Great Game
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. The Russian and British Empires also cooperated numerous times during the Great Game, including many treaties and the Afghan Boundary Commission.
Britain feared Russia's southward expansion would threaten India, while Russia feared the expansion of British interests into Central Asia. As a result, Britain made it a high priority to protect all approaches to India, while Russia continued its military conquest of Central Asia. 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, but after 1901, they had no serious intention of directly attacking India. Russian war plans for India that were proposed but never materialised included the Duhamel and Khrulev plans of the Crimean War.
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 le grand jeu 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. 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. Captain Conolly had been appointed as a political officer. A similar term, the "Tournament of Shadows" was reportedly used by Russian diplomat Karl Nesselrode. 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:
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.It was introduced into the mainstream by the British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim. It was first used academically by Professor H.W.C. Davis in a presentation titled The Great Game in Asia 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.
File:Boukhara_4696a.jpg|thumb|Silk and spice festival in modern-day Bukhara, Uzbekistan
First signs of possible India invasion
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. Expecting a future action by the British against Russia and her allies in Europe, Paul decided in 1801 to make the first move towards where he believed the British Empire was weakest. He wrote to the Ataman of the Don Cossacks Troops, Cavalry General Vasily Petrovich Orlov, directing him to march to Orenburg, conquer the Central Asian Khanates, and from there invade India. Paul was assassinated in the same year, and the invasion was terminated.
Historian Peter Hopkirk wrote that Tsar Paul had not been able to obtain a detailed map of India until the Cossacks' departure from Orenburg. He quotes the Tsar as instructing Orlov: "My maps only go as far as Khiva and the River Oxus. Beyond these points it is your affair to gain information about the possessions of the English, and the condition of the native population subject to their rule". 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".
Napoleon tried to persuade Paul's son, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, to invade India; however Alexander resisted. In 1807, Napoleon dispatched General Claude Matthieu, Count Gardane on a French military mission to Persia, with the intention of persuading Russia to invade India. In response, Britain sent its own diplomatic missions in 1808, with military advisers, to Persia and Afghanistan under the capable Mountstuart Elphinstone, averting the possible French and Russian threat to India. However, Britain was left with concerns about being able to defend its colony on the subcontinent. At the time, Russia also went to war with Qajar Iran and invaded the Persian Caucasus from 1804 to 1813, adding to Britain's fears, while Russia was distracted mainly by the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1810, British Lieutenant Henry Pottinger and Captain Charles Christie undertook an expedition from Nushki to Isfahan disguised as Muslims. The expedition was funded by the East India Company and was to map and research the regions of "Beloochistan" and Persia because of concerns about India being invaded by French forces from that direction. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the collapse of the French army, the threat of a French invasion through Persia was removed.
The shah of Iran, Fath-Ali Shah Qajar would become part of diplomatic intrigues about India. He first received limited British support in 1801 that was canceled after Russia's invasion of Persia in 1804. Fath-Ali then lent a promise to Napoleon in 1807 to theoretically invade British India in exchange for French military assistance which fell through despite the Treaty of Finckenstein in 1807. When France allied with Russia at Tilsit in 1807, as Russia was still invading Iran, Fath-Ali Shah turned toward British diplomacy and alliance in 1809. The shah was also able to use a rivalry between the East India Company and the British Foreign Office, to garner more British aid. In the 1809 preliminary Treaty of Tehran, Persia agreed to stop any European or foreign army passing to India, while the British agreed to send a mission to train sixteen thousand Persian soldiers and, if Qajar Persia was invaded by a European state, pay a £100,000 subsidy to Persia, while attempting to mediate if at peace with Persia's enemy. Nevertheless, Russia would end up defeating Iran a few years later, with Britain mediating the treaty.
The Russo-Persian Wars began to coalesce into a point of tension between the British and Russian empires, particularly following the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, which gave the Russian Empire the theoretical right to intervene in Persia at any time, a humiliation of Persia. Fath-Ali Shah sought to counterbalance Russia by increasing the ties between the Qajars and Britain; the British offered military and financial assistance to the shah, supporting Iran as a buffer between Russia and India. The Russian invasion of Iran in 1826–1828 led to a Russian victory, weakening Qajar Iran which retained only minimal influence and power. This fully placed Persia into another colonial contest between Russia and Britain.