Eric Enno Tamm's Blog: Eric Enno Tamm, page 4

Author interview by Steve Madely

Listen to Steve Madely interview Eric Enno Tamm about his book The Horse That Leaps Through Clouds on CFRA 580 News Talk Radio in Ottawa on September 7, 2010.

A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road and the Rise of Modern China

Two epic journeys along the Silk Road – past and present – offer a riveting and cautionary tale about the breathtaking rise of modern China.On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim—who decades later became the President of Finland—boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Tsar Nicholas II to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynasty's sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last Tsarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled...

Mannerheim as Photographer

Gustaf Mannerheim practicing photography in Finland just before departing on his secret military mission to China.

GUEST ESSAY BY FINNISH PHOTOGRAPHER PETER SANDBERG
.One of the riches treasures that Gustaf Mannerheim brought back from his journey along the Silk Road from 1906 to 1908 is his very considerable collection of photographs. The pictures contain a huge quantity of information, and the collection amounts to a colourful reportage of a bygone world and of peoples known to few...

The Geography of Chinese Power

CNN's Fareed Zakaria talks with Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic, about his article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Geography of Chinese Power".Having read the article, my own sense is that Kaplan overemphasizes military might with his realist credo. Old balance-of-power thinking needs to be understood in the context of global economic integration. Yes, the Chinese do need to secure oil and gas, and various metals to ...

PROLOGUE

Crossing the Mannerheim LineI spent almost a week in Finland conducting interviews and doing research prior to departing for St. Petersburg. In 2005, I had also visited Finland and Russian-occupied Karelia to conduct research and tour the Mannerheim Line with Finnish friends. I arrived in Finland in the western port of Turku via ferry and rented a moped to drive to Louhisaari Manor, the birthplace of Gustaf Mannerheim and a fitting start to my epic journey. I then travelled by bus to...

CHAPTER 1

St. Petersburg: The Secret Agent

I spent six days in St. Petersburg, touring Gustaf Mannerheim's old haunts, interviewing scholars and immersing myself in the city's grand architecture and cultural institutions. The highlights included touring the city with retired Russian naval officer and Mannerheim aficionado Alexey Shkvarov, and interviewing the director of the State Hermitage Museum in the former Winter Palace. From St. Petersburg, I boarded the night train for Moscow, as Mannerheim did a...

Coping with China's financial power

State-owned banks are financing a $35-billion plan to triple the size of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province.

Ken Miller, president of a merchant banking firm and director of the USA Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, has written a level-headed, sophisticated and cautiously optimistic Foreign Affairs article about China's financial might. Much of the article, titled "Coping With China's Financial Power: Beijing's Financial Foreign Policy", rang true to me, and it wasn't laden with...

Russia's New Nobility lacks 'noblesse oblige'

Statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, still stands in St. Petersburg.

There's an interesting article in the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs that just arrived in my post box. It's titled "Russia's New Nobility: The Rise of the Security Services in Putin's Kremlin" by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, co-founders of the website Agentura.ru. The article is adapted from their forthcoming book, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's...

Secret Agent, Soldier and Statesman

Of all the great explorers who plundered the ancient treasures of the Silk Road a century ago, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim would become the most famous, but not for his archaeological exploits.Men such as Sven Hedin, Sir Aurel Stein, Albert von Le Coq and Paul Pelliot were the celebrity-explorers of their time. Feted and financed by Europe's monarchs, they were treated like heroes, returning home with rapturous stories of Oriental adventure and caravan loads of priceless antiquities. Nowadays...

Mannerheim's Dagbok

The first page of Mannerheim's diary, or dagbok in Swedish, of his journey across Asia.

Harry Halén, a philologist and the foremost expert on Gustaf Mannerheim's Asian expedition, has just edited a masterful new edition of Mannerheim's travelogue. Like his original diary, or dagbok in Swedish, this three-volume book is in Mannerheim's mother tongue. Co-published by Svenska litteratursällskapet in Helsinki and Atlantis Books Stockholm and weighing more than 10 pounds, it has been called "an...