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Stoddart, Charleslocked

(1806–1842?)

Stoddart, Charleslocked

(1806–1842?)
  • Elizabeth Baigent

Charles Stoddart (1806–?1842)

by William Brockedon, 1835

Stoddart, Charles (1806–1842?), diplomatist, born at Ipswich on 23 July 1806, was the son of Major Stephen Stoddart (1763–1812), army officer, and his wife, Katherine Randal (1773–1824). His father died in a riding accident near Limerick in 1812. Appointed to the Royal Staff Corps as second-lieutenant in 1823 and lieutenant in 1826, Stoddart was placed on half pay in 1834 with the rank of captain. From 1833 to 1835 he was secretary to the Royal United Service Institution, London, and to the Institution of Civil Engineers.

In 1835 Stoddart went to Persia as military secretary to the British envoy, Henry Ellis. He continued in his post under John McNeill, Ellis's successor. In February 1838 Stoddart informed Haji Mirza Aghasi, chief adviser to the shah, that Britain would take steps to ensure the continuing independence of Herat, regarded as the western gateway to Afghanistan and then under siege by the shah. Stoddart appears to have been unauthorized to make this threat, and in any case it was unsuccessful. In June 1838 Stoddart was sent back to the shah with a note demanding his withdrawal from Herat, but again went beyond his instructions and told the shah that Britain would declare war if he did not withdraw. His lack of diplomacy made worse a delicate and difficult situation, although it cannot be said to have made a material difference to events.

Shortly afterwards Stoddart left for Bukhara with instructions from McNeill to negotiate for the release of Russian slaves so as to avert the threat of a Russian attack, and, if possible, to conclude a treaty of friendship with the amir, Nasrullah Khan. Stoddart did not, however, go direct to Bukhara: instead he joined Eldred Pottinger in Herat. Pottinger, a Briton, had in an unofficial capacity been active in Herat during the siege and had acquired great influence there, although his position was contentious, and in November 1838, after a particularly bitter quarrel with the wazir, Stoddart, as Pottinger's colleague, was expelled. It was only after this that Stoddart went on to Bukhara.

Why Stoddart was chosen by McNeill is a mystery. He was described by a close friend, John Grover, as 'a man of impulse, with no more power of self-control than an infant … for a diplomatic mission, requiring coolness and self-control, a man less adapted to the purpose could not readily have been found' (Yapp, 409). Stoddart arrived in Bukhara on 17 December 1838 and Amir Nasrullah, who had already heard of his behaviour in Herat and who found his manner at their first meeting arrogant and overbearing, imprisoned him. Stoddart's imprisonment dominated British relations with Bukhara for the next three years. The British were reluctant to send a military detachment to force his release and instead tried a series of unsuccessful diplomatic means. In the autumn of 1840 his position improved after the Russian failure at Khiva led to a rise in the esteem in which Britain was held. The amir released Stoddart from prison, but problematic negotiations then followed in which the amir's hopes of British recognition of his ambitious territorial claims were quashed. Stoddart, feeling himself in favour in Bukhara, began to hope for the release of the amir's Russian slaves. It has been suggested that he was offered passage out of Bukhara in 1841 with a Russian mission under Butenev, but that he refused, since he was unwilling to be beholden to Russia. Yapp judges this unlikely, on the basis of letters from Stoddart which make clear his suspicions of the amir.

At the amir's request Stoddart invited Arthur Conolly to join him at Bukhara. Conolly was in Kokand on an ill-defined diplomatic mission, hoping to further his scheme of the union of Uzbek states against Russia. Conolly arrived in October 1841. In December he and Stoddart were imprisoned by the amir, who felt himself ill-used by the British and emboldened by the Kabul rising the previous month. In June 1842, possibly on the 17th or 24th, or according to other sources in 1843, Stoddart and Conolly were taken to a public square in the city and beheaded. According to a statement made to Joseph Wolff, a Jewish convert, missionary in India, and close friend of Conolly's, who had been sent by a London committee to discover what had happened to the two men, Stoddart had said before he was killed, 'Tell the ameer I die a disbeliever in Muhammad; that I am a Christian, and a Christian I die'. This statement was of importance to his family, who were alarmed by contemporary reports of his conversion to Islam. He and Conolly seem both to have been ardent Christians, but poor diplomatists who suffered from the lack of a clearly articulated policy towards the Uzbek states and Turkestan.

Sources

  • M. E. Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798–1850 (1980)
  • J. Grover, The Bokhara victims (1845)
  • J. W. Kaye, Lives of Indian officers, 2 vols. (1867)
  • J. Wolff, Mission to Bokhara (1845)
  • private information (2004)
  • P. Hopkirk, The great game: on secret service in high Asia (1990)

Likenesses

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