Colonel Charles Stoddart (23 July 1806 in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...

– June 1842 in

Bukhara Bukhara ( Uzbek: /, ; tg, Бухоро, ) is the seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan, with a population of 280,187 , and the capital of Bukhara Region. People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and the city ...

) was a British officer and

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or interna ...

. He was a famous British agent in Central Asia during the period of the

Great Game The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...

. Stoddart, the son of Major Stephen Stoddart (1763–1812), was educated at

Norwich School Norwich School (formally King Edward VI Grammar School, Norwich) is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a traceable history to 1096 as a ...

and later commissioned into the Royal Staff Corps from

Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infant ...

, in 1823. Dispatched on a mission to persuade the

Emir Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cer ...

to free Russian slaves and sign a treaty of friendship with Britain, he was first arrested by the Emir Nasrullah Khan in 1838. In November 1841 Captain

Arthur Conolly Arthur Conolly (2 July 1807, London – 17 June 1842, Bukhara) was a British intelligence officer, explorer and writer. He was a captain of the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry in the service of the British East India Company. He participated in many r ...

arrived in Bukhara with part of his remit to attempt to secure Stoddart's release. He was unsuccessful. Both men were executed on charges of spying for the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

on 24 June 1842. In 1845, the Rev Joseph Wolff, who had undertaken an expedition to discover the two officers' fate and who barely escaped with his life, published an extensive account of his travels in Central Asia which made Conolly and Stoddart household names in Britain for years to come. Stoddart is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

n lizard, ''

Ceratophora stoddartii The rhino-horned lizard (''Ceratophora stoddartii''), also commonly known as Stoddart's unicorn lizard and the mountain horned agama, is a species of lizard in the family Agamidae. The species is endemic to Sri Lanka. It is called ''kagamuva a ...

''.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Stoddart", p. 255).

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Peter Hopkirk, ''

The Great Game The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...

'', Kodansha International, 1992, , p. 565
The timeline of the Great Game is availabl
online
*Tom Bissell, ''Chasing the Sea'', Vintage, 2004, , pp 247–253 *Stephen M. Bland ''Does it yurt? Travels in Central Asia or How I Came to Love the Stans'', Hertfordshire Press, 2016, *Leonard Arthur Bethell, ''Tales from the Outposts – Vol 1, Frontiers of Empire''. Edinburgh: Blackwood. 1st edition 1932, pp 267–268. * Joseph Wolff, ''Narrative of a mission to Bokhara, in the years 1843–1845, to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly''. London: J. W. Parker, 1845. First and second (revised) edition both came out in 1845.
Reprints: **New York: Harper & Bros., 1845 **Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1848 **New York: Arno Press, 1970 **Elibron Classics, 2001, ) **''A mission to Bokhara''. Edited and abridged with an introduction by Guy Wint. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. {{DEFAULTSORT:Stoddart, Charles 1806 births 1842 deaths Royal Staff Corps officers People educated at Norwich School Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst British diplomats Executed military personnel The Great Game