The Great Game

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Covering a time period right from the 16th Century, when the Russians slowly started expanding eastwards and came in conflict first with the Central Asian Khanates, then with the British Raj in the 19th Century, the book finishes with the Great Game's own end in the beginning of the 20th Century when Japan beat the Russian Empire. Hopkirk does a decent job of covering such a massive time span without getting too technical and boring his readers. The Great Game has many strengths, Hopkirk’s masterful writing being the highlight. All too often in histories, the author can get bogged down in minute details and the book, despite being well-researched, fails to interest the reader. This is hardly the case in The Great Game. In many places, the book reads like an adventure novel, keeping the reader fully engrossed in the story. Hopkirk’s writing makes the officers and officials on both sides of the struggle come alive not just as players of the Game, but as heroes that I found myself rooting for as they attempted to overcome natural and man-made challenges. China initiates enormous Yangtze water diversion scheme : Although not on the scale of the Grand Canal or the... by GoKunming

His works have been officially translated into fourteen languages, and unofficial versions in local languages are apt to appear in the bazaars of Central Asia. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.[3] much of his research came from the India Office archives, British Library, St Pancras. 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.

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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'. 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. Naturalmente nel mentre all'ambasciatore viene notificato che un un ferocissimo nomade, Yakoob Beg, è andato a prendersi la Kashgaria. 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.

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. The story encompasses places that I was fortunate enough to visit some years after that first youthful trip, such as the marvellous cities of the Silk Road. It begins with Prince Alexander Bekovich, sent by Peter the Great in 1717 to propose an alliance with the Khan of the glorious, pink-walled city of Khiva. The Khan however had other ideas. Many years later my Khivan guide Ali gleefully showed me the place on the Great Gate where Bekovich’s head had been hung. Hopkirk travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set – Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and eastern Turkey. As a journalist, he sought a life in dangerous situations, being sent to Algeria to cover the revolutionary crisis in the French colonial administration. Inspired by Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches, he began to think about the Far East. He was based in New York during the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, covering the events for the Daily Express.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. Also, super-relevant for our time with the silent struggle for oil in Central Asia. Every now and again, one comes across an article about Central Asia, but the coverage is hardly in proportion to the intensity of business, political, criminal, and petro-economical activity in that region. There's a lot of unknown knowledge in this area and it's pretty fun to read about it before it's been totally containerized. Di diritto nello scaffale (virtuale) della Storia, questo corposo saggio di scuola inglese ci trasporta in un territorio pressoché inedito per le nostre conoscenze, scolastiche e non, in un “Grande Gioco” che è la metafora dell’interminabile lotta per la supremazia in Asia Centrale nei secoli XVIII e XIX fino alle soglie della rivoluzione bolscevica. An account of the encounter last century between the British in India and Tsarist Russia in Central Asia which became known as the "Great Game". When the encounter began the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2000 apart. By the end, the gap had shrunk in places to 20 miles Un esempio. Questa mappa, dove il Pamir sono pochi tratteggi malposti, prima di dire che fa schifo, sappiate che è desunta dal rapporto di uno dei personaggi, un inglese. Se l'è fatto a piedi. Non il Pamir, ANCHE il Pamir. Prima di lui non c'era nulla.

Stesso discorso per le descrizioni dei luoghi, descrizioni di cui si sente fortemente la mancanza. I protagonisti attraversano migliaia e migliaia di chilometri di deserto, giungono in oasi che definire magiche sarebbe poca cosa, ma Hopkirk non concede il lusso non dico di una descrizione o di una istantanea sfuocata, ma nemmeno di una congettura. Il lettore lo sa di suo, per forza di logica, che i luoghi visitati dai protagonisti non sono tutti uguali, eppure la percezione immediata che si ricava da tale tipo di narrazione è - purtroppo - proprio quella: personaggi tutti uguali in luoghi tutti uguali. Solo verso il finale, qualche breve suggestione a proposito di Lhasa e qualche vaga descrizione di Chitral, hanno il sapore della beffa proprio perché tardive. The place where aggressive military officers could demonstrate their fitness for higher station and bigger titles. That is the Imperial Court could be counted upon to reward success and deny failure. The gold is for the winner as long as he takes all the risks 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. There are so many details missing. Nationalism and religion continue to render Europeans, especially their military as automatically to be resisted. In many of these cultures, raiding remains a part of what people do. Complete with family owned and handed down ambush positions. Villages can be situated so as to control entrance/exit for military purposes, even at the cost of commercial traffic.

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Across snow-capped peaks, mountain ranges & great deserts the British & Russian forces seemed to play a costly, deadly game that ultimately ended in a kind of stalemate that came at last with the fall of the Russian Czar. However, on so very many occasions what some have termed the "melting pot of history" also became its vast graveyard, with young men from both major Great Game contestants "dying while filthy, half-starved & lice-ridden, so very far from their beloved homes". China’s Upscaling of Potato Production Sprouts Controversy : The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture start... by Karlis Rokpelnis