Spying for Empire: The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947

by Robert Underwood Johnson

'The Great Game' was the struggle between Russia and Britain for imperial influence over southern and central Asia, immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim. For the British, the threat to India's frontiers compelled them to dispatch diplomats, or more clandestine agents, to survey, map and monitor the approaches to the Indian subcontinent. Anxieties about Russian ambitions in central Asia were magnified by the discovery of military plans and the arrival of 'shooting parties' and 'scientific explorers' on the mountains adjacent to India's northern border. The British faced major problems compounded by the unresolved status of Afghanistan, the interception of agents, and the division of opinion in British military and political circles about the real or imagined nature of the Russian threat to India. The situation was further complicated by the instability of the Indian border area, a region through which British and Indian troops would need to operate in wartime, but which was inhabited by bellicose tribesmen who fought the imposition of British rule every step of the way. Spying for Empire gives a fascinating insight into how the British intelligence network worked in the 1800s. It also examines how the intractability of Afghanistan plagued imperial defense planners, and how the threat of conflict with Russia colored Britain's dealings with the peoples of south-west Asia.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2006

About the author

Johnson joined the staff of The Century Magazine in 1873. He became the magazine's associate editor in 1881, and in 1909, on the death of Richard Watson Gilder, succeeded to the editorial chair, which he occupied until May 1913. Johnson was also a longtime writer and editor for Scribner's Monthly.
Using the influence of The Century Magazine, Underwood, in conjunction with famed naturalist John Muir, was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Yosemite National Park in the California in 1890. In 1889, Johnson also encouraged Muir to "start an association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, inspiring the formation of the Sierra Club in 1892.
He married Katherine McMahon. They had a son, Owen McMahon Johnson (1878 - 1952), who became an American writer in his own right. In the 1890s, he and his wife Katharine became very close friends with the inventor Nikola Tesla.
Underwood became noted early for his work on international copyright. As secretary of the American Copyright League, he helped get the Law of 1891 passed, for which he was decorated by the French and Italian governments. He had a hand in many important publishing undertakings, and it was on his persuasion that Ulysses S. Grant wrote his Memoirs. He became permanent secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a driving force for the effort to acquire and preserve as a museum the rooms in Rome where the poet John Keats and his friend Joseph Severn spent Keats's final months in 1821. You can visit this Keats Shelley Memorial in Rome today, where its windows look out over the Spanish Steps.
In 1916 he acted as pallbearer for the funeral of Alexander Wilson Drake. In 1917 he organized and was chairman of the American Poets' Ambulance in Italy. This organization presented 112 ambulances to the Italian army in four months. In 1918–19 he was president of the New York Committee of the Italian War Relief Fund of America. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy from April 1920 to July 1921, and represented the United States as observer at the San Remo conference of the Supreme Council of the League. He was decorated by the Italian government in recognition of his work in behalf of good relations between Italy and the United States.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Johnson set out to write a historical account that explored the complicated history of the individuals that participated in the game played by Britain and Russia for influence and power in Central Asia. Johnson succeeded admirably in his goal, and his book offers a well-developed account of how the modern intelligence agencies of Britain are deeply rooted in its imperial past.

What is more impressive in Spying for Empire than the evolution of British intelligence is Johnson's research that demonstrates how the British imperial project was not the systemic domination, top-down approach some scholars want to dismiss the British Empire as being. Johnson thoroughly explores how the British were reliant on the support and cooperation native peoples and native agents in order to maintain the British Raj domestically and prevent it from being challenged by external threats--especially by the Russian expansion into Central Asia. The Great Game's numerous participants included as many Indians, Chinese, and Persians as it did Britons or Russians. Many of these agents were not coerced or bribed to secure their services, and several of the intelligence services early pioneers believed the expansion of the Company, and later government, Raj was better for India than a period of chaos or division.

Johnson also examined the interesting social acceptance that predominated the much of the Raj's Anglo-Indian community. The most noteworthy examples include how several Indians garnered official recognition from the prestigious Royal Geographic Society for their explorations of the region that was eventually organized into the Raj's North West Frontier Province and the service of George Macartney, a young officer who was of mixed British and Chinese parentage. Macartney's example is particularly interesting given how many Europeans of mixed parentage struggled for acceptance in European societies dominated by strict metropolitan social mores. However, India was frequently a territory that defied these norms and offered what would otherwise be classified as social outcasts a way to participate in the imperial project and achieve both fame and acceptance.

Spying for Empire is incredibly detailed in its examination of the early development and increasingly complicated evolution of the intelligence network the British created to defend their empire. Johnson carried this narrative into the twentieth century and explained how this experience prepared Britain for the previously unknown scale and complexity of warfare unleashed on the globe by the First World War. However, the remainder of the book appeared to be written with unnecessary haste as a limited examination of the Raj's experiences with the communist intrigues of the Soviet Union and the Asian campaigns of the Second World War are disheartening when compared to Johnson's earlier examinations. The bibliographies and notes make it clear that the author did not want for primary sources from this era, and the race to reach Britain's abrupt department from India in 1947 undermines the collective whole of the book.

Despite its short-shrift of the later British imperial experiences, Spying for Empire is among the best pieces of research I have read in the past three years. I look forward to more comparable research from Johnson in the near future and wholly recommend this book to any who want to gain a detailed, even-handed examination of the British Empire and how its legacy continues to shape the world in the twenty-first century.