The Great Game was played between the Russian Empire and British Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. At stake was the preservation 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. [1] Najibullah translation [ edit ] Various authors connect British-Russian competition in Iran to the Great Game as well. [79] [12] [80] This competition continued until the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 after which the British and Russian Empires largely moved together in their overtures for imperial influence in the region until the Bolshevik Revolution. [12] Hopkirk, Peter (1990). The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia. London: Hachette UKJohn Murray (published 2006). ISBN 9781848544772 . Retrieved 14 June 2019. The Caucasus, thanks to Urquhart and his friends, had thus become part of the Great Game battlefield. Second Anglo-Afghan War | 1878–1880". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 19 July 2022 . Retrieved 29 February 2020. In this work, the author relates the story of a time best described by Captain Arthur Connolly, of the East India Company before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, as " The Great Game".

Minute by Viceroy, encl. No. 123 of 1875, Government of India, Foreign Department (Political), to Salisbury, 7 June 1875, N.P.123. 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). That Sergeev generally shares this opinion is reflected in his derogatory representation of Kenessary Kasimov as nothing but a ‘self-proclaimed “sultan”’ who heads up nothing more than one of the ‘[n]umerous gangs of mounted bandits’ who ‘raided the frontier area’. To the contrary, Kenessary was the grandson of the great Kazakh khan Ablai (1711–81) and, therefore, rightful heir to the Kazakh khanship. He was clearly affirmed and embraced by a large portion of the Kazakh population as the last khan to rule the Kazakh khanate before a Russian provincial governing system was instituted on the Kazakh Steppe. (33) The Kazakh historian Zh. Kasimbaev, in his article on ‘The ethnonational independence movement of the Kazakh people led by Kenesari Kasimuhli’, makes clear that Kenessary, when conducting his campaign,In like manner, he omits entirely any discussion, let alone even mention, of the Indian National Congress and its essential predecessors. (22) In relation to both the Turkic Russian and Indian contexts, Sergeev could have made at least passing reference to one of the leading Jadid voices, Ismail bey Gaspirali (1851–1914) as well as the anti-British Indian Muslim reformer Abdul Hafiz Muhammad Barakatullah (1859–1927) who traveled internationally opposing Western imperialism while agitating for Indian independence from British rule. The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (US title The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia is a book by Peter Hopkirk on " the Great Game", a series of conflicts in the 1800s between the UK and Russian powers to control Central Asia. Nevertheless, in 1716, the Russians embarked on the construction of the so-called Orenburg-Siberian defensive line…protecting the southern frontier of the Russian Empire. …However, nomadic tribes regularly raided the frontier area during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries—as, for example, they did under the command of the self-proclaimed Kazakh “sultan” Kenessary Kasimov in 1841-47. Numerous gangs of mounted bandits frequently broke through defensive lines of cordon posts, looted Russian colonists, captured many people, and sold them as white slaves on the markets of Khiva and Bokhara, while frontier guards were enlisted mostly to garrison service. The ignorance of local specialities, inadequate mobility, and a scarcity of the means of offensive prevented frontier guards from conducting effective punitive expeditions on a regular basis … to eliminate banditry and slavery in Central Asia (pp. 56–57; cf. p. 144, 159, 221). Gerard, Maj.-Gen. M. G. Report on the Proceedings of the Pamir Boundary Commission. Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1897, 1st ed., Foolscap Folio (33 x 21cm), iv, 99pp

Chapter two (pp. 65–104) portrays 'the military party at the Tsarist court and the so-called forwardists among the British ruling elite’ (p. 66) as those bearing primary responsibility for the start of the Great Game in the aftermath of the Crimean (1853–6) and Caucasus (1828–59) wars. It was they who dictated the outlines of 'Russia’s challenge and Britain’s response, 1856–1864', with the former pressing Russia's agenda in Central Asia and related war plans against British India, orchestrated around Russian political missions to Asian countries which ushered in a new season of strained relations between the two empires (see esp. pp. 65–7). On the Russian side, the author seems to pin sizeable blame on the Russian need to save face after their Crimean defeat as the catalyst which 'finally overruled the cautious policy that Saint Petersburg had pursued in Central Asia during the Caucasian War and Crimean War in the first half of the 19th century’ (p. 94). But ultimately it was both Tsarist militants and British ‘forwardists’ together who squandered ‘an opportunity to make a new, peaceful start in their relationship' in the post-Crimean War period, an opportunity provided by, among other factors, the accession of Alexander II (1855–81) who had surrendered to the British (French, and Ottomans) in the Crimean War and then launched into his Westernizing economic, social, and political reforms (p. 66). Dean, Riaz (2019). Mapping The Great Game: Explorers, Spies & Maps in Nineteenth-century Asia. Oxford: Casemate. pp.270–71. ISBN 978-1-61200-814-1. the Transcaspian conquests of the Czar have brought about, and the seal upon which has been set by the completion of the new railway. The power of menace, which the ability to take Herat involves, has passed from English to Russian hands; the Russian seizure of Herat is now a matter not so much of war as of time; and that the Russians will thus, without an effort, win the first hand in the great game that is destined to be played for the empire of the East. [133]

A pencil and piece of paper for each player might also be useful (especially for younger kids) when planning their route around the board. Johnson, K. Paul (1 January 1994). The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge. SUNY Press. pp.XVIII, 244. ISBN 978-0-7914-2063-8. Andreeva, Elena. "Russia v. Russians at the Court of Moḥammad-ʿAli Shah". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021 . Retrieved 19 May 2022. Japanese Spies in Inner Asia during the Early Twentieth Century* | The Silk Road". edspace.american.edu. Archived from the original on 1 September 2021 . Retrieved 1 September 2021. C. Collin Davies (1932) Cambridge University Press. p. 158 The Problem of the North-West Frontier:1890–1908

Similarly to the British Empire, the Russian Empire saw themselves as a "civilizing power" expanding a purely humanitarian mission among the Turcomans into what they perceived a "semi-barbarous" region, reflecting the ideology of the time. [30] [3] Early explorations and accounts [ edit ] Afghan foot soldiers in British regiment "The Rangers", 1841 East India Company [ edit ] In the early 1920s, Roerich asserted that beings from an esoteric Buddhist community in India told him that Russia was destined for a mission on Earth. That led Roerich to formulate his "Great Plan," which envisaged the unification of millions of Asian peoples through a religious movement using the Future Buddha, or Maitreya, into a "Second Union of the East." There, the King of Shambhala would, following the Maitreya prophecies, make his appearance to fight a great battle against all evil forces on Earth. Roerich understood that as "perfection towards Common Good." The new polity was to include southwestern Altai, Tuva, Buryatia, Outer and Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, with its capital in "Zvenigorod," the "City of Tolling Bells," which was to be built at the foot of Mount Belukha, in Altai. According to Roerich, the same Mahatmas revealed to him in 1922 that he was an incarnation of the Fifth Dalai Lama. [168] Other uses of the term "Great Game" [ edit ] George N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question, London 1889, pp. 356–7. a b c d Gozalova, Nigar (2023). "Qajar Iran at the centre of British–Russian confrontation in the 1820s". The Maghreb Review. 48 (1): 89–99. doi: 10.1353/tmr.2023.0003. ISSN 2754-6772. S2CID 255523192.It would strengthen protectionism and thereby undermine the free trading ideal that Britain was committed to. 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. Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. IV 1908, p.5 Quote: "The history of British India falls ... into three periods. From the beginning of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century, the East India Company is a trading corporation, existing on the sufferance of the native powers, and in rivalry with the merchant companies of Holland and France. During the next century the Company acquires and consolidates its dominion, shares its sovereignty in increasing proportions with the Crown, and gradually loses its mercantile privileges and functions. After the Mutiny of 1857, the remaining powers of the Company are transferred to the Crown ..." (p. 5) And so, Sergeev still carries on not only a long-standing Tsarist tradition, but the post-Stalinist approach of the 1950s and 1960s which he himself highlights when ‘the champions of the so-called concept of the lesser evil advocated the Russian penetration of Central Asia as a progressive development aimed at the reformation of preindustrial societies’ (p. 11). His direct descent from this line of scholarship is only reinforced by the continuation of the same quote which clarifies that

of The Great Game on contemporary political boundaries Toggle Effect of The Great Game on contemporary political boundaries subsection a b Tamm, Eric Enno (10 April 2011). The Horse that Leaps Through Clouds: A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road, and the Rise of Modern China. Catapult. ISBN 978-1-58243-876-4. Ascending The Roof Of The World – Nain Singh's Last Exploration | Dreams Of Tibet". www.pbs.org. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021 . Retrieved 6 September 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)

Etymology

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] When Russia reached the Indian Ocean it could threaten the naval communications that held the British Empire together. The box has a moulded plastic insert that keeps everything neatly together when the game is not in use. a b Great British Adventurers by Nicholas Storey. Pen and Sword Books Ltd, Yorkshire, UK, 2012. ISBN 9781844681303 p29-32 Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim also acted as a tsarist agent during the Great Game, leading an expedition through Tibet, Xinjiang, and Gansu on the way to Beijing. [76] [77] The Russian General Staff wanted on-the-ground intelligence about reforms and activities by the Qing dynasty, as well as the military feasibility of invading Western China: a possible move in their struggle with Britain for control of inner Asia. [76] In a report to the Russian General Staff, Mannerheim also argued in favor of a Russian invasion of Xinjiang. [77] Disguised as an ethnographic collector, Mannerheim joined the French archeologist Paul Pelliot's expedition at Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan. They started from the terminus of the Trans-Caspian Railway in Andijan in July 1906, but Mannerheim quarreled with Pelliot, so he made the greater part of the expedition on his own. [76] Mannerheim met the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet and acted as an envoy of Russia. [78] Persia [ edit ] Iran and Turkestan in 1835