Great Game

thumb|400x400px|1885 British map of Western Asia during the Great Game, with the [[Russian Empire|Russian and Ottoman Empires, Qajar Iran, the southern fringes of Russian Turkestan, Afghanistan and western India]]

thumb|400x400px|"Afghanistan and her relation to British and Russian territories", 1885 American map of [[Central Asia, Afghanistan, and British and Russian territories]]

The Great Game () was a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. The two colonial empires used military interventions and diplomatic negotiations to acquire and redefine territories in Central and South Asia. Russia conquered Turkestan, and Britain expanded and set the borders of British India. By the early 20th century, a line of independent states, tribes, and monarchies from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Himalayas were made into protectorates and territories of the two empires.

Though the Great Game was marked by distrust, diplomatic intrigue, and regional wars, it never erupted into a full-scale war directly between Russian and British colonial forces. However, the two nations battled in the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, which affected the Great Game. Aware of the importance of India to the British, Russian efforts in the region often had the aim of extorting concessions from them in Europe, Russian war plans for India that were proposed but never materialised included the Duhamel and Khrulev plans of the Crimean War (1853–1856).

Russia and Britain's 19th-century rivalry in Asia began with the planned Indian March of Paul and Russian invasions of Iran in 1804–1813 and 1826–1828, shuffling Persia into a competition between colonial powers. According to one major view, the Great Game started on 12 January 1830, when Lord Ellenborough, the president of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord Bentinck, the governor-general, with establishing a trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain aimed to create a protectorate in Afghanistan, and support the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Khiva, and Bukhara as buffer states against Russian expansion. This would protect India and key British sea trade routes by blocking Russia from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. As Russian and British spheres of influence expanded and competed, Russia proposed Afghanistan as the neutral zone.

Traditionally, the Great Game came to a close between 1895 and 1907. In September 1895, London and Saint Petersburg signed the Pamir Boundary Commission protocols, when the border between Afghanistan and the Russian Empire was defined using diplomatic methods. In August 1907, the Anglo-Russian Convention created an alliance between Britain and Russia, and formally delineated control in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet.

Name

The phrase "the Great Game" was used well before the 19th century and was associated with games of risk, such as cards and dice. The French equivalent dates back to at least 1585 and is associated with meanings of risk, chance and deception.

The term Great Game was coined in 1840 by a British intelligence officer Captain Arthur Conolly (1807–1842). Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim popularized the term, increasing its association with great power rivalry. It became even more popular after the 1979 advent of the Soviet–Afghan War.

In the historical sense, the term dates from the mid-19th century. In July 1840, in correspondence to Major Henry Rawlinson who had been recently appointed as the new political agent in Kandahar, Conolly wrote, "You've a great game, a noble game, before you." Conolly believed that Rawlinson's new post gave him the opportunity to advance humanitarianism in Afghanistan, and summed up his hopes:<blockquote>If the British Government would only play the grand game – help Russia cordially to all that she has a right to expect – shake hands with Persia – get her all possible amends from Oosbegs – force the Bukhara Amir to be just to us, the Afghans, and other Oosbeg states, and his own kingdom – but why go on; you know my, at any rate in one sense, enlarged views. The expediency, nay the necessity of them will be seen, and we shall play the noble part that the first Christian nation of the world ought to fill.</blockquote> It was introduced into the mainstream by the British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901). It was first used academically by Professor H.W.C. Davis in a presentation titled The Great Game in Asia (1800–1844) on 10 November 1926. The use of the term "The Great Game" to describe Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia became common only after the Second World War.

thumb|Silk and spice festival in modern-day [[Bukhara, Uzbekistan]]

First signs of possible India invasion

thumb|400x400px|1909 map of the [[British Indian Empire, showing British India in two shades of pink and the princely states in yellow]]

At the start of the 19th century, the Indian subcontinent was ruled in part by independent princely states and in part by the company rule of the British East India Company. During the 19th century, a political and diplomatic confrontation developed between Britain and Russia over Afghanistan which would become known as The Great Game. Russia's foreign policy was driven by the perspective that Britain would develop and control commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain's foreign policy was based on expectations of Russia adding the "jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires. If Russia were to gain control of the Emirate of Afghanistan, it might then be used as a staging post for a Russian invasion of India, was the British line of thinking.

Napoleon had proposed a joint Franco-Russian invasion of India to tsar Paul I of Russia. The British public learned about the incident years later, but it firmly imprinted on the popular consciousness, contributing to feelings of mutual suspicion and distrust associated with the Great Game. Hugh Seton-Watson observed that "the grotesque plan had no military significance, but at least showed its author's state of mind". Hopkirk remarked that "no serious thought or study has been given to this wild adventure".

In 1810, British Lieutenant Henry Pottinger and Captain Charles Christie undertook an expedition from Nushki (Balochistan) to Isfahan (Central Persia) disguised as Muslims. The expedition was funded by the East India Company and was to map and research the regions of "Beloochistan" (Balochistan) and Persia because of concerns about India being invaded by French forces from that direction. The shah was also able to use a rivalry between the East India Company and the British Foreign Office, to garner more British aid. drawing by Charles Thomas Marvin (1854–1890)]]

thumb|General [[Mikhail Annenkov|Mikhaïl Annenkov in Paris, 1891, supervisor of Russo-Indian railway operation]]

Britain believed that it was the world's first free society and the most industrially advanced country, and therefore that it had a duty to use its iron, steam power, and cotton goods to take over Central Asia and develop it. British goods were to be followed by British values and the respect for private property. With pay for work and security in place, nomads would settle and become tribal herdsman surrounding oasis cities. These were to develop into modern states with agreed borders, as in the European model. Therefore, lines needed to be agreed and drawn on maps. Morgan says that two proud and expanding empires approached each other, without any agreed frontier, from opposite directions over a "backward, uncivilized and undeveloped region."

<blockquote>Here we are, just as we were, snarling at each other, hating each other, but neither wishing for war. – Lord Palmerston (1835)</blockquote>

American historian David Fromkin argues that by the mid-19th century the British had developed at least nine reasons to expect a major war with Russia unless Russian expansion in Asia could be stopped:

Expansion would upset the balance of power by making Russia too powerful.
Sooner or later Russia will invade India.
Russian success would encourage anti-colonial elements in India to revolt.
It would undermine the old Islamic regimes of Central Asia leading to a frantic war among the powers for shares of the spoils.
It would add power and prestige to the Russian regime that was the great enemy of political freedom.
The British people hated and feared Russia and demanded a pushing back.
It could disrupt the established British trade with Asia.
It would strengthen protectionism and thereby undermine the free trading ideal that Britain was committed to.
When Russia reached the Indian Ocean it could threaten the naval communications that held the British Empire together.
By the late 19th century London added the argument that Russian success against the Ottoman Empire would seriously embarrass Britain's reputation for diplomatic prowess.
And finally petroleum deposits in Central Asia were discovered in the early 20th century. This oil was essential to the modernization of the Royal Navy, and to build Britain's economy.

In the early 1880s, Russia failed to float a 9 million roubles loan on the European markets for its strategic geopolitical enterprises, driving severe budget cuts by the Minister of Finance. For the construction of the Russo-Indian railway however, an operation supervised by renowned engineer General Mikhail Annenkov, funding had been freely furnished.

The Tsar also entered into agreements about delivery of munition for its fortresses at an estimated value of one million sterling, with German steel magnate Alfred Krupp, being the arms manufacturer for the German Empire. Andreyev states that, as late as 1909, strategists of the Russian Empire sought to use Afghanistan to "threaten India... to exert influence on Britain", quoting Andrei Snesarev.

Similarly to the British Empire, the Russian Empire saw themselves as a "civilizing power" expanding a purely humanitarian mission among the Turcomans into what they perceived a "semi-barbarous" region, reflecting the ideology of the time.

thumb|350x350px|Political cartoon depicting the Afghan [[Sher Ali Khan|Emir Sher Ali with his "friends" the Russian Bear and British Lion (1878)]]

In 1838, Colonel Charles Stoddart of the East India Company arrived in the Emirate of Bukhara to arrange an alliance with Nasrullah Khan. Nasrullah Khan had Stoddart imprisoned in a vermin-infested dungeon because he had not bowed nor brought gifts. In 1841, Captain Arthur Conolly arrived to try to secure Stoddart's release. He was also imprisoned and on 17 June 1842 both men were beheaded. On hearing of the execution of the two British officers, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia would no longer receive Bukhara's gifts or emissaries, and its ambassador was turned back at Orenburg with a message that the Emperor would no longer have anything to do with the Emir of Bukhara.

Anglo-Sikh Wars

In 1843, Britain annexed the Sind. The First Anglo-Sikh War was fought between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company in 1845–1846, resulting in the partial subjugation of the Sikh kingdom. The Second Anglo-Sikh War was fought in 1848–1849, resulting in subjugation of the remainder of the Sikh Empire, and the annexation of the Punjab Province and what subsequently became the North-West Frontier Province.

Anglo-Persian War

thumb|300x300px|Map of northern [[Persia and northern Afghanistan in 1857 showing Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand that form modern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan]]

In 1856, Persia commenced an assault on Herat and the British Home Government declared war on Persia. The Anglo-Persian War was conducted under Major General Sir James Outram until 1857, when Persia and Britain both withdrew and Persia signed a treaty renouncing its claim on Herat. Notable Russian generals included Konstantin Kaufman, Mikhail Skobelev, and Mikhail Chernyayev.

From 1869 to 1872, Mir Mahmud Shar was able to gain control of the Khanate of Badakhshan with the help of Afghanistan's new ruler, Amir Sher Ali Khan, and by 1873 Afghanistan governed Badakhshan. The publications of the Royal Geographical Society in 1869 made the arrival of British Pundits at Lhasa known in Russia. The Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky felt there was a British threat to Russian ambitions in Inner Asia, and set out on a series of 1870s expeditions. According to Andreyev, "in the days of the Great Game, Mongolia was an object of imperialist encroachment by Russia, as Tibet was for the British."" In response, Britain sought to increase its own influence in Tibet as a buffer for British India. British forces, led by Sir Francis Younghusband, invaded the country with the Curzon expedition in 1904 and made a treaty with the Tibetans, the 1904 Lhasa Convention.

In its Meiji period, the Empire of Japan would observe the Great Game and participate indirectly through diplomacy and espionage. For example, Japan hosted Abdurreshid Ibrahim, a pan-Muslim opponent of Russian and British expansion. Japanese interest in the region as well as enmity with Russia led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and an attempted Ottoman-Japanese alliance.

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim also acted as a tsarist agent during the Great Game, leading an expedition through Tibet, Xinjiang, and Gansu on the way to Beijing. The Russian General Staff wanted on-the-ground intelligence about reforms and activities by the Qing dynasty, as well as the military feasibility of invading Western China: a possible move in their struggle with Britain for control of inner Asia.

Persia

thumb|upright=1.53|[[Iran and Turkestan in 1835]]

Various authors connect British-Russian competition in Iran to the Great Game as well. This competition continued until the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907 after which the British and Russian Empires largely moved together in their overtures for imperial influence in the region until the Bolshevik Revolution. Although Britain had a reputation for industrialization and international trade boosted by its colony of India, Russian authors saw the Russian Empire as competing directly with Britain for trade in Iran and other bordering markets. Russian travelogues written between the 1870s and the turn of the 1900s seem to imply that Russian commerce had become dominant in the northern and western portions of Iran that would be officially delineated to Russia by Britain in 1907. By the 1890s, Russian tutors, doctors and officers were prominent at the Shah's court, influencing policy personally. Russia and Britain had competing investments in the industrialisation of Iran including roads and telegraph lines, as a way to profit and extend their influence. However, until 1907 the Great Game rivalry was so pronounced that mutual British and Russian demands to the Shah to exclude the other, blocked all railroad construction at the end of the 19th century. In November 1878, 40,000 men led by the British Raj, invaded Afghanistan from British India. The Afghans claimed that the people of the district had always paid tribute to Afghanistan, and the Russians argued that this district was part of the Khanates of Khiva and Merv which they had annexed earlier. The Afghan Boundary Commission was supposed to have settled the dispute, however the battle occurred before its arrival. The Afghan force of 500 was overwhelmed by superior Russian numbers. Britain did not aid Afghanistan as was required by the Treaty of Gandamak, leading the Amir to conclude that he could not rely on the British in the face of Russian aggression. However, Bismarck through the Three Emperors' League also aided Russia, by pressuring the Ottoman Empire to block the Bosporus from British naval access, compelling an Anglo-Russian negotiation regarding Afghanistan.

Protocol between Great Britain and Russia (1885)

On 10 September 1885, the Delimitation Protocol between Great Britain and Russia was signed in London. The protocol defined the boundary from the Oxus to the Harirud and was later followed by 19 additional protocols providing further detail between 1885 and 1888. and in 1893 reached agreement with Russia to demarcate the rest of the border, a process completed in 1895. The report of the Commission proved the absolute impracticality of any Russian invasion of India through the Pamir mountains. The Pamir Mountains were demarcated as a border line between the Russian Empire and Afghanistan as well. The Taghdumbash would be the subject of a later Afghan-China agreement. To conclude their agreement, one peak was named Mount Concord. In exchange for a British agreement to use the term Nicholas Range in honor of the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia on official maps, the Russians agreed to refer to Lake Zorkul as Lake Victoria in honour of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

The Russians had gained all of the lands north of the Amu Darya which included the land claimed by the Khanate of Khiva, including the approaches to Herat, and all of the land claimed by the Khanate of Khoqand, including the Pamir plateau. To ensure a complete separation, this new Afghan state was given an odd eastern appendage known as the Wakhan Corridor. "In setting these boundaries, the final act of the tense game played out by the British and Russian governments came to a close."

For a time, the British and Russian Empires moved together against potential German entrance into the Great Game, and against a constitutional movement in Iran that threatened to dispel the two-way sphere of influence. Additional brigades of the Russian Army were also deployed to assist the Shah and occupied Tabriz after April 1909. Nonetheless, the constitutionalists were able to retake the capital and were initially victorious with the Triumph of Tehran in July 1909, and dispelled Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, who was exiled and took refuge with the Russians. When a new ruler, Ahmad Shah Qajar, took power he found it difficult to completely reverse the constitutional reforms, yet the Qajar state was weakened by the upheaval and the Qajar court dependent on foreign powers. Meanwhile, Britain and Russia aligned to oust Shuster from Iran by an ultimatum in 1911 which was unanimously rejected by the Majilis. British and Russian officials coordinated as the Russian army, still present in Persia, invaded the capital again and suspended the parliament. The Tsar ordered the troops in Tabriz "to act harshly and quickly", while purges were ordered, leading to many executions of prominent revolutionaries. The British Ambassador, George Head Barclay reportedly disapproved of this "reign of terror", though would soon pressure Persian ministers to officialize the Anglo-Russian partition of Iran. By June 1914, Russia established near-total control over its northern zone, while Britain had established influence over Baluch and Bakhtiari autonomous tribal leaders in the southeastern zone. Sergeev believes that the Great Game started in the aftermath of the Caucasus War (1828–1859) and intensified with the Crimean War (1853–1856).

Soviet Great Game

According to German historian David X. Noack, the Great Game resumed from 1919 to 1933 as a conflict between Britain and the Soviet Union, with the Weimar Republic and Japan as additional players. Noack calls it a "Second Tournament of Shadows" over the territory composing the border of British India, China, the Soviet Union and Japanese Manchuria. To Britain, the Germans initially appeared to be a secret Soviet ally. In 1933–1934 it "ended with Mongolia, Soviet Central Asia, Tannu-Tuva and Xinjiang isolated from non-Soviet influence." Authors Andrei Znamenski and Alexandre Andreyev also describe the continuation of elements of the Great Game by the Soviet Union until the 1930s, focused on secret diplomacy and espionage in Tibet and Mongolia. proposes that Britain lost the Great Game. "The Great Game was an aspect of British history rather than international relations: the phrase describes what the British were doing, not the actions of Russians and Chinese." The Great Game was an attempt made in the 1830s by the British to impose their view on the world. If Khiva and Bukhara were to become buffer states, then trade routes to Afghanistan, as a protectorate, along the Indus and Sutlej rivers would be necessary and therefore access through the Sind and Punjab regions would be required. The Great Game began between 1832 and 1834 as an attempt to negotiate trade deals with Ranjit Singh and the Amirs of Sind, and the "first interruption of this magnificent British daydream was caused by the determination of the Amirs of Sind to be left alone." Its failure occurred at the end of the First Anglo-Afghanistan war in 1842 with the British withdrawal from Afghanistan. The failure to turn Afghanistan into a client state meant that The Great Game could not be won. The victory also strengthened Britain's influence in Afghanistan, which had become a British protectorate.

In 1889, Lord Curzon, who later became Viceroy of India (1899–1905), wrote a book on the strategic balance between the Russian and British Empires, as well as his travels on the Trans-Caspian railway.

In that book, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 & the Anglo-Russian Question, he commented:

<blockquote>Our relations with Afghanistan in the forty years between 1838 and 1878 were successively those of blundering interference and of unmasterly inactivity.</blockquote>Russia remained a focus for Curzon through and after his time as Viceroy of India.

"The British colluded with the Russians over Central Asia"

In the 1850s, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels accused MP and PM Lord Palmerston of colluding with Russia during the Crimean War. At the time, Marx alleged that Palmerston weakened Britain's defense of the Ottoman Empire. Although this view was not otherwise widespread, the same accusation was levied by David Urquhart (1805–1877).

thumb|300px|1912 map of [[Central Asia|Central and South Asia]]

thumb|The [[Indo-European telegraph line|Indo-European Telegraph Line, which allowed London to communicate with its colony in India from 1870 onward, was built through the territory of the Russian Empire, during the 'Great Game' between Russia and Britain. Nevertheless, an all-British-owned line Eastern Telegraph Company also completed its first India connection in 1870, the same year.]]

Mail communications between London and Calcutta could take as long as three months either way. Long-distance telegraph lines were built across Russia in the 1850s. In 1870, the Indo-European Telegraph Line was completed and it provided a communication link between London and Calcutta after passing through Russia. In the following year he wrote to Rawlinson, a member of the Council of India, "Our engagement with Russia with respect to the frontier of Afghanistan precludes us from promoting the incorporation of the Turkomans of Merv in the territories subject to the Ameer of Kabul". Northbrook would not accept any extension of Persia towards Merv.</blockquote>

Lawyer and mediator in Supreme Court of India, Aman M. Hingorani in his book Unravelling the Kashmir Knot that Winston Churchill directed War Cabinet to assess 'the long-term policy required to safeguard the strategic interests of the British Empire in India and the Indian Ocean', the report in respect of which was submitted on 19 May 1945. He states in the book:<blockquote>The report emphasized that 'Britain must retain its military connection with the subcontinent so as to ward off the Soviet Union's threat to the area', citing four reasons for the 'strategic importance of India to Britain'—India's 'value as a base from which forces could be suitably deployed within the Indian Ocean area, in the Middle East and the Far East'; it serving as 'a transit point for air and sea communications'; it being 'a large reserve of manpower of good fighting quality'; and the strategic importance of the northwest region to threaten the Soviet Union.</blockquote>

The Great Game as a legend

Mythologized aspects of the Great Game

A. Vescovi argued that Kipling's use of the term was entirely fictional, "...because the Great Game as it is described in the novel never existed; it is almost entirely Kipling's invention. At the time when the story is set (i.e. in the late Eighties), Britain did not have an intelligence service, nor an Ethnographical Department; there was only a governmental task force called 'Survey of India' that was entrusted with the task of charting all India in response to a typically English anxiety of control."

Two authors, Gerald Morgan and Malcolm Yapp, have proposed that The Great Game was a legend and that the British Raj did not have the capacity to conduct such an undertaking. An examination of the archives of the various departments of the Raj showed no evidence of a British intelligence network in Central Asia. At best, efforts to obtain information on Russian moves in Central Asia were rare, ad hoc adventures and at worst intrigues resembling the adventures in Kim were baseless rumours, and that such rumours "were always common currency in Central Asia and they applied as much to Russia as to Britain". After two British representatives were executed in Bukhara in 1842, Britain actively discouraged officers from traveling in Turkestan.

Gerald Morgan also proposed that Russia never had the will nor ability to move on India, nor India the capability to move on Central Asia. Russia did not want Afghanistan, considering their initial failure to take Khiva and the British debacle in the First Anglo-Afghan War. To invade Afghanistan they would first require a forward base in Khorasan, Persia. St. Petersburg had decided by then that a forward policy in the region had failed but one of non-intervention appeared to work.

Sneh Manajan wrote that the Russian military advances in Central Asia were advocated and executed only by irresponsible Russians or enthusiastic governors of the frontier provinces. Robert Middleton suggested that The Great Game was all a figment of the over-excited imaginations of a few jingoist politicians, military officers and journalists on both sides. Whereas the Great Game between Russia and Britain was codifying imperial spheres of influence at their frontiers, the supposed Great Game between Russia and Japan did not end up in a similarly defined frontier, with warlord states and Honghuzi emerging through the period.

Role of legends and mysticism in the Great Game

Several scholars have focused on the role of legends and mysticism (sometimes interpreted as a form of Orientalism that was prominent in the late 19th and early 20th century), during the Great Game and in its aftermath.

Some writers such as Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac have connected the Great Game to earlier and later expeditions in Inner Asia, predominantly those expeditions by British, Russian, and German orientalists. Robert Irwin summarizes the expeditions as "William Moorcroft, the horse doctor with a mission to find new stock for the cavalry in British India; Charles Metcalfe, the advocate of a forward policy on the frontier in the early 19th century; Alexander 'Bokhara' Burnes, the foolhardy political officer, who perished at the hands of an Afghan mob; Sir William Hay Macnaghten, the head of the ill-fated British Mission in Kabul (and a scholar who produced an important edition of The Arabian Nights); Nikolai Przhevalsky, the explorer who gave his name to a hard-to-spell horse; Francis Younghusband, the mystical imperialist; Aurel Stein, the manuscript hunter; Sven Hedin, the Nazi sympathiser who seems to have regarded Asian exploration as a proving ground for the superman; Nicholas Roerich, the artist and barmy quester after the fabled hidden city of Shambhala."

The founder of Theosophy, esotericist Helena Blavatsky, has also been connected to the Great Game, with her Himalayas-inspired Western mysticism both critiquing, and falling for, two forms of Orientalism by the British and Russian Empires, as they competed to define and claim "the Orient". Blavatsky would be referenced by the poet Velimir Khlebnikov, who argued that Britain and Russia had both taken traits from the Kazan Khanate and Mongol Empire respectively, in their colonial struggle over Asia. Blavatsky would also refer to Russia's double-layered conception of itself as a European power in contrast to Asia as well as an empire based in Asia; meanwhile, she would also "consciously appropriate" British rhetoric on Russia in labelling herself a "Russian savage". Both Blavatsky and Khlebnikov claimed Kalmyk ancestry in imitation of the traditionally nomadic culture. Scholar Anindita Banerjee argued this shows a "deconstruction" of national identities by identifying with a "religious, geographic, and ethnic other", relevant to the diversity of Central Asia and India and the frontier that existed between the British and Russian Empires.

thumb|1933 painting by Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich, Tibet. Himalayas.

thumb|1924 or 1927 painting by Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich, Command of Rigden Djapo

According to the scholar Andrei Znamenski, Soviet Communists of the 1920s aimed to extend their influence over Mongolia and Tibet, using the mythical Buddhist kingdom of Shambhala as a form of propaganda to further this mission, in a sort of "great Bolshevik game". The expedition of Russian symbolist Nicholas Roerich has been put in context of the Great Game due to his interest in Tibet, Although Roerich did not like the Communists, he agreed to help Soviet intelligence and influence operations due to a shared paranoia towards Britain, as well as his goal to form a "Sacred Union of the East" called Roerichism.

In the early 1920s, Roerich asserted that beings from an esoteric Buddhist community in India told him that Russia was destined for a mission on Earth. That led Roerich to formulate his "Great Plan," which envisaged the unification of millions of Asian peoples through a religious movement using the Future Buddha, or Maitreya, into a "Second Union of the East." There, the King of Shambhala would, following the Maitreya prophecies, make his appearance to fight a great battle against all evil forces on Earth. Roerich understood that as "perfection towards Common Good." The new polity was to include southwestern Altai, Tuva, Buryatia, Outer and Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, with its capital in "Zvenigorod," the "City of Tolling Bells," which was to be built at the foot of Mount Belukha, in Altai. According to Roerich, the same Mahatmas revealed to him in 1922 that he was an incarnation of the Fifth Dalai Lama.

Other uses of the term "Great Game"

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan invited comparisons to the Great Game in the 1980s. One journalist linked the term to an interest in the region's minerals and another to its minerals and energy. The interest in oil and gas includes pipelines that transmit energy to China's east coast. One view of the New Great Game is a shift to geoeconomic compared to geopolitical competition. Xiangming Chen believes that "China and Russia are the two dominant power players vs. the weaker independent Central Asian states".

Other authors have criticized the reuse of the term "Great Game". It may imply that Central Asian states are entirely the pawns of larger states, when this ignores the potentially counterbalancing factors. According to strategic analyst Ajay Patnaik, the "New Great Game" is a misnomer, because rather than two empires focused on the region as in the past, there are now many global and regional powers active with the rise of China and India as major economic powers. Central Asian states have diversified their political, economic, and security relationships. David Gosset of CEIBS Shanghai states "the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) established in 2001 is showing that Central Asia's actors have gained some real degree of independence. But fundamentally, the China factor introduces a level of predictability."

The Great Game has been described as a cliché-metaphor, and there are authors who have now written on the topics of "the Great Game" in Antarctica, the world's far north, and in outer space.

References

Sources

External links

The Franco-Russian Expedition to India
Central Asia: Afghanistan and Her Relation to British and Russian Territories from 1885.
The timeline of the Great Game
The Great Game and Afghanistan – Library of Congress