Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

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In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central Asia. At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of the British Empire. When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated the two rivals.

ANNOTATION

The Great Game was the epic stand-off between the two superpowers of the nineteenth century--Victorian Britain and Czarist Russia--for the riches of India and the East. Based on meticulous scholarship and on-the-spot research, Peter Hopkirk's immensely readable account covers the history at the core of today's geopolitics. Photos and maps.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the lonely passes and blazing deserts of Central Asia, a deadly struggle took place in the last century between secret agents of the two superpowers - Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia. One of the most gripping episodes in imperial history, it is known as the Great Game. Today, following the sudden collapse of Russia's mighty empire, its often violent repercussions are once again rocking the headlines, giving rise to what political analysts are already calling 'the new Great Game'. Peter Hopkirk's acclaimed, spellbinding account tells the story of this great imperial struggle for strategic and economic supremacy, fought across a cruel and desolate terrain stretching from the Caucasus to China. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2,000 miles apart. By the end, as the caravan towns of the old Silk Road fell one by one to the fast-riding Cossacks, this had shrunk to less than twenty in places. At times war seemed inevitable. Here is the real-life world of Kipling's Kim seen through the adventures of those on either side - espionage and treachery on a grand scale and in exotic settings. Based on meticulous scholarship and on-the-spot research, its heroes and villains include ambitious young officers, bloodthirsty Emirs, ruthless Russian generals, and Muslim holy warriors. Yet for all its glamour and romance, the Great Game has once again become ominously topical, as a new power struggle begins in Central Asia.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Half-mad Russian czar Paul I dispatched an invasion force to India in 1801. It was hastily recalled upon his assassination. But 70 years later a succession of ambitious czars had crushed the Muslim peoples of Central Asia, and confident St. Petersburg again cast a covetous eye southward on India. Fearing a Russian invasion, the British rulers of India sent English spies disguised as holy men to find out what the Russians were up to. In 1880, after bloody fighting, the British eradicated Russian influence in Afghanistan and established a buffer state. The Great Game, as the Anglo-Russian struggle in Central Asia was called, unfolds in Hopkirk's ( Setting the East Ablaze ) intricate narrative as an incredible tale of high adventure and political intrigue, conveyed here through the exploits of Cossacks, Muslim guerrillas, courageous travelers, spies, mapmakers and soldiers. The Great Game ended in 1907 with an Anglo-Russian pact, but as Hopkirk notes in a foreword, a new imperialist rivalry is underway in Central Asia, pitting the U.S. against Russia, Turkey, China and Iran. Photos. (Sept.)

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