In the following years, he travelled extensively in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East, and published several books on the region in which he detailed his geopolitical outlook and underlined the perceived Russian threat to British control of India.

He also oversaw the division of the British Mandate of Palestine and the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan, and was the chief Allied negotiator of the 1922 Treaty of Lausanne which defined the borders of modern Turkey.

An influential presence in Curzon's childhood was that of his brutal, sadistic governess, Ellen Mary Paraman, whose tyranny in the nursery stimulated his combative qualities and encouraged the obsessional side of his nature.

[7][page needed] Curzon was President of the Union[4] and Secretary of the Oxford Canning Club (a Tory political club named after George Canning), but as a consequence of the extent of his time-expenditure on political and social societies, he failed to achieve a first class degree in Greats, although he subsequently won both the Lothian Prize Essay and the Arnold Prize, the latter for an essay on Sir Thomas More, about whom he knew little.

[4] His maiden speech, which was chiefly an attack on home rule and Irish nationalism, was regarded in much the same way as his oratory at the Oxford Union: brilliant and eloquent but also presumptuous and rather too self-assured.

[13][page needed] In the meantime Curzon had travelled around the world: Russia and Central Asia (1888–1889); Persia (September 1889 – January 1890); Siam, French Indochina, China, Korea and Japan (1892); and a daring foray into Afghanistan and the Pamirs (1894–1895).

[4] A bold and compulsive traveller, driven by orientalism, he was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his exploration of the source of the Amu Darya (Oxus).

The line starts from the city of Kyzyl-Su, formerly Krasnovodsk (nowadays Turkmenbashi) (on the Caspian Sea), travels southeast along the Karakum Desert, through Ashgabat, continues along the Kopet Dagh Mountains until it reaches Tejen.

[16] This railway connected Russia with the most wealthy and influential cities in Central Asia at the time, including the Persian Khorasan Province,[17] and would allow the rapid deployment of Russian supplies and troops into the area.

[21] Years later Curzon would lament that "Persia has alternatively advanced and receded in the estimation of British statesmen, occupying now a position of extravagant prominence, anon one of unmerited obscurity.

Although he was neither a devout nor a conventional churchman, Curzon retained a simple religious faith; in later years he sometimes said that he was not afraid of death because it would enable him to join Mary in heaven.

[citation needed] They had three daughters during a firm and happy marriage: Mary Irene (known as Irene), who inherited her father's Barony of Ravensdale and was created a life peer in her own right; Cynthia Blanche, who became the first wife of the fascist politician Sir Oswald Mosley; and Alexandra Naldera ("Baba"), Curzon's youngest daughter; she married Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe, the best friend, best man and equerry of Edward VIII.

In response to what he called "a number of murderous attacks upon Englishmen and Europeans", Curzon advocated at the Quetta Durbar extremely draconian punishments which he believed would stop what he viewed as such especially abominable crimes.

[31] Only four years later this position was abandoned and the Persian Gulf declared a neutral zone in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, prompted in part by the high economic cost of defending India from Russian advances.

[34]Within India, Curzon appointed a number of commissions to inquire into education, irrigation, police and other branches of administration, on whose reports legislation was based during his second term of office as viceroy.

After learning about the realities of labour conditions for indentured Indians, he deemed it impossible to defend the system in its current state, and committed to a stance of reform.

In 1900, Curzon wrote an appeal to the Permanent Under-Secretary for India calling for indentured labourers to be treated better given their contribution to colonial defences, although this did not prompt immediate change.

On 14 May 1903, he wrote a lengthy despatch to the India Office demanding full discretion to withdraw from the system of indentured labour if they would not concede to the proper treatment of Indian workers.

[40] In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis criticised Curzon for cutting back rations and raising relief eligibility.

In deference to the wishes of the King and the advice of his doctors, Curzon did not stand in the general election of 1906 and thus found himself excluded from public life for the first time in twenty years.

With Allied victory over Germany far from certain, Curzon wrote a paper (12 May 1917) for the War Cabinet urging that Britain seize Palestine and possibly Syria.

In 1918, during World War I, as Britain occupied Mesopotamia, Curzon tried to convince the Indian government to reconsider his scheme for Persia to be a buffer against Russian advances.

The Anglo-Persian Agreement of August 1919 was never ratified and the British government rejected the plan as Russia had the geographical advantage and the defensive benefits would not justify the high economic cost.

Against Curzon's wishes, but on the advice of Sir George Milne, the commander on the spot, the CIGS Sir Henry Wilson, who wanted to concentrate troops in Britain, Ireland, India, and Egypt,[64] and of Churchill (Secretary of State for War), the British withdrew from Baku (the small British naval presence was also withdrawn from the Caspian Sea), at the end of August 1919 leaving only three battalions at Batum.

After a British garrison at Enzeli (on the Persian Caspian coast) was taken prisoner by Bolshevik forces on 19 May 1920, Lloyd George finally insisted on a withdrawal from Batum early in June 1920.

When Wilson asked (15 July 1920) to pull troops out of Persia to put down the rebellions in Iraq and Ireland, Lloyd George blocked the move, saying that Curzon "would not stand it".

[67] During the Irish War of Independence, but before the introduction of martial law in December 1920, Curzon suggested the "Indian" solution of blockading villages and imposing collective fines for attacks on the police and army.

A letter purporting to detail the opinions of Bonar Law but actually written by Baldwin sympathisers was delivered to the King's Private Secretary Lord Stamfordham, though it is unclear how much impact this had in the outcome.

Although he was the last and in many ways the greatest of Victorian viceroys, his term of office ended in resignation, empty of recognition and barren of reward.... he was unable to assert himself fully as Foreign Secretary until the last weeks of Lloyd George's premiership.

This sense of opportunities missed was summed up by Winston Churchill in his book Great Contemporaries (1937):The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze; and the evening lead.