All of these are now available in Amazon Kindle format.įor a fictional treatment of these events, see the Flashman series by George Macdonald Fraser. Other books from Hopkirk, which deal with the area but not precisely about the Great Game are Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (about early archeological expeditions on The Silk Road) and The Quest for Kim (about tracing the possible inspirations for the classic Rudyard Kipling story Kim). Other books in the series are Like Hidden Fire or alternatively On Secret Service East of Constantinople (about German intrigues in Central Asia in World War I) and Setting the East Ablaze (about the Russian Civil War in Central Asia) and Trespassers on the Roof of the World (about the Great Game as played in Tibet). In any case, much of our knowledge of the geography of the region comes from those days. But there was no way to know that for sure at the time. In other words, Russia trying to conquer India would have been an even worse disaster than anyone else trying to conquer Russia.

For Russia to invade India, it would have to get past the nastiest deserts in the world, then the nastiest mountains in the world. In retrospect, it seems like much ado about nothing at first glance. This became a generations-long Secret War which was to end in an anticlimax when both powers decided that there were more important matters elsewhere. As well as intriguing with, or pressuring local princes. Central Asia was a gigantic blank space, a place of danger and mystery and sometimes of romantic tales.īoth Britain and Russia sent a series of explorer-spies into this vast territory to find out what was there. In the meantime, the newly victorious Czarist regime was looking to extend its power conquering and settling lands to the eastward and probing at the Ottoman Empire. It begins during The Napoleonic Wars when Britain had recently conquered a large part of India and was becoming nervous about its newly acquired possessions.

This is a classic history by Peter Hopkirk of the rivalry between Tsarist Russia and The British Empire for interests in Asia.

The great game peter hopkirk review