineteenth century. Jeffrey Brooks
has described the new interest in empire, among other themes, evi-
dent in popular literature and chapbooks before the revolution, and
Daniel Brower has described the Russian interest in the adventures of
Nikolai Przhevalsky in Central Asia, an imperial equivalent, perhaps,
of David Livingstone or Richard Burton for European readers.^24
Russians read popular publications such as Vsemirnyi Puteshestvennik
(Global traveller), where they learned of the journey of the English-
men Speke and Grant through North and central Africa in search of
the source of the Nile, French progress in New Caledonia, General
Sherman’s attempts to subdue the Native Americans, the growth of
San Francisco from its rugged beginnings in the American West, the
growth of Australia in spite of its humble origins as a penal colony, or
the construction of a railway in Central America.^25 The general struc-
ture of these tales – the willing departure from the civilized world,
the deprivations of travel, the encounter with the natives, glimpses of
exotic women, and hunting in the wild – were familiar to Russians
and non-Russians raised on Romantic travel literature. Patagonian
nomadic tribes, for example, living solely by robbery seemed to have
much in common with “Cherkes” tribes who swept down from the