a b c d e f Meyer, Karl E. (10 August 1987). "The Editorial Notebook; Persia: The Great Game Goes On". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 18 August 2022 . Retrieved 24 October 2021. Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia". Foreign Affairs. 28 January 2009. ISSN 0015-7120. Archived from the original on 1 September 2021 . Retrieved 1 September 2021. The Great Game has been described as a cliché-metaphor, [182] and there are authors who have now written on the topics of "the Great Game" in Antarctica, [183] the world's far north, [184] and in outer space. [185] Scott, David (2008). China and the international system, 1840–1949: power, presence, and perceptions in a century of humiliation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. p.107. ISBN 978-1-4356-9559-7. OCLC 299175689. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023 . Retrieved 24 October 2021. Britain considered that... 'It was necessary to cultivate China as a counterbalance to the Russian threat to British India' a b c d e f g Andreeva, Elena (2007). Russia and Iran in the great game: travelogues and Orientalism. London: Routledge. pp.20, 63–76. ISBN 978-0-203-96220-6. OCLC 166422396. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023 . Retrieved 24 October 2021.

It would strengthen protectionism and thereby undermine the free trading ideal that Britain was committed to. If the British Government would only play the grand game – help Russia cordially to all that she has a right to expect – shake hands with Persia – get her all possible amends from Oosbegs – force the Bukhara Amir to be just to us, the Afghans, and other Oosbeg states, and his own kingdom – but why go on; you know my, at any rate in one sense, enlarged views. The expediency, nay the necessity of them will be seen, and we shall play the noble part that the first Christian nation of the world ought to fill. Salyer, Matt (29 October 2019). "Going All in on the Great Game? The Curious and Problematic Choice of Kiplingesque Inspiration in US Military Doctrine". Modern War Institute . Retrieved 31 January 2023.

Breu, Thomas; Maselli, Daniel; Hurni, Hans (2005). "Knowledge for Sustainable Development in the Tajik Pamir Mountains". Mountain Research and Development. 25 (2): 139. doi: 10.1659/0276-4741(2005)025[0139:KFSDIT]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 131608320. Archived from the original on 28 December 2020 . Retrieved 27 September 2019. all Soviet scholars shared the opinion that Britain had always been an aggressive imperialistic power in the Orient and that British colonial rule should be considered far crueler and less acceptable to indigenous ethnicities than that inaugurated by Tsarist civil and military authorities (p. 11). Dr R. Charles Weller, review of The Great Game, 1856-1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia, (review no. 1611) The Great Game: Britain and Russia in Central Asia. Edited by Martin Ewans. Volume II: Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde, by Henry Pottinger. First published by Longman, London, 1816. This edition by RoutledgeCurzon, Milton Park, England 2004. ISBN 0415316405. It would undermine the old Islamic regimes of central Asia leading to a frantic war among the powers for shares of the spoils.

Goodwin, Jason (20 February 2009). "Mongolia and the Madman". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 19 March 2023. With its panoply of outlandish tyrants, fortune tellers, mounted tribesmen and wild dreams advanced against absurd odds, the whole story [of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg] could have possessed the makings of a glorious offshoot of the Great Game, had Ungern been anything more than a murderous sadist.Penzev, Konstantin (15 November 2010). "When Will the Great Game End?". Oriental Review. Archived from the original on 13 February 2017 . Retrieved 14 June 2019. Unofficially, the Great Game is still going on; and as Rudyard Kipling said, it will end when everyone is dead, i.e. it will never end. Of that we can be sure. In 1868, Russia moved against Bukhara and occupied Samarkand. Prince Gorchakov wrote in the Gorchakov Memorandum of 1874 that the Russian Ambassador to Britain offered an explanation that satisfied Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary. Clarendon replied that the rapid advance of Russian troops neither alarmed nor surprised the British Government, however it did the British public and the Indian Government. Clarendon proposed a neutral zone between Britain and Russia in the region, a view that was shared by the Russian Government. This led to a confidential meeting in Wiesbaden between Clarendon and Count Brunow, the Russian Imperial Secretary. [144] Chapter one: the prologue of the Great Game' (pp. 23–64) opens with coverage of 'Russian and British motives in their advances into Asia' (pp. 24–35), arguing that though economic and Christian civilizing aims are present, it was predominantly geostrategic motives grounded in 'the quest for natural, or “scientific”, frontiers above all' which shaped both Russian and British foreign policy in Asia in the initial stages of the Game (pp. 23, 63). Following from this are the 'Profiles of the Game’s players' (pp. 35–49) ‘who', the author tells us, 'fell into three main categories’: ‘monarchs and high-standing bureaucrats’, ‘military and diplomatic agents in the state’s service’, and ‘explorers, journalists, and other freelancers, who often acted at their own risk’ (p. 23). Asian nationals played their role as well, employed within the ranks of each empire 'as surveyors, scouts, and secret informants' (p. 49). These included, among others, not only (those posing as) Muslim merchants, but even Siberian and Mongolian Buddhist monks on sacred pilgrimage to Tibet (pp. 250–9, 270–1). Chapter one closes with the provocative suggestion that the primary role of the Asian nations within the Great Game's prologue (and throughout) was that of 'decadent Oriental states' being incorporated 'into the global system of relations’ forged by 'the great powers' (p. 23; see critique below). According to Robert Irwin, who considers a smaller, espionage-focused interpretation of the Great Game, Tibet was indeed connected to the Great Game, but "the truth is that, in the period concerned, British ruling circles didn’t own so much as a sweetshop in Tibet." Specifically, he notes that the commercial trade that followed the Younghusband expedition was negligible compared to the cost of the expedition. [4]

It was introduced into the mainstream by the British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901). [19] It was first used academically by Professor H.W.C. Davis in a presentation titled The Great Game in Asia (1800–1844) on 10 November 1926. [20] The use of the term "The Great Game" to describe Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia became common only after the Second World War. Hopkirk, Peter (2001). Setting the East Ablaze: On Secret Service in Bolshevik Asia. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280212-5. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023 . Retrieved 21 June 2022. Take a nostalgic race around the historic railway networks of Britain with The Great Game of Britain Board Game. In 1810, British Lieutenant Henry Pottinger and Captain Charles Christie undertook an expedition from Nushki ( Balochistan) to Isfahan (Central Persia) disguised as Muslims. The expedition was funded by the East India Company and was to map and research the regions of "Beloochistan" (Balochistan) and Persia because of concerns about India being invaded by French forces from that direction. [27] After the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the collapse of the French army, the threat of a French invasion through Persia was removed. Volodarsky, Mikhail (1983). "Persia and the Great Powers, 1856–1869". Middle Eastern Studies. 19 (1): 75–92. doi: 10.1080/00263208308700534. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4282923. Archived from the original on 24 October 2021 . Retrieved 24 October 2021.Still more, Sergeev’s choice to use the adjective ‘punitive’ (in the text cited above) carries a clear, intended sense of ‘just, deserved punishment’ for aggressive violations against the innocent, assaulted Russian victims. (37) Meanwhile, the Kazakh scholar Akseleu Seidimbek insists, from the perspective of the colonized, that for his people it accomplished not justice, but instead only ‘cast the hell of colonization into their consciousness’. (38) Another Kazakh scholar, Abdizhapar Abdakimuhli, agrees, calling it nothing but ‘oppressive over-lordship’. (39) A good deal more could, likewise, have been said regarding the development and impact of the pan-Islamic and broader pan-Asian movements upon the dynamics of Russo-British and other ‘great power’ relations. In describing how ‘[t]here emerged for the first time a perspective on the coalescence of Asian states under Russia’s patronage to renounce a British civilizing mission’ among ‘some native princelings’ of India following the Sepoy Uprising of 1857-58 (pp. 73–4), Sergeev offers fair, but limited coverage. He has, for starters, overlooked the fact that ‘[d]uring the [Sepoy] Mutiny, the British took full advantage of the help they had given to the Ottomans during the Crimean War’ by ‘not only obtain[ing] permission from the Porte for the passage of their troops to India through Egypt and Suez, but also secur[ing] a proclamation from the Sultan, as Caliph, advising the Indian Muslims not to fight against them’, with the proclamation then ‘circulated and read in the mosques of India’. While Indian Muslims certainly retained a measure of bitterness toward the British, the Ottoman Sultan’s proclamation ‘had a remarkable influence over them’, so much so that ‘”in this way the debt that Turkey owed to Great Britain for British support in the Crimean war was paid in full”’. (5) Indeed, with the Sepoy incident leading to the official end of the Mughal Dynasty and, thus, the dethroning of Muslim power in India, Indian Muslims were, more and more, driven to look toward the Ottoman Sultan as the sole Caliph of the Muslim world, as well as the Meccan ulema who were also under Ottoman rule, so that in due course debates over ‘jihad’ against the British as ‘infidels’ were deemed unnecessary and even un-Islamic by the remaining Muslim leadership in India. (6)