The Great Game

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In recent years, there’s been talk of a new Great Game being played out over the oil-rich steppes of Central Asia. Where the oil and natural gas from countries like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will flow has been a matter of great debate between China and Russia as both try to spread and use their influence in these former Soviet Republics. This talk of a new Great Game piqued my interest not only in the current resource battles being waged, but more in the original Great Game – the century-long struggle between czarist Russia and Great Britain over Central Asian supremacy. To better familiarize myself with the subject, I read The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Middle East and Central Asia expert Peter Hopkirk. There are typically two kinds of history books: those that are extensively researched and cover every relevant event in comprehensive and precise detail but are dry and stylistically boring, and those that are engagingly written but gloss over the minor or complicated details for the sake of appealing to readers. Very rarely does an author succeed in achieving both. The Great Game is one of those rare books that do. First thoughts: Am halfway through listening to this (i.e., about 8 hours in), but as excellent as the whole thing is, am going to take a little break. Like a good action movie, there is a lot of exciting plot offset with the occasional big "set piece," which at this point is the First Anglo-Afghan War which ended in the disastrous 1842 Retreat from Kabul...and I am frankly exhausted. Time for something a little lighter, before I get into Part II... What is crippling in this book is that Hopkirk fails to see this period with a modern eye. While it isn't necessary that all periods of history should be critically re-looked at, Hopkirk does a serious misjudgment here, because this book serves as a salve to Western readers who still think that Europeans "did a jolly good job" with their Empires (as is evident in this book's popularity, right here on Goodreads). It also doesn't help that Peter Hopkirk unabashedly hero worships questionable characters such as Alexander Burnes who are directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths, rape and imprisonment of thousands. Uno dei lati positivi della ricostruzione fedele e documentata è nel poter quasi toccare con mano l'eleganza dei modi di questi ufficiali che sanno di doversi scannare il giorno successivo, ma il giorno prima conversano amabilmente e si offrono a vicenda il pranzo e la cena. Una certa cavalleria ed eleganza sono veramente morte e sepolte con il XIX sec., spariti la grazia e il garbo oggi ci restano solo fanatismo e ipocrisia.

This is to be sure a rather blood-soaked tale, with grim betrayals, frequent beheadings but also uncommon bravery. Hopkirk contends that while the British may have had their Achilles' heel in India, the Russians had theirs in the Caucasus where the local Muslim tribes were still holding out fiercely against the might of the Czar. Author Peter Hopkirk culls from many period accounts. He tells the stories of adventurers, spies, secret agents and provocateurs. Geographical survey was a priority, as much was unknown about the region. Henry Pottinger, in Muslim disquise, explored from Baluchistan to Isfahan in 1810. He later played a leading role in the Opium War, the Treaty of Nanking, and founding of Hong Kong. Alexander Burnes, who made an overland reconnaissance in 1831, traced the Indus River, crossed the Khyber Pass to Kabul and became famous during his lifetime for the memoir 'Travels Into Bukhara'. It is a wonderful account and, already addicted to Peter Hopkirk’s tellings, I was completely captivated by a part of history I knew nothing of. And not just Central Asia; it's important to remember that at this same time, England was continuing its less-than-benign empire building in India and Africa, as well as its unconscionable abuse of my ancestors in Ireland.This library has been posted for non-commercial purposes and facilitates fair dealing usage of academic and research materials for private use including research, for criticism and review of the work or of other works and reproduction by teachers and students in the course of instruction. Many of these materials are either unavailable or inaccessible in libraries in India, especially in some of the poorer states and this collection seeks to fill a major gap that exists in access to knowledge. What might be thought of as Russia’s version of Manifest Destiny. From a Russian point of view, the natural boundaries of Russia could include everything east of the Caucuses all the way to the Pacific (At one point Russia had active control of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest south into California) curbed only by whatever parts of India that England failed to hold and as much of China as she failed to hold.

I knew a little about the Great Game before – that 19th-century wrangling over Central Asia between Britain and Russia – but I hadn't appreciated before how motivated both sides were, in Britain's case because they feared encroachment on their ‘jewel of the Empire’, British India, and in Russia's case because they were hell-bent on expanding their influence as far as possible. But the real joy here is in the Boy's-Own adventuring of some of the principal players – ambitious explorer-spies who headed off the map and into a world of mountain fortresses, Himalayan snowstorms, Russian ambushes, gruelling sieges, and daring gunfights. At stake was a barely-known network of independent city-states whose rulers were befriended, betrayed, and played off one another by the two major powers in an attempt to win influence and ascendancy in the area. Peter Hopkirk’s spellbinding account of the great imperial struggle for supremacy in Central Asoa has been hailed as essential reading with that era’s legacy playing itself out today. Hopkirk describes this struggle from its nascence in Alexander I's triumph over Napoleon to the decline of Russia after the Russo-Japanese War. While Russia was intent on expanding its empire into Central Asia, Britain was trying very hard to keep India British, so they were on full-alert to any Russian incursions into Central Asia. And they were keeping a third-eye-out for any kingdoms they could snatch up with promises of Victorian infrastructural progress. (You'll enjoy visualizing manifestations of Victorian progress (the steam train, the telegraph perhaps, the Enfield Gun), when you're reading of the fate of Arthur Conolly- repeatedly, peripatetically successful in all exploration and espionage sorties, a BIG PLAYA in the Game- when he wears out the welcome of the Emir of Bukhara. (or was it Queen Victoria who wore out his welcome??) Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game first appeared in 1990 & stands as a very interesting, well-researched book, written with a journalist's eye for detail. I recommend it, as well as another of Hopkirk's books, Quest For Kim, an excellent companion to Kipling's novel. L’impero britannico e l’impero russo vi si fronteggiarono instancabilmente senza mai arrivare allo scontro diretto (benché in un paio di occasioni vi giunsero alquanto vicino…) ma sfruttando, come in una scacchiera o un risiko grande come l’intero continente asiatico, gli stati e staterelli interposti come cuscinetto: regni, emirati, canati (territori governati da un Khan) coinvolti in un vortice di alleanze, tradimenti, accordi labili come fili d’erba, donazioni, feroci rappresaglie e finte conversioni, un “gioco” di cui gli orientali sono ritenuti maestri ma che inglesi e russi dimostrarono di saper condurre con analoga astuzia e doppiezza.

This item is part of a library of books, audio, video, and other materials from and about India is curated and maintained by Public Resource. The purpose of this library is to assist the students and the lifelong learners of India in their pursuit of an education so that they may better their status and their opportunities and to secure for themselves and for others justice, social, economic and political. The period covered begins in the early 19th century with the Russian Czar seeming to match wits & extensive treasury outflows with the British King and ends (roughly speaking) a century or so later with the realignment of Europe & Asia, the fall of the Czar, the death of the Ottoman Empire and the lessening of British imperial power during the time between the two World Wars.

He was in fact a young British officer in disguise, Lieutenant Arthur Conolly of the 6th Bengal Native Light Calvary, having somehow survived his mission to reconnoiter the military & political no-man's-land between the Caucasus & the Khyber, through which a Russian army might march. Daring, resourceful & ambitious, Conolly was the archetypical Great Game player & it was he, fittingly enough, who first coined this memorable phrase in a latter to a friend. Despite his junior rank & tender years, his views were to have a considerable influence on the outcome of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Asia. According to Hopkirk, Arthur Conolly also had a strongly religious nature and "in common with most of his generation, believed in the civilizing mission of Christianity & in the duty of its adherents to bring the message of salvation to others less fortunate." Indeed, the author does often view those protecting their homelands from intruders as heinous, treacherous & fanatical but he also sees British leadership as marked by incompetence, irresolution & plain cowardice, as in the case of General William Elphinstone. What the Great Game fails to analyze is the thinking and interests of the many peoples who would fight against, ally with or otherwise own all of the ground that the two recognized powers would invade, fight over or otherwise manipulate in favor of goals rarely consistent with the culture or needs of the peoples who were already there. First things first, it is an engaging read, with just the correct amount of detail and narrative punch. 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. [1] [2] Biography [ edit ]

The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road—both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to twenty miles at some points. Now, in the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is once again talk of Russian soldiers “dipping their toes in the Indian Ocean.” Combine intelligence activity to understand the routes a Russian invasion might take, with developing client states friendly to Great Briton. Questo è un commento che non avevo intenzione di scrivere e che voi molto probabilmente non avreste mai voluto leggere, ma poi l'ottima Malacorda ha pensato bene di citarmi nella sua recensione del Grande Gioco, ed il sottoscritto si è sentito perciò in dovere di dare corpo a quel suo pensiero riportato altrove; per cui eccoci qua.

I found myself reading late into the morning, at times I couldn't put the book down. Most of the time I had heard of the places and people involved but a lot of this story was new to me. The narrative read like a novel, gripping but informative, never boring and full of information, breathing life into history in a way that is hard to find now-a-days. Con una prosa ispirata ed un racconto avvincente, in questo volume Peter Hopkirk ci accompagna nelle ignote lande orientali a rivivere l'ormai leggendario Grande Gioco, la guerra di spie che vide contrapporsi per oltre un secolo i due più potenti imperi dell'epoca, quello russo contro quello britannico. Naturalmente nel mentre all'ambasciatore viene notificato che un un ferocissimo nomade, Yakoob Beg, è andato a prendersi la Kashgaria. Come tutti i principi afghani, Dost Mohammed era stato istruito sin dall'infanzia nelle arti dell'intrigo e del tradimento. A ciò si aggiungeva un talento naturale, ereditato dalla madre persiana, per le sottigliezze.The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, Kodansha International, 1992, ISBN 1568360223 A Kazalinsk fu ricevuto dagli ufficiali russi, i quali, pur riservandogli un'accoglienza calorosa, lo informarono che non vedevano l'ora di battersi con gli inglesi per il possesso dell'India. "Ci spareremo addosso a vicenda la mattina" gli disse uno, porgendogli un bicchiere di vodka "e berremo insieme durante la tregua". There’s nothing I can say about ‘The Great Game; On Secret Service in High Asia’ that has not already been said. I liked this a lot, although I think the relevance to events today has been overplayed a bit by some other reviewers: it's better enjoyed as a stirring history than a political primer.