And because he draws extensively from first-hand accounts by the men who were part of the Great Game, we get details that add color and excitement to the narrative. At times, these nations were treated as mere pawns, but these were pawns with a will of their own, and the ultimate outcome of the game often hinged on their decisions.īecause Hopkirk covers such a long period, nearly 100 years, we get to see certain patterns emerge and we get a sense of just how vast and ongoing the game was. Generally characterized as a dispute between Russia and Britain, the Great Game drew in players from every nation in Central Asia and many others from the surrounding area.
Peter Hopkirk’s exhaustive account of these years makes it clear just how perilous and unpredictable the Great Game was for the players on every side, and the game did indeed have many sides. In the time of the Great Game, you could never be quite clear where you stood as the situation was in constant flux and the players couldn’t always be trusted. Cultures clashed, and people were betrayed and sometimes murdered. This era, known as the Great Game, is the time of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, a time when spies traveled Afghanistan and the Caucasus, making deals with emirs and other local leaders, all of whom had their own angles that they were pursuing. The Russians were attempting to gain trading partners as well as land and to keep Britain at bay. On Britain’s part, the struggle was primarily to protect British India from possible incursions from the Russians. For much of the 19th century, the world’s two great superpowers of the time, Britain and Russia, were engaged in a struggle for control of the lands and, by extension the people, of Central Asia.
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