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The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

Peter Hopkirk

4.32 · Rating details · 6,144 ratings · 489 reviews

For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it "The Great Game," a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began, the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outpo ...more

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Paperback, 566 pages

Published March 1st 2006 by John Murray (first published 1990)

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Aug 28, 2018 Lori rated it liked it · review of another edition

It's a fabulous eastern action adventure full of the brave and resourceful British explorers and fighters confronting treacherous oriental despots as they maneuver to protect the jewel in the crown from another colonial power.

Hopkirk covers a vast swathe of history and territory from Russia's eastward expansion to Alaska to the Russo–Japanese War. He does warn you early on that his goal is to be impartial, but you can't tell a bit as you read. A compelling narrative with fantastic material, I d ...more

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Jun 26, 2009 'Aussie Rick' rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Peter Hopkirk's book; The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia is a great historical account and a very enjoyable book to read. It is very rare nowadays to find a book that holds your attention throughout, without finding one boring section, this is one of those books. In over 560 pages (paperback edition) Peter Hopkirk tells the amazing stories of a number of early British and Russian officers and men involved in the great imperial struggle for supremacy in Central Asia.

I found m ...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Cameron Willis rated it did not like it

Shelves: russia, british-empire, india, central-asia

This is a complete enough narrative history of the struggle between Russia and Britain for control of Central Asia. So, if you want the bare, exciting outlines, read here, but don't expect analysis or deep thought on the issue. What we have here is a particularly Tory version of imperial history: all the British spies and agents are brave, ingenious, inventive and decent; all the Russians are mysterious, brutal, callous but always one step ahead of the good guys; the 'Asians' are, as always in t ...more

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Nov 23, 2019 Dmitri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: central-asia

In 1236 Mongol 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 1500'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 1735. In 1757 the British began major territorial gains in India. The aspirations and apprehensions of these rival In 1236 Mongol 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 1500'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 1735. In 1757 the 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 1800's.

In the late 18th 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 in 1812 helped 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 1830's. British intrigue in Kabul precipitated the disastrous Anglo-Afghan War of the 1840's. The 1850's Crimean War strained Russian relations with Britain. The 1860'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 1870's. Britain controlled the Suez Canal in the 1880's, while Russia layed rails in Central Asia. Russians invaded Afghanistan in the 1890's, as did the British in early 1900'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 1810. 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 1831, 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 late 20th 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. ...more

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Sep 05, 2017 Jovan Autonomašević rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An excellent book charting the rivalry between the British and the Russians in Central Asia, from Peter the Great until Russia's disastrous defeat by Japan in 1905. The epic tale is told through the adventures of the various soldiers, explorers and thrill-seekers who deployed to this vast, unknown and hazardous region on behalf of their respective governments. Slowly the region was absorbed by the imperial powers, with many a disastrous mishap on the way. In particular, Afghanistan remained an i ...more

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Nov 17, 2008 Erin Deathstar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Written in a style that is eminently appropriate for this story, The Great Game is a good introductory book for understanding the struggle between Britain and Russia over Central Asia in the 19th C. (If you love Kim by Rudyard Kipling, you will slobber over every page in this book. And I have grown to LOVE Kim. Took me a few decades, but it's the shit… Especially if you read it in a Comp Lit class analyzing the colonial discourse and the unforgivable cries of colonialism. If that's you, give Kim Written in a style that is eminently appropriate for this story, The Great Game is a good introductory book for understanding the struggle between Britain and Russia over Central Asia in the 19th C. (If you love Kim by Rudyard Kipling, you will slobber over every page in this book. And I have grown to LOVE Kim. Took me a few decades, but it's the shit… Especially if you read it in a Comp Lit class analyzing the colonial discourse and the unforgivable cries of colonialism. If that's you, give Kim a chance. Written by someone who grew up in Anglo-India, I think you'll find it extraordinarily insightful, despite the presence of the ponderous and stylistically stilted British Empire.)

But back to the style of the Great Game, Peter Hopkirk is a very masterful writer for sure, but for this story, he manages to write the history in the totally anachronistic, rip-roarin' style that you find in colonial-adventure stories (late-Victorian colonial-adventure). Basically, it's fun to read, in the way that Gunga Din is fun to watch. Plus, it incorporates classic spy novel style as well.)

The history he's trying to relate is in no way compromised by this writing style. In fact, by using this style he takes an important tack that makes the book really sing. By using that Victorian colonial-adventure style, he gets you in the heads of the Brits and Russinas who were, in that day, reading all of this rip and run super-adventure stuff. It's really hard to understand the mentality of British soldiers in the late 19th Century, or even in WWI (!!!!) without recognizing that all of those guys grew up reading colonial-adventure stories, which were very much like the "Wild West" novels of that day. (Think mid-40sWB cartoons if you're an American of a certain age.) They're so out of style now that it's hard for me to provide an example. I keep thinking Karl May, who was a German writer who wrote all kinds of thrilling Indian Jones-type adventures set in locales that were exotic to a European: the American Wild West, India, Africa, Arabia (cf. Lawrence, he read them too.), China and Central Asia.

Anyway, I admire the ability of an author to pull the reader back in to the minds of their protagonists and their contemporaries. Plus, this style makes the book read like a cheap titillating novel. This is one fast read considering the breadth of the work.

A bit about the content of the book might be useful after all of my bombination on style: The Great Game relates the history of the struggle between the British Empire and the Russian Empire over the strongholds of Central Asia. Basically this was an imperialist struggle. It wasn't a race for oil (yet.) The Brits had a ton of colonies, the jewel of which was the Raj. As the Russians made attempts to grab parts of Central Asia, the Brits freaked out over the safety of their sacred cow and engaged in a very entertaining, deadly and technical spy game with the Russians to infiltrate and map these unknown regions and try to ingratiate themselves with the local leaders.

Hopkirk describes this struggle from its nascence in Alexander I's triumph over Napoleon to the decline of Russia after the Russo-Japanese War. While Russia was intent on expanding its empire into Central Asia, Britain was trying very hard to keep India British, so they were on full-alert to any Russian incursions into Central Asia. And they were keeping a third-eye-out for any kingdoms they could snatch up with promises of Victorian infrastructural progress. (You'll enjoy visualizing manifestations of Victorian progress (the steam train, the telegraph perhaps, the Enfield Gun), when you're reading of the fate of Arthur Conolly- repeatedly, peripatetically successful in all exploration and espionage sorties, a BIG PLAYA in the Game- when he wears out the welcome of the Emir of Bukhara. (or was it Queen Victoria who wore out his welcome??)

"Conolly and Stoddart, whose plight had been all but forgotten in the wake of the Kabul catastrophe, were, he reported, both dead. It had happened , he said, back in June, when Britain's reputation as a power to be feared in Central Asia was at rock bottom. Furious at receiving no reply to his personal letter to Queen Victoria, and no longer worried by any fear of retribution, the Emir of Bokhara had ordered the two Englishmen, then enjoying a brief spell of freedom, to be seized and thrown back in prison. A few days later they had been taken from there, with their hands bound, and led into the great square before the Ark, or citadel, where stood the Emir's palace. What followed next, the Persian swore, he had learned from the Executioner's own lips.
First, while a silent crowd looked on, the two British officers were made to dig their own graves. Then they were ordered to kneel down and prepare for death. Colonel Stoddart, after loudly denouncing the tyranny of the Emir, was the first to be beheaded. Next the executioner turned to Conolly and informed him that the Emir had offered to spare his life if he would renounce Christianity and embrace Islam. Aware that Stoddart's forcible conversion had not saved him from imprisonment and death. Conolly, a devout Christian, replied: 'Colonel Stoddart has been a Musselman for three years and you have killed him. I will not become one, and I am ready to die.' He then stretched out his neck for the executioner and a moment later his head rolled in the dust with that of his friend."

The battle over Central Asia was fought primarily through spies. And this is what makes it even more thrilling. All of this conflict was conducted by artists and inventors and intellectuals and con men far below the radar of the diplomats and politicians. The men in charge were explorers, spy masters, and spies who had an incredible wealth of means before them. They were map-makers (again cf. Lawrence), surveyors, costume artists, cross-dressers, hucksters and linguists. Sometimes magicians, witches and jewel connoisseurs and libertines.

Also, super-relevant for our time with the silent struggle for oil in Central Asia. Every now and again, one comes across an article about Central Asia, but the coverage is hardly in proportion to the intensity of business, political, criminal, and petro-economical activity in that region. There's a lot of unknown knowledge in this area and it's pretty fun to read about it before it's been totally containerized.

Highly recommended for people who are trying to figure out why and how the US is in Afghanistan; the why/how of the Soviet invasion in 1980, the upcoming Great Game in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Turkistan, Uzbekistan....
...more

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Oct 20, 2014 fourtriplezed rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, asia, britain

This is narrative history that can keep one enthralled from the first to the last page. Cliches such as page-turner apply. No doubt the game itself can be discussed further, new books published etc etc but who cares. Hopkirk has written a book that had me looking at the maps, researching the characters, marking the bibliography for further literature to read. What more can one want! A wonderful book.

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Feb 16, 2013 Warwick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: folio-society, history, india, politics, raj, russia, iran, empire, afghanistan

I liked this a lot, although I think the relevance to events today has been overplayed a bit by some other reviewers: it's better enjoyed as a stirring history than a political primer.

I knew a little about the Great Game before – that 19th-century wrangling over Central Asia between Britain and Russia – but I hadn't appreciated before how motivated both sides were, in Britain's case because they feared encroachment on their ‘jewel of the Empire’, British India, and in Russia's case because they I liked this a lot, although I think the relevance to events today has been overplayed a bit by some other reviewers: it's better enjoyed as a stirring history than a political primer.

I knew a little about the Great Game before – that 19th-century wrangling over Central Asia between Britain and Russia – but I hadn't appreciated before how motivated both sides were, in Britain's case because they feared encroachment on their ‘jewel of the Empire’, British India, and in Russia's case because they were hell-bent on expanding their influence as far as possible. But the real joy here is in the Boy's-Own adventuring of some of the principal players – ambitious explorer-spies who headed off the map and into a world of mountain fortresses, Himalayan snowstorms, Russian ambushes, gruelling sieges, and daring gunfights. At stake was a barely-known network of independent city-states whose rulers were befriended, betrayed, and played off one another by the two major powers in an attempt to win influence and ascendancy in the area.

It would take a hard-hearted reader not to feel some pangs of awe and excitement at some of the derring-do here, however much you are made aware of the cynical political game-playing behind it all. Hopkirk tells his story engagingly, if occasionally dropping into some speculative scene-setting (‘As he donned a long quilted coat and black lambskin hat, the two men with him watched in silence’ – how do you know?). There are narrative problems – it covers a long period, and the book is necessarily somewhat episodic, with rather little of the political background filled in – but on the whole, the episodes are so extraordinary that it's hard to mind too much.

I'd be interested to see a update of some of this – when it came out the Soviet Union was still in place, and it would be good to know which previously-hidden records on the Russian side have now become available. Until then, it's a great primer on a fascinating period of imperial history. ...more

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Apr 16, 2014 Quo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: personal-identity, reviewed, political-struggle, colonialism-imperialism

Peter Hopkirk's excellent book, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia represents an extended tale of Silk Road spies, Oriental despots, cartographers enlisted by the Royal Geographic Society (at times disguised as Afghan traders), high-ranking & titled British officers, agent-provocateur's, Muslim fanatics, tribal warlords, Sepoys (recruited Indian troops, including a few fierce Ghurkas, all in service to Great Britain) + countless British & Russian soldiers endeavoring to stay ...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Maitrey rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: history

First things first, it is an engaging read, with just the correct amount of detail and narrative punch.

Covering a time period right from the 16th Century, when the Russians slowly started expanding eastwards and came in conflict first with the Central Asian Khanates, then with the British Raj in the 19th Century, the book finishes with the Great Game's own end in the beginning of the 20th Century when Japan beat the Russian Empire. Hopkirk does a decent job of covering such a massive time span w First things first, it is an engaging read, with just the correct amount of detail and narrative punch.

Covering a time period right from the 16th Century, when the Russians slowly started expanding eastwards and came in conflict first with the Central Asian Khanates, then with the British Raj in the 19th Century, the book finishes with the Great Game's own end in the beginning of the 20th 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 the 1870s and 1880s, rather than a book published in 1990! 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 Anglo-Afghan 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 the 1840s (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 re-looked 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 book'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 one-dimensional and outdated views. ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Phrodrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk has reported a lot of history with just enough analysis. Strongly recommended for both the serious student of history and the more general reader looking to get a foundation in a complicated and often ignored portion of world history. My caution is that it is too easy to think of this period as a mirror of or direct predictor of what is now happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighboring areas.

The Great Game constitutes my second attempt to build a background In The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk has reported a lot of history with just enough analysis. Strongly recommended for both the serious student of history and the more general reader looking to get a foundation in a complicated and often ignored portion of world history. My caution is that it is too easy to think of this period as a mirror of or direct predictor of what is now happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighboring areas.

The Great Game constitutes my second attempt to build a background on a region described as the Top of the World. The prior read Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asiawhile good enough in its way is a distinct second place to The Great Game. What makes Hopkirk the better historian of this period is that he has stripped away the biographical material and focused on events and motives. In other words less about who the individuals were and more about what specifically Russia and Great Briton were doing and what they hoped to accomplish.

Russia depending on the period was engaged in
1. What might be thought of as Russia’s version of Manifest Destiny. From a Russian point of view, the natural boundaries of Russia could include everything east of the Caucuses all the way to the Pacific (At one point Russia had active control of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest south into California) curbed only by whatever parts of India that England failed to hold and as much of China as she failed to hold.
2. The place where aggressive military officers could demonstrate their fitness for higher station and bigger titles. That is the Imperial Court could be counted upon to reward success and deny failure. The gold is for the winner as long as he takes all the risks
3. Part of a vague and almost legendary belief that Russia was destined to rule the world.

The other recognized partner in The Great Game was Great Briton. Her situation was relatively simple.
1. Protect existing holdings from real and perceived threat by Imperial Russia.
2. Combine intelligence activity to understand the routes a Russian invasion might take, with developing client states friendly to Great Briton.

What the Great Game fails to analyze is the thinking and interests of the many peoples who would fight against, ally with or otherwise own all of the ground that the two recognized powers would invade, fight over or otherwise manipulate in favor of goals rarely consistent with the culture or needs of the peoples who were already there.

The absence of this third/fourth/however many points of view leads me to caution readers against thinking that with this book they can speak definitively about the challenges Soviet Russia failed to overcome in the end of their empire; or the reasons why the American Invasion had to last as long as it has while being careful about purposes and minimal goals.

Hopkirk will often remind us that this or that Mongol or Turkoman leader was born to intrigue and treachery. He is clear that religion, especially the Muslim religion was an important part of why the Europeans were unwelcome and violently resisted. There is a wonderful description of the arrival of a Muslim party in a Russian village. They are appalled at the visibility of Russian women and offended by the presence of and apparent worship of the idols (Icons) in Russian Churches. Hopkirk is also quick to contrast the deliberate attempts to remain remote by the leadership and peoples in what are now famous tourist places like Herat or Tibet.

There are so many details missing. Nationalism and religion continue to render Europeans, especially their military as automatically to be resisted. In many of these cultures, raiding remains a part of what people do. Complete with family owned and handed down ambush positions. Villages can be situated so as to control entrance/exit for military purposes, even at the cost of commercial traffic.

The Great Game is excellent at the history it does relate. The political and military motives, moves and thinking of England and Russia are well told. By design the many local peoples are not the purpose of this history. It is this part of the story that is most critical to a modern reader looking for historic answers to questions relating to modern regional geopolitics. ...more

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Jun 09, 2017 Aditya Pareek rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-own-physically

This book exposed me to a geopolitical legacy of my country that I would have otherwise never heard about.
Yes that was the british administered Raj's "Government of India" but Geopolitical realities rarely change with the ethnicity of those in power.
Especially liked the chapter "The lion of Tashkent", I love it when Russians win :) . ...more

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Jun 03, 2019 Joel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, history, to-read-2019

There 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 y ...more

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Sep 09, 2019 W rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia's struggle for supremacy in Central Asia.Took me a while to read,and occasionally I was a bit bored.William Dalrymple's Return of a King,which also deals with this subject is more interesting. ...more

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Jan 01, 2010 Gerald Sinstadt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"There were peaches, plums, apricots, pears, apples, quinces, cherries, walnuts, mulberries pomegranates and vines all growing in one garden. There were also nightingales, blackbirds, thrushes and doves ... and chattering magpies on almost every tree." Thus Alexander Burnes, a young British subaltern, likening the city he had entered for the first time to paradise. The date was April 1832. The city was Kabul.

Peter Hopkirk's masterly history goes a long way to explaining how the capital of Afgha "There were peaches, plums, apricots, pears, apples, quinces, cherries, walnuts, mulberries pomegranates and vines all growing in one garden. There were also nightingales, blackbirds, thrushes and doves ... and chattering magpies on almost every tree." Thus Alexander Burnes, a young British subaltern, likening the city he had entered for the first time to paradise. The date was April 1832. The city was Kabul.

Peter Hopkirk's masterly history goes a long way to explaining how the capital of Afghanistan and its surroundings have been transformed into the bloody battleground which features so often in today's television news. The story covers most of the 19th Century, when Russia was flexing its muscles to extend its eastern boundaries while India - at the outset run by a commercial enterprise, the East India Company, with its own army - feared an invasion from the north. Persia and Turkey had their own interests to protect and possibly to advance. Between the territories of the great powers lay a virtually unmapped, mountainous region populated by warring khanates.

Here are the men who shaped the conflict, sometimes in disguise, always in danger, often wielding swords and bayonets. They were principally British and Russian with a supporting cast of Cossacks, Gurkhas, Sikhs, Afghans, Turcomans and Kashmiris. Treachery, bluff and double bluff were the cards in the Great Game. Sieges and battles, vividly described, make for enthralling reading; heroes emerge whose deeds earned many a Victoria Cross. There were occasions when officers from the two sides could share a meal on a mountainside and drink a toast to the possibility that their next meeting might be as deadly enemies. By the end the dead numbered not tens but hundreds of thousands.

Not the least achievement of this fine book is to present much of the struggle in terms of the brave men from both sides who took leading roles, but also to preserve a clear view of the fluctuating political and diplomatic exchanges between London, Calcutta and Simla, and St Petersburg. Successive Tsars come and go, the British Parliament is itself a battleground between Tories and Liberals.

There are lessons here in abundance, not least to leave one dismayed by what has become of Kabul between 1832 and 2009. ...more

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Jan 11, 2014 Annikky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Don't get me wrong, I DID like the book (that's what three stars mean, incidentally). It's a well written overview and the subject matter is just so fascinating. I personally find this mixture of danger, physical hardship, different cultures, politics, spying and everything else very difficult to resist. I'm afraid I'm in love with most of the players - the frontier ones at least.

The reason I gave it three, not four stars (I almost never give five, 'cause I'm difficult to please), is that I read ...more

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May 27, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-history

This work provides an introduction to the struggle for Central Asia between England and Russia. If you are already somewhat familiar with the topic, the book is a disappointment. Hopkirk appears only to have examined the archives on the British side. Thus what you get is half the story. We learn only about what the British speculate about the Russians.

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Aug 10, 2019 Fahad Naeem rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, nonfiction, history

I expected it to be focusing on all Central Asia countries but it gave thorough details about British Army's expeditions, USSR's implicated intentions and local's revolts which were glorified to be terrorist activities.

The notion that the winner writes history never happened to be so true as it is today. ...more

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May 06, 2010 Erik Graff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Americans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: history

I read this because of the Bush administration's moves towards war after the 9/11 bombings, hoping to get some historical background to Afghanistan, about which I knew very little. On this score, the book was not only what I wanted, but also a pleasure to read. ...more

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Jan 11, 2010 Eugenia Vlasova rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Why is history so important? Because it helps us to understand better our present, realize the deep reasons of recent events and make more accurate forecasts regarding consequences they may have. Why do we learn nothing from history? Well, perhaps because we keep ourselves too alienated, too distant from the events that happened in the past and forget that history is nothing but a sum of decisions and actions made by individuals.

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Ho Why is history so important? Because it helps us to understand better our present, realize the deep reasons of recent events and make more accurate forecasts regarding consequences they may have. Why do we learn nothing from history? Well, perhaps because we keep ourselves too alienated, too distant from the events that happened in the past and forget that history is nothing but a sum of decisions and actions made by individuals.

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk is one of those rare books that turn boring academic, historical reading into a breathtaking, thrilling, and eye-opening experience. Peter Hopkirk shows a century of confrontation between Great Britain and Russia in Asian regions through the lives and fates of people involved into the Great Game. There is no abstract “Britain” or “Russia” or “Persia” in the book, but there are people of flesh and blood, with their motives, wills and ambitions. The book is written like a very good thriller. You see the grandiose chess game developing in the map of Asia and suddenly understand that it is not all over yet. The geographical names mentioned in the book are the same as those you might read in the morning news. Places of the strongest political tension in the modern world are the same that were in the 19th century. Kabul, just to mention one. “I wish our politicians would have read it before we went into Afghanistan and Iraq” one reader wrote in his review, and this is the thought you can’t get rid of throughout the book.

In early 19th century, Asia was not explored by Europeans well enough. The maps of Afghanistan, Tibet and surroundings were very approximate with many white spots on them. Europeans also lacked information about multiple tribes and nationalities that lived in the rocky and deserted area. Any pieces of information about landscapes, aboriginal people and their attitudes toward strangers were priceless those days. Great Britain needed to know everything about the lands that laid between India and Russia, Britain’s major competitor in this area. Young (many players of the Great Game were just 20 or a bit older) men volunteered for research expeditions to Asian countries and gained valuable information, sometimes at price of their health and lives.

Along with the heroism of Asian pioneers, Peter Hopkirk draws the meanness and unscrupulousness of politicians – both Russian and British. Though the author does not give moral appraisals, providing readers with the facts, it is impossible to stay calm and objective when reading about the decisions that were motivated with the greediness and/or stupidity and/or ignorance and cost a thousand innocent lives. What a miserable fate to be a pawn in the Great Game of superpowers!

It is particularly interesting to read about cross-cultural conflicts that developed in Asia, where British, Asian and Russian ways of thinking and ways of acting clashed. Although The Great Game covers the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, it it has a message for contemporary audiences. We think that the world is changing so fast, but in fact many things have not been changed for ages. any modern problems the world faces today are rooted in the Great Game. At least, it is useful to know the rules… ...more

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Jul 20, 2015 Gary rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People interested in history and the UK

Recommended to Gary by: The Folio Society

Shelves: owned, social-commentary, folio-society-edition, history, political, exploration, espionage-non-fiction

I read this fantastic book a few years ago and will re-read it at some point. I knew nothing about the politics or empire building in central Asia and found this a captivating and fascinating history of intrigue, bravery and derring-do, from north of present day Bangladesh right across to Iran and up into the Russian federation states. Spies, secret expeditions, plots to invade India (by the Russians and even Napoleon), diplomacy, bribery, war and savage death all played their part.
Hopkirk does ...more

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Oct 16, 2008 Robert rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: readers interested in foreign affairs, central and south Asia, and world history.

This book is an excellent account of the competition between the British and Russians to dominate Central and South Asia, including the Central Asian republics, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan throughout the 19th century With the development of Caspian Basin oil and gas, the "great game" goes on even today--2008. So this book is fascinating reading, even if it was first published around 1990. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about it, however, is the degree to which British military adve ...more

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Apr 22, 2020 Frank rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history-politics, non-fiction

I had believed Lawrence (of Arabia) a unique character. But TGG tells a different story, and after reading it one might think that 19th century Britain was home to a whole army of Indiana Jones types, spies ready and able to convincingly adopt the language, manners and appearance of peoples from some of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth, all in the dubious cause of defending British India from anticipated Russian incursion.

Were British fears realistic? I hardly think so. Indeed, t ...more

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Aug 05, 2018 Yigal Zur rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

great travel writer. love his tales and books

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Nov 04, 2019 Simon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a book about feelings.

Russia, brows furrowed by the crushing psychological weight of the Mongol invasions over 500 years previously, lurches towards the lands of the Silk Road, seeking belated security from brutal horseman of the East. Britain, the Norman yoke barely lifted from its neck, strikes out by sea to neutralise any future launchpad for invasion, be it Flanders, uh…. Gibraltar… uh Egypt… and ummmmmmm, India.* Of course, Britain’s hold on India requires a quiescent Afghanistan, w ...more

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Dec 19, 2018 Vicky Hunt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-in-2018, vicky-s-favorites, gaming

Itching Russians and Scratching Brits

"Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar. " Russian Proverb

In this monumental work Peter Hopkirk does a masterful job of opening up Central Asia, which is likely to be a wide new world for the average continental of the North or South Americas. Hopkirk writes like a storyteller to such an extent that readers find themselves heavily immersed in gripping edge-of-your-seat accounts of savage encounters and daring incursions in the wild tribal lands between t ...more

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Apr 08, 2020 Suzannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Before the Cold War, there was the Great Game, in which Russian and British agents intrigued in the deserts and mountains of Central Asia to add to their empires, like two murderous, insatiable, treacherous tigers pretending to be very polite to each other while flossing their teeth with the bones of unfortunate locals.

There are no decent people in this book - literally none of the factions thinks twice about slaughtering people for the sake of a bit of mountain or desert - and the only people I ...more

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Jun 03, 2017 Lauren Albert rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history-world, history-asia

A wonderful look at the great game with all the romance and occasional total lack of ethics that came into play. Hopkirk is a vivid writer with a knowledge of all of the key players. I look forward to the books of his I haven't read yet. ...more

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Sep 06, 2017 11811 (Eleven) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

200 years of game history in under 600 pages. That's a bargain. ...more

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May 31, 2015 Todd Stockslager rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Review title: Talking a good game
Unfortunately Hopkirk talks a good game about the Great Game but doesn't deliver. The Great Game is the name Rudyard Kipling immortalized in his classic novel Kim about the imperial cold war between England and Russia over the high mountains and deserts between British India and Russia. This blood drenched ground is now parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the other Stans freed from Soviet communism with the end of the second Cold War.

As Kipling said with more cla ...more

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About Peter Hopkirk

Peter Hopkirk

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Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank Stewart Hopkirk, a prison chaplain, and Mary Perkins. He grew up at Danbury, Essex, notable for the historic palace of the Bishop of Rochester. Hopkirk was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford. The family hailed originally from the borders of Scotland in Roxburghshire where there was a rich history of barbaric raids and reivers hanging just Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank Stewart Hopkirk, a prison chaplain, and Mary Perkins. He grew up at Danbury, Essex, notable for the historic palace of the Bishop of Rochester. Hopkirk was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford. The family hailed originally from the borders of Scotland in Roxburghshire where there was a rich history of barbaric raids and reivers hanging justice. It must have resonated with his writings in the history of the lawless frontiers of the British Empire. From an early age he was interested in spy novels carrying around Buchan's Greenmantle and Kipling's Kim stories about India. At the Dragon he played rugby, and shot at Bisley.

Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York City correspondent of Lord Beaverbrook's The Sunday Express, and then worked for nearly twenty years on The Times; five as its chief reporter, and latterly as a Middle East and Far East specialist. In the 1950s, he edited the West African news magazine Drum, sister paper to the South African Drum. Before entering Fleet Street, he served as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles in 1949 – in the same battalion as Lance-Corporal Idi Amin, later to emerge as a Ugandan tyrant.

Hopkirk travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set – Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and eastern Turkey.

He sought a life in dangerous situations as a journalist, being sent to Algeria to cover the revolutionary crisis in the French colonial administration. Inspired by Maclean's Eastern Approaches he began to think about the Far East. During the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 he was based in New York covering the events for the Express. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk was twice arrested and held in secret police cells, once in Cuba, where he was accused of spying for the US Government. His contacts in Mexico obtained his release. In the Middle East, he was hijacked by Arab terrorists in Beirut, which led to his expulsion. The PLO hijacked his plane, a KLM jet bound for Amsterdam at the height of the economic oil crises in 1974. Hopkirk confronted them and persuaded the armed gang to surrender their weapons.

His works have been officially translated into fourteen languages, and unofficial versions in local languages are apt to appear in the bazaars of Central Asia. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.[3] much of his research came from the India Office archives, British Library, St Pancras.

Hopkirk's wife Kathleen Partridge wrote A Traveller's Companion to Central Asia, published by John Murray in 1994 (ISBN 0-7195-5016-5).

Hopkirk died on 22 August 2014 at the age of 83. ...more