I’m booked to spend one night in Khiva. Second prize, two nights in Khiva?
In 1840, near the height of the “great game” a British Lieutenant set out from Khiva with 416 Russians whose release from slavery he had effected in negotiation with the Khan. He marched them 500 miles to the Russian Fort Alexandrovsk on the Caspian Sea. The Russians, in the delicate politics of the time, were not amused:
She seemed to consider that the interposition of England in her behalf was almost an insult; that she was humiliated by accepting of any favour at our hands; and she thus refuses to the present day to admit tht she was indebted to Shakespeare’s intercession for the recovery of her kidnapped subjects. The extreme sensitiveness, indeed, which she has betrayed upon this subject can only be explained by her pretension to exclusive relations with the Uzbek principalities, both commercial and political; a pretension which of course has never been recognized in England, and which it may yete be of national importance to us distinctly to disavow.
--“The Russians in Central Asia,” London Quarterly Review CCXXXV,
Article VIII, 277-304 284 (July 1865).
Available here. To be fair, I guess you'd have to add that the British were not amused that the Russians were not amused.
Post-Visit Update: Actually, Khiva is a perfectly pleasant place. Bit touristy, but the slaves, if any, are kept decently under wraps.
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