A visit to Russian Central Asia.

/ By Michael Francis O’Dwyer, I.C.S., Director of Land Records and Agriculture, Punjab. pp. 479-512 in: Journal of the Society of Arts, April 16, 1897. London : The Society, 1897. Octavo (250 x 165 mm), stitchbound, pp. i-ii, 479-514, iii-iv; one double-page with 4 photomechanical process illustrations of mosques and tombs in Samarkand and the Gates of Tamerlane, one full-page map; light vertical fold, else fine and complete, as issued.

An obscure Central Asia travel account from the early career of the notorious Indian Civil Service officer Michael O’Dwyer, describing his journey from Moscow to Merv, Bokhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Khokand.

‘Sir Michael Francis O’Dwyer GCIE KCSI (28 April 1864 – 13 March 1940) was an Irish Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer and later the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, British India between 1913 and 1919. It was during O’Dwyer’s tenure as Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre occurred in Amritsar, on 13 April 1919. As a result, his actions are considered one of the most significant factors in the rise of the Indian independence movement. O’Dwyer endorsed Reginald Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh, making it clear that he felt Dyer’s orders to shoot at a peaceful demonstration, killing many innocent men, women, and children, was correct. He subsequently administered martial law in Punjab, on 15 April, and backdated it to 30 March 1919. In 1925, he published India as I knew it, in which he wrote that his time as administrator in Punjab was preoccupied by the threat of terrorism and spread of political agitation. In 1940, in retaliation for the massacre, O’Dwyer was assassinated by the Indian revolutionary Udham Singh.’ (Wiki)