Robert Barkley Shaw

Robert Barkley Shaw, CIE, (12 July 1839 – 15 June 1879) was a British explorer and diplomat. He was an early English traveller to Kashgar in Central Asia, and he established a relation with the local leader; he was later a member of a diplomatic expedition to the area. He became a diplomat in northern India and in Mandalay.

Early life

Shaw was born in Upper Clapton, London, and was educated at schools on the continent, at Marlborough College, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Unable to recover his health after an attack of rheumatic fever, he gave up the idea of entering the army, and in 1859 he went to Kangra in the Himalayas, where he settled as a tea-planter.

Exploring Central Asia

He had an adventurous spirit, and was interested in exploring the then almost unknown country north of the Karakoram; after one or two tentative excursions, he started in May 1868 for Eastern Turkestan, travelling as a merchant. On the obverse Yakub Beg was targeted by the Russians for assassination, closing the Silk Road that Shaw had hoped to trade tea caravans. Shaw concurred with the theoretical land hunger of the Tsar for territorial expansion into Kashgaria; to invade India, the Russians would enter Chang Lung Pass, surmount past Leh to the Ladakh and down into the plains.

Mission to Eastern Turkestan Prime Minister of England William Gladstone believed in a buffer state policy to protect British India from invasion; built on a network of diplomatic alliance and friendships. Economic liberalism and free trade aimed to open up routes to the Far East through the Karakorams. Shaw estimated there were potentially 60 million customers in Kashgaria region waiting for his tea caravans. Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India authorised Shaw to join a new expedition in 1869 under Sir Thomas Douglas Forsyth, a senior political officer to cement the friendship with Yakub Beg and pre-empt Russian aggression.

Later career In 1872 the Royal Geographical Society awarded Shaw the patron's gold medal; Sir Henry Rawlinson stated that this distinction was given him "for the services he had rendered to the cause of geography in exploring Eastern Turkestan; and above all for his very valuable astronomical observations."

Works A Visit to High Tartary, Yarkund, and Kashgar, London, 1871 A Sketch of the Turki Language as spoken in Eastern Turkestan, Lahore, 1875 The Ghalchah Languages, Calcutta, 1876