The Great Game was a term used for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the
British Empire and the
Russian Empire for supremacy in
Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the
Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the
Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Following the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second, less intensive phase followed.
The term "The Great Game" is usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, an intelligence officer of the British East India Company's Sixth Bengal Light Cavalry.[1] It was introduced into mainstream consciousness by British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901).
At the start of the 19th century there were some 2000 miles separating British India and the outlying regions of Tsarist Russia. Much of the land in between was unmapped. The cities of Bukhara, Khiva, Merv, Kokand and Tashkent were virtually unknown to outsiders. As Imperial Russian expansion threatened to collide with the increasing British dominance of the occupied lands of the Indian sub-continent, the two great empires played out a subtle game of exploration, espionage and imperialistic diplomacy throughout Central Asia. The conflict always threatened, but never quite developed into direct warfare between the two sides. The centre of activity was in Afghanistan.
The term "Great Game" has no currency in Russian and Soviet historiography. In retrospect, it appears to have been a rather one-sided affair resulting from Victorian Imperialism and Russophobia[citation needed]. The only evidence of Russia's interest in challenging the British Raj was the Indian March of Emperor Paul (1801), a Russo-French adventure that got as far as the Aral Sea, roughly a thousand miles short of the Khyber Pass. Nevertheless, it created quite a stir in London and touched off a war scare between Britain and Russia.
