Armies of the Nineteenth Century
Asia Volume 1
Central Asia and
the Himalayan Kingdoms

Book Review

by Richard Brooks


by Ian Heath. Organization, warfare, dress and weapons, includes 133 figures, 41 illustrations and 12 maps contained in 174 pages. $40 plus postage, available from The Foundry, in the US 1549 Marview Dr., Westlake, OH 44145, 440-871-4587, fax 440- 892-5887. In the UK and the rest of the world from The Foundry, Hubert's Lane, Off Doyle Road, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 1RG, Channel Islands, Great Britain.

Chapters under Central Asia include Bokhara, Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, Khiva, Khokand, Khotan, The Kirghiz, Kuldja, and the Turcomans. Each of these chapters are divided into sections that discuss the general and military history, organization, unit organization, flags, conduct of warfare, Dress and Apearance, uniforms, arms and artillery. Illustrations of uniforms are numerous (57), as are contemporary photographs and illustrations of cannons and forts. Obviously, not all the sections under each chapter are as detailed as others as information is almost nonexistant in some areas. For example, Bokara is well documented with 17 1/2 pages of text while Khotan has less than one page.

Central Asia also includes a two page appendix on Central Asia tents and a two page bibliography. Most of the bibliographic entries are primary and contemporary books and articles.

Chapters under the Himalayan kingdoms include: Baltistan, Bhutan, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Tibet. The chapters are arranged similar to Central Asia and contain 76 uniform illustrations as well as cannon and forts. Once again the bibliographic references are mostly to primary and contemporary sources.

Everyone needs a unit of Tibetian Yak mounted infantry, what a great drawing, who's first to produce these.

Based on the information contained in this volume I feel very confident that I could produce a very credible army and fight it the way these states did. Further, if I could sculpt, I should be able to produce a range of very accurate figures based on both the drawings and the text. I first saw the figure drawings during the "Campaigning on the Oxus" articles and the Khivan figures were just perfectly matched to contemporary drawings.

More Book Reviews


Back to The Heliograph #112 Table of Contents
Back to The Heliograph List of Issues
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1999 by Richard Brooks.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com