Charles Stoddart

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Colonel Charles Stoddart (1806 - June 1842) was a British officer and diplomat.

[edit] Biography

Stoddart, the son of Major Stephen Stoddart (1763-1812), was a famous British agent in Central Asia during the Great Game. When he was captured by the Emir of Bukhara, Nasrullah Khan, in 1842, Captain Arthur Conolly staged an unsuccessful rescue attempt. Both men were executed on charges of spying for the British Empire in June 1842.

In 1845, Rev. Joseph Wolff, who had undertaken an expedition to discover the two officers' fate and barely escaped with his life, published an extensive account of his travels in Central Asia, which made Conolly and Stoddart household names in Britain for years to come.

[edit] References

• Peter Hopkirk. The Great Game, Kodansha International, 1992, ISBN 4-7700-1703-0, 565p. The timeline of the Great Game is available online.
• Rev. Joseph Wolff (1795 - 1862). Narrative of a mission to Bokhara, in the years 1843-1845, to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly. London, J.W. Parker, 1845. First and second (revised) edition both came out in 1845. Reprints:
  • New York, Harper & Bros., 1845
  • Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood & Sons, 1848
  • New York, Arno Press, 1970 ISBN 0-405-03072-X
  • Elibron Classics, 2001, ISBN 1-4021-6116-6)
  • A mission to Bokhara. Edited and abridged with an introduction by Guy Wint. London, Routledge & K. Paul, 1969. ISBN 0-7100-6456-X