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Amazon.com Review
In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central Asia. At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of the British Empire. When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated the two rivals.

Peter Hopkirk, a former reporter for The Times of London with wide experience of the region, tells an extraordinary story of ambition, intrigue, and military adventure. His sensational narrative moves at breakneck pace, yet even as he paints his colorful characters--tribal chieftains, generals, spies, Queen Victoria herself--he skillfully provides a clear overview of the geographical and diplomatic framework. The Great Game was Russia's version of America's "Manifest Destiny" to dominate a continent, and Hopkirk is careful to explain Russian viewpoints as fully as those of the British. The story ends with the fall of Tsarist Russia in 1917, but the demise of the Soviet Empire (hastened by a decade of bloody fighting in Afghanistan) gives it new relevance, as world peace and stability are again threatened by tensions in this volatile region of great mineral wealth and strategic significance. --John Stevenson

From Publishers Weekly
Chronicles the imperial struggle for power in Central Asia between Victorian England and Czarist Russia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher
14 1.5-hour cassettes

Customer Reviews

A fascinating read... truth is stranger than fiction...
Colonialism was not paternalism neither was benevolent... but if ever it was a "tempered" colonialism imbued by the precept "of doing the decent thing" it probably the British "empire" was...
All empires have menacing "borders" where their influence is contested... this is one of the most fascinating reads on the subject by far... an History page turner in fact... sometimes you want to laugh at some folly... or are deeply moved by pure unselfish heroism (I know today this sounds absurd... but there was a time where THAT kind of breed existed...)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED (but have in mind that the notion that are peoples and races not able to govern themselves is a fallacy... this is the sane maxim to have present...).

ADB

PS: In fact "GREAT EMPIRES" are mainly found in History Books Maps where large untamed and rebellious areas of the world are "painted" red in the case of the British Empire... (when actually the dominion was largely that of the seas and trade)... or whatever other colour in the case of the largely mythical Spanish Empire (which of course also went bankrupt)... but that is another story.

The Great Game --- The Nineteenth Century's Cold War
Interesting subject, interesting book. And interesting author. Peter Hopkirk has somehow got himself unofficially elected as the world's leading Great Game aficionado.

So what is the "Great Game?" The term, coined by Rudyard Kipling in his book "Kim," describes the competition between Russia and Great Britain for control of Central Asia. It was, in a way, the "Cold War" of the Nineteenth Century. My first real introduction to the Great Game was in 2005, when I traveled to Kashgar in the West of China's Xinjiang Province. I got a dorm room at the Seman Binguan. Walking outside one day around the grounds of the hotel, I came upon the old Russian Consulate, looking just about exactly the way it had over a hundred years earlier, in 1890, the date on the plaque in front. Across town, behind the Chini Bagh Hotel, I found the old British Consulate. It was kinda eerie to see these two symbols of a bygone era staring each other down as if no one had informed them that the Great Game had ended generations earlier.

Peter Hopkirk is a British journalist and author who has made a lifetime project out of studying and writing about the Great Game. During his many years as a journalist, he has gotten himself into some interesting scrapes. He was twice held incommunicado in secret police cells, and was once acosted by terrorists. Prior to his career as a journalist, he was a comrade in arms of Lance Corporal Idi Amin, later the cannibalistic dictator of Uganda.

But it is Hopkirk's life-long fascination with the Great Game that does the readers of this book the greatest service. He has lived, eaten and breathed the Great Game for many, many years. If you want to study it, start here.

After all that praise, I should tell you that this is not the easiest book to read. Not that it isn't well written. But it is so loaded full of stories about the Great Game that the overall narrative sometimes gets lost. The trees outshine the forest. That makes the grand scheme of history a little more difficult, perhaps, but in my opinion, it is a small price to pay, because you can always make up for the grand scheme of things, but the wealth of information this book contains about specific events would be hard to replace. You need this book if you want to study this great historical interlude.

I said you should start here, but maybe it would be a good idea to spend a little time with Wikipedia or something getting a feel for what the Great Game is all about, before you read this book. Then the stories will come together. I don't read very many books more than once, but I think this one may just become an exception. Five stars. And my sincere thanks to Mr. Hopkirk for the scholarship he has presented in this comprehensive work.

The most exciting history book.
It is hard to find a history book that you literally can't put down once start reading. This one is by far my favorite. Absolutely fascinating. Through the stories in it the history of India and of the world politics of the period comes alive. It reads like a thriller... But in this case reality is million times more exciting than any fiction one could possibly come up with.