Reginald Teague-Jones
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Reginald Teague-Jones MBE (30 July 1889 – 16 November 1988) was a British political and intelligence officer. He was active in the
Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...
and Central Asia during the
Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
. For the last 66 years of his life he was known as Ronald Sinclair. Under that assumed name, he authored two published accounts of his travels and adventures in Asia and the Middle East.


Early life

Teague-Jones was born in
Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
. He was brought up in
St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...
, capital of Imperial Russia. His father was a language teacher and died when Reginald was still a child. He was educated at a German-run school that specialised in languages where he learned French, German and Russian, and at
Bedford School Bedford School is a 7–18 Single-sex education, boys Public school (United Kingdom), public school in the county town of Bedford in England. Founded in 1552, it is the oldest of four independent schools in Bedford run by the Harpur Trust. Bed ...
between 1905 and 1907. He later spent two years studying at
King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...
, but left without taking a degree.


Indian intelligence officer

In 1910, at the age of 21, he joined the Indian Police and was soon transferred to the (British) Indian government's Foreign and Political Department, an organisation that had trained earlier players in the so-called
Great Game The Great Game was a rivalry between the 19th-century British Empire, British and Russian Empire, Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, primarily in Emirate of Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Qajar Iran, Persia, and Tibet. The two colonia ...
, the clandestine struggle for influence in Central Asia between the Russian and British empires during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here he became involved in intelligence work on the North West Frontier, undertaking missions in disguise and adding Persian to his knowledge of languages.


World War I and the Russian Civil War

In 1917 he was moved to military intelligence at G.H.Q. Delhi and given responsibility for the Persian Gulf. The war in the Middle East was now entering a critical stage with the collapse of Russian forces following the October Revolution and the creation of a
power vacuum In political science and political history, the term power vacuum, also known as a power void, is an analogy between a physical vacuum to the political condition "when someone in a place of power, has lost control of something and no one has replac ...
in the Caucasus. As 1918 dawned, a reinvigorated Turkish force, the
Ottoman Army of Islam The Islamic Army of the Caucasus (; Turkish: ''Kafkas İslâm Ordusu'') (also translated as ''Caucasian Army of Islam'' in some sources) was a military unit of the Ottoman Empire formed on July 10, 1918. The Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha ...
under
Enver Pasha İsmâil Enver (; ; 23 November 1881 – 4 August 1922), better known as Enver Pasha, was an Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkish people, Turkish military officer, revolutionary, and Istanbul trials of 1919–1920, convicted war criminal who was a p ...
began advancing on
Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...
, much to the alarm of the British, who envisaged Enver's army crossing the Caspian, sweeping through
Transcaspia The Transcaspian Oblast, or simply Transcaspia, was an oblast of the Russian Empire and early Soviet Russia to the east of the Caspian Sea during the second half of the 19th century until 1924. It was bounded to the south by Iran's Khorasan Prov ...
(Russia's southernmost Central Asian possession) and on to India by way of
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
. Teague-Jones was now despatched on an intelligence-gathering mission to Transcaspia via the British garrison commanded by Wilfrid Malleson at Meshed to find out what resistance to the Turks could be expected. Crossing the
Kopet Dagh The Köpet Dag, Kopet Dagh, or Koppeh Dagh (; ), also known as the Turkmen-Khorasan Mountain Range, is a mountain range on the border between Turkmenistan and Iran that extends about along the border southeast of the Caspian Sea, stretching nort ...
mountains in disguise in July, he spent the next six months between Meshed, Baku and the Transcaspian capital
Ashkhabad Ashgabat (Turkmen language, Turkmen: ''Aşgabat'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag, Kopetdag mountain range in Central Asia, approximately 50 km (30  ...
, where he found the Bolsheviks had been overthrown days earlier and replaced by the
Transcaspian Government The Transcaspian Government (1918 - July 1919) was a "Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary" coalition set up by the railway workers of the Trans-Caspian Railway in 1918. It was based at Ashgabat, Transcaspian Oblast. Origin Autonomous sentiments we ...
, claiming allegiance to the
Social Revolutionaries Social revolutions are sudden changes in the structure and nature of society. These revolutions are usually recognized as having transformed society, economy, culture, philosophy, and technology along with but more than just the political system ...
. He was appointed British political representative in Ashkhabad as a small British force, the
Malleson Mission The Malleson mission or British intervention in Transcaspia was a military action by a small autonomous force of British Indian troops, led by General Wilfrid Malleson, operating against Bolshevik forces over large distances in Transcaspia (mo ...
, arrived from Persia to aid resistance against the Turks and to fend off attacks by the Bolsheviks from
Tashkent Tashkent (), also known as Toshkent, is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uzbekistan, largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of more than 3 million people as of April 1, 2024. I ...
. Here he remained until the withdrawal of this force began early in 1919


The 26 Baku Commissars

As a result of his involvement in Transcaspian politics, his name became linked to the murder of the
26 Baku Commissars The 26 Baku Commissars were Bolshevik and Left SR, Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR) members of the Baku Commune. The commune was established in the city of Baku, which was then the capital of the briefly independent Azerbaijan Democratic Repub ...
. The commissars had escaped across the Caspian after the fall of Baku in September 1918, and had been taken prisoner by White Russians at Krasnovodsk. They were then shot in the desert between Krasnovodsk and
Ashkhabad Ashgabat (Turkmen language, Turkmen: ''Aşgabat'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. It lies between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag, Kopetdag mountain range in Central Asia, approximately 50 km (30  ...
in mysterious circumstances on 20 September. In 1919, and again in 1922, the Social Revolutionary lawyer Vadim Chaikin claimed these murders had been carried out under the direct orders of Teague-Jones. In November 1922 Teague-Jones produced a 1,500-word rebuttal of Chaikin's claims which was passed by the British Foreign Office to the Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. However, Chaikin's version of events was later endorsed by Trotsk

and was upheld by Soviet historians until the collapse of the USSR.


Change of identity

Teague-Jones changed his name in 1922 and all reference to him in Foreign Office files ceased after the end of 1922. For the next 66 years until his death, he was known as Ronald Sinclair. In 1926 he undertook a trip by car across Persia, ostensibly in the interests of a British business consortium. The trip is widely held to have been undertaken in a Ford Model A (1927–31), Ford Model A, although this fact is disputed as the model did not go on sale until December 1927. His account of this trip, ''Adventures in Persia: To India by the Back Door'

was published in 1988 just before his death. As Ronald Sinclair, he later served as Vice-Consul in New York from 1941 until his retirement shortly after the war, possibly in collaboration with the newly-formed
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...
. It has been suggestedHopkirk (1994), pp 396 – 399 that his change of identity was intended either to protect him from Soviet vengeance for the death of the Baku commissars, or to provide cover for future intelligence operations. Evidence that he had worked for
MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...
was found in his possessions at the time of his death, and it seems likely that both his 1926 Persian trip and his diplomatic position in New York were fronts for intelligence work.


Death

He died on 16 November 1988, as Ronald Sinclair at a private nursing home in Plymouth, England. An obituary appeared in ''The Times'' on 22 November, alerting
Peter Hopkirk Peter Stuart Hopkirk (15 December 1930 – 22 August 2014) was a British journalist, author and historian who wrote six books about the British Empire, Russia and Central Asia. Biography Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank St ...
, a historian of the Great Game, who was researching Teague-Jones at the time. As a result, Hopkirk immediately wrote a second obituary for ''The Times'' revealing his true identity.


Notes


References / Bibliography

* Hopkirk, Peter (1990): ''The Spy Who Disappeared'' (Introduction and epilogue), Victor Gollancz * Hopkirk, Peter (1994): ''On Secret Service East of Constantinople'', Oxford University Press * Teague-Jones, Reginald (1988): ''Adventures in Persia: To India by the Back Door'', Victor Gollancz * Teague-Jones, Reginald (1990): ''The Spy Who Disappeared'', Victor Gollancz * Ter Minassian, Taline (2012): ''Reginald Teague-Jones'', Paris: Grasset (a new work by a professor of Russian history at the INALCO (Institut national des langues et civilsations orientales) in France, which is dedicated to Brian Pearce for his help with the research). * Ter Minassian, Taline (2014): ''The Most Secret Agent of Empire: Reginald Teague-Jones, Master Spy of the Great Game'', translated from the French by Tom Rees, London: Hurst Publishers. * *Trotsky, Leon ''Between Red and White'' A large number of Teague-Jones's papers are in the British Library, under various headings, and can be found via the Access to Archives website. {{DEFAULTSORT:Teague-Jones, Reginald 1889 births 1988 deaths Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Alumni of King's College London British Indian Army officers British police officers in India Members of the Order of the British Empire People educated at Bedford School