Procure The Great Game: The Struggle For Empire In Central Asia Imagined By Peter Hopkirk Displayed In Manuscript

are typically two kinds of history books: those that are extensively researched and cover every relevant event in comprehensive and precise detail but are dry and stylistically boring, and those that are engagingly written but gloss over the minor or complicated details for the sake of appealing to readers.
Very rarely does an author succeed in achieving both, The Great Game is one of those rare books that do,

Hopkirk brings the characters and battles to life and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very last chapter.
Yet he doesn't skimp on the details, Every major and most of the minor characters are intimately developed, Almost every conflict or encounter is described, He provides evenhanded for the most part commentary on the political and strategic considerations and debates of the time.
The geography, culture, and background history is vividly painted, He quotes directly from both primary and secondary sources, contemporary accounts, and analysis of later historians, both British and Russian.


I wish every history book was like this, I came away from it not only learning an incredible amount about a topic that is not very well known, but also enjoying it immensely.
I've added all of Hopkirk's other books to my toread, and I can't wait to get to them, InMongol horsemen swept westward through Russia, tying serfs to the Tartar yoke, The Golden Horde would exact tribute until Ivan the Terrible defeated the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid's, opening the way for expansion east through Siberia.
Peter the Great turned his gaze south, through the Caucasus and Caspian towards Persia, yet was thwarted by Nader Shah in.
Inthe British began major territorial gains in India, The aspirations and apprehensions of these rival European empires became the 'Great Game', played out in Central Asia during the's.


In the lateth century, the British were concerned with Catherine the Great's expansion into Crimea, but distracted by the rise of Napoleon.
The Russian defeat of the French inhelped to end one concern but created another, Threat of a Russian attack on India, via Turkey and Tehran, obsessed the British, and a cold war Russophobia took hold.
Tsar Alexander I sent envoys to Khiva, present day Uzbekistan, to make allies and secure forward positions, British probed passes of Afghanistan seeking similar advantage in Bukhara, a neighboring kingdom on

the Silk Road,

A Russian treaty with the Ottoman Empire to control the Dardenelles Straight stoked paranoia in the's.
British intrigue in Kabul precipitated the disastrous AngloAfghan War of the's, The's Crimean War strained Russian relations with Britain, The's US civil war raised Russian interests in Central Asian cotton, and Tashkent was taken, Soon Samarkand fell. Spies like Frederick Burnaby rode to Khiva in the's, Britain controlled the Suez Canal in the's, while Russia layed rails in Central Asia, Russians invaded Afghanistan in the's, as did the British in early's Tibet,

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, He later played a leading role in the Opium War, Treaty of Nanking, and founding of Hong Kong, Alexander Burnes, who made an overland reconnaissance in, traced the Indus River, crossed the Khyber Pass to Kabul and became famous during his lifetime for the book 'Travels Into Bukhara'.


Hopkirk was a lateth century British writer, perhaps best known for this work, He began as a journalist on risky assignments in Africa and the Mideast, Widely traveled, he was a collector of Victorian books on the subjects he covered, All of his works were about Central and South Asia, covering eclectic topics such as archaeology in Xinjiang, Bolshevik subversion in India and Kipling's sources of inspiration for Kim.
The history is anglocentric, but takes a reasonable view towards other players, The writing is unpretentious and clear, if somewhat oversimplified and given to cliche at times, First things first, it is an engaging read, with just the correct amount of detail and narrative punch,

Covering a time period right from theth Century, when the Russians slowly started expanding eastwards and came in conflict first with the Central Asian Khanates, then with the British Raj in theth Century, the book finishes with the Great Game's own end in the beginning of theth 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.


However, what took me aback was the language and propaganda used throughout the book, which is more suitable for something written in the heady days of Imperialism in thes ands, rather than a book published in! Consider for example when Hopkirk talks about the meeting between the British spy/diplomat/emissary Alexander Burnes later Sir Alexander, and the Emir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad: "Dost Mohammad, being an Afghan prince was schooled in the art of intrigue and treachery, right from childhood".
This is shockingly irresponsible, all the more so, because we know it was Alexander Burnes who was "intriguing" for the Raj in Afghanistan.


The book is extremely lopsided, using loaded terms such as "Asiatic despot" and "Oriental tyrant" with depressing regularity, and presenting all Asian rulers right from the Shah of Persia, to the leader of the Sikhs, to the Khans, Emirs and chiefs of various kingdoms as corrupt, venal and easily seduced by money, trinkets and women handed out to them by clever and resourceful Europeans.
While this was true of many of them, to simply state this without exploring the kind of military, political and even cultural and religious pressure that the Europeans could bring to bear is very misleading.
Even the repetitive stating of the fact that many of the Central Asian chiefs had a misguided sense of their own importance and no idea about Britain, Russia and their relative strengths smacks of ridicule after a while, which is bizarre coming from a historian specializing in these subjects.


It appears that Hopkirk has swallowed the propaganda, of that age, whole, He even goes so far as to explain away naked Russian imperialism and racism in Central Asia as some kind of payback for what the Mongols did in Russia some four centuries earlier! What next, the Scramble for Africa was revenge for the trauma suffered by the Europeans thanks to Hannibal Similarly, the well documented murder, rape and pillaging carried out by the British in the first AngloAfghan War is simply stated as "boisterous womanizing".


Every Russian advance is met with a shudder, and Hopkirk trembles with rage when news of what would now be termed "human rights abuses" is carried out by the Russian army in Central Asia.
But no mention is made of what the British themselves were engaging in India, And the conquering of the Punjab and the Sindh by the British in thes mainly as massive new opium farmland is dealt with in a few short sentences.
While Hopkirk studiously mentions the various majors, captains and lieutenants on both the British and Russian sides who heroically laid down their lives, there is a characteristic lack of any Asian names, and even the name of the contemporary Shahs is never mentioned while all the Tsars are.
Hopkirk tries to take neither the British or Russian side, but there is not a single note on what the Indians, Persians or other Asians thought or think about the Great Game, supposedly for whose benefit it was "played".


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 relooked 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 The Great Game'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.


Bottomline: Engaing read, if you can overcome the fact that Peter Hopkirk has distinctly onedimensional and outdated views.
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