The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

Overview

THE GREATGAME: THE EPIC STORY BEHIND TODAY'S HEADLINES

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.

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."

The Washington Post has said that "every story Peter Hopkirk touches is totally engrossing." In this gripping narrative he recounts a breathtaking tale of espionage and treachery through the actual experiences of its colorful characters. Based on meticulous scholarship and on-the-spot research, this is the history at the core of today's geopolitics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568360225
Publisher:	Kodansha USA
Publication date:	05/15/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	596
Sales rank:	47,484
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

PETER HOPKIRK is the author of Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Race for Lhasa, and two other books. A staff writer for The Times of London for nineteen years, five as its chief reporter, he is a Middle and Far East specialist.

Table of Contents

	Maps
	Illustrations
	Foreword
	Acknowledgements
	Prologue	1
	The Beginnings	9
1	The Yellow Peril	11
2	Napoleonic Nightmare	24
3	Rehearsal for the Great Game	38
4	The Russian Bogy	57
5	All Roads Lead to India	69
6	The First of the Russian Players	77
7	A Strange Tale of Two Dogs	89
8	Death on the Oxus	99
9	The Barometer Falls	109
	The Middle Years	121
10	'The Great Game'	123
11	Enter 'Bokhara' Burnes	135
12	The Greatest Fortress in the World	153
13	The Mysterious Vitkevich	165
14	Hero of Herat	175
15	The Kingmakers	188
16	The Race for Khiva	202
17	The Freeing of the Slaves	213
18	Night of the Long Knives	230
19	Catastrophe	243
20	Massacre in the Passes	257
21	The Last Hours of Conolly and Stoddart	270
22	Half-time	281
	The Climactic Years	293
23	The Great Russian Advance Begins	295
24	Lion of Tashkent	306
25	Spies Along the Silk Road	321
26	The Feel of Cold Steel Across His Throat	339
27	'A Physician from the North'	355
28	Captain Burnaby's Ride to Khiva	365
29	Bloodbath at the Bala Hissar	384
30	The Last Stand of the Turcomans	402
31	To the Brink of War	418
32	The Railway Race to the East	430
33	Where Three Empires Meet	447
34	Flashpoint in the High Pamirs	465
35	The Race for Chitral	483
36	The Beginning of the End	502
37	End-game	513
	Bibliography	527
	Index	543

Editorial Reviews

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.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hopkirk's real-life thriller, first published in Great Britain in 1990 as The Great Game: on Secret Service in High Asia (John Murray Ltd.), tells the story of the 19th-century imperial struggle between agents of Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for strategic and economic supremacy over an area stretching from the Caucasus to China. Includes 24 pages of illustrations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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