Black Dragon River Quotes

“Russia is usually readier to ascribe misfortune to conspiracies rather than to the more probable screwup.”
― Dominic Ziegler, Black Dragon River: A Journey Down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires

“Yet a small number continued to believe that the Amur held future promise—no longer as a land of furs and gold and grain, but as a waterborne supply route conveying provisions from the relatively fertile lands of western Siberia to the Russian fur colonies, or as an outlet for trade more broadly on the vast Pacific Ocean.”
― Dominic Ziegler, Black Dragon River: A Journey Down the Amur River Between Russia and China

“I spent hours gazing out at the bright rivers and lush meadows. How little different it can have looked when this was China’s Outer Tartary. I also spent hours thinking about the pivotal moments in the story of the Amur, the fur-driven impulse that first brought the Russians to this place, the Manchu repulse that pushed them away, and finally the nineteenth-century nationalist urgings that brought them back. It was like a ball ricocheting over historical time, absorbing fresh energies (including, later, manufactured grievances) at critical points.”
― Dominic Ziegler, Black Dragon River: A Journey Down the Amur River Between Russia and China