The diverse and vibrant regions of Afghanistan and
Central Asia have always been at the crossroads of the old world. Located at the nexus of the Silk
Road, they have long been the object of desire for many Empires, from the Achaemenid Persians,
to Alexander’s Macedonians, to the early Islamic Caliphates. Therefore, it is no surprise
that Central Asia as we know it today came to exist as the result of a 19th century clash
between two great powers, Britain and Russia. This clash, known as the Great Game,
included wars, espionage, and diplomacy, and drew boundaries in the region that still
exist in the present. How was this Game conducted, and who were the people in between?
Welcome to our video on the Great Game, where we explore the forging of modern
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special link in the description. In British sources, the first mention of the
‘Great Game’ is found in an 1840 correspondence between one Captain Arthur Connolly and Major
Henry Rawlison, a political agent in Kandahar. In it, Connolly describes the idea of
a mission to ‘civilize’ Afghanistan. “You’ve a great game, a noble game before you, and
I have strong hope that you will be able to steer through all jealousy, and caprice, and
sluggishness, till the Afghans unite with your own countrymen in appreciating your labours
for a fine nation’s regeneration and advancement.” Later novels such as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim
shifted the meaning to the geopolitical struggle for domination. Russia for its own
part, saw the conquest of the various Khanates present in Central Asia as a ‘civilizing
mission’ of its own, conquering what they saw as barbaric states built on slave-trading.
Other actors in the region included Qajar Iran, which tried to establish a diplomatic network
with what they saw as their greater homeland, and France, which also launched attempts to
influence both Afghanistan and Iran, albeit in a mostly diplomatic and cultural context.
In current narratives, the Great Game usually takes place primarily in and around Afghanistan.
However, other regions were impacted, as Russian expansion throughout Central
Asia continued throughout the 19th Century, while regions such as Tibet also saw diplomatic
and espionage overtures by both powers. As the first of our two major Empires,
the British expansion into central Asia began with the aforementioned Emirate of
Afghanistan, which occupied parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. This was
an ethnically diverse Emirate, with Pashtuns, Turkmen, Tajiks and many others ethnic
groups living across very loose frontiers. For Britain, Afghanistan was interpreted as either
a place to be conquered, or a possible buffer state between them and a Russia which was rapidly
expanding into Central Asia. For this reason, Britain orchestrated various methods to bring
Afghanistan into its Imperial influence. These included political agents like
the aforementioned Major Rawlison, diplomatic alliances, as well as
attempts to install friendly rulers. Inevitably, colonial warfare was also employed as
a tool to British ends in the region. Conflicts such as the Anglo-Sikh Wars of 1845-1846 and
1848-1849 resulted in the virtual annexation of the regions of Punjab and Kashmir. However, the
biggest conflicts were the two Anglo-Afghan Wars of 1839-1842 and 1878-1880. The first of these
broke out when competition between Persia and Britain over who would influence Afghanistan led
to the British invading to install a puppet Emir. The founder of the Emirate of Afghanistan, Dost
Mohammad Khan, fought to defend his position, but was captured and exiled. However, the British
failed to maintain stability and withdrew, allowing Mohammed Khan to return and become the
second-longest reigning ruler of Afghanistan since its founding. The second Anglo-Afghan War,
however, was far more successful for the British. The then ruler of Afghanistan was Sher Amir
Khan, a man who carefully maintained a neutral stance between the growing British
and Russian spheres of influence. By that time the British were growing
increasingly belligerent due to Russian incursions into Central Asia, and saw Amir
Khan’s fence-sitting as Russian collusion. Their invasion quickly led to the takeover of
Kabul, which resulted in the Treaty of Gandamak, a negotiation which gave much of the Emirate’s
southern territories to the British Raj in exchange for protection. In 1893, these borders
were finalized under the Durand Line agreement, which formalized the divide between Afghanistan
and what would become modern-day Pakistan. Characteristically of British imperial policy,
these borders did not take ethnic divisions into account, and as such, have caused
political issues into the present day. It is here that we flip to the perspective of the
Russians, for while the British had been busy in Afghanistan, the Tsar’s agents had been continuing
their incursions into the south, annexing many of the Central Asian Khanates. By 1847, the Kazakh
Khanate had been thoroughly conquered after a ten-year long rebellion against increasing Russian
influence and taxation by tribal leaders. After failing to conquer the Khanate of Khiva in 1839,
the Russians opted to more carefully pace their expansion into the region, building forts over
the Sur Darya river, and laying down rail lines, such as the famous Siberia line. While doing
this, they had to face the Kokand Khanate, squaring off with a local ruler called Yaqub
Beg in a fort called Ak-Mechet, or White Mosque. The initial siege of the fort was
unsuccessful, but it eventually fell in 1853. The Russians then turned east and moved down via
the Caspian Sea to take over Kyrgyzstan. The 1860s proved to be a decade of monumental expansion, as
Tashkent, Bukhara and Samarkand, major Silk Road hubs and parts of the Great Khanate of Bukhara,
were slowly conquered by General Chernayev of the Russian Imperial Army. The Campaign in Bukhara
in 1866 was particularly harsh for the Bukharans, as they had lost their artillery and were
decimated by the Russians in a battle in Kattakurgan in modern day Uzbekistan. In 1867,
the Russian province of Turkestan was founded by General Konstantin von Kaufmann. Kaufmann was
given essentially a blank cheque by the Russian government, and his fervent militarism drove
him to further conquest, capturing Samarkand in 1868. The aforementioned Emirate of
Kokand was also fully conquered in 1878. As Russia conquered these lands, they inherited
a hodgepodge of multiple cultures and languages, with no clear boundaries between them.
The complicated demographics of the region would become apparent much later during Soviet
rule, when the borders of various Central Asian Socialist Republics were drawn with little
attention paid to the local ethnic groups. As Kaufmann expanded the Russian dominion, the
British came to see him as an immediate threat. By that time, the rapid expansion of the Tsar’s
armies into Central Asia, combined with fears from the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish War of
1878, made Britain see Russia as a barbaric and backwater foe. The conquest of Khiva and Bukhara,
seen as major trading centers by the British, sent the Raj into fearful alert. Within the British
foreign office, there were different proposals on how to contain the Russians. Some preferred
to maintain Afghanistan as a buffer state, while others wished to fight the Russians
directly. Eventually the former view won out, and at the end of the second Anglo-Afghan War,
channels of diplomacy between Britain and Russia were initiated, with the aim of establishing
Afghanistan as a buffer state between them. This was the beginning of the
Anglo-Russian Joint Boundary Commission, or the Pamir Boundary Commission, which
traveled and set borders between 1884-1886. One of the officers who accompanied
the mission was Charles Edward Yate, Yates’ description of his experiences offers a
view into the colonial mindset of many European travelers and how they perceived the Central
Asia of the 19th century. His letters describe the various troubles they encountered during their
travels, as well as descriptions of the beautiful landscapes of Afghanistan. Yates’ correspondences
represent an antiquated form of ethnography, with rather Orientalist interpretations of
the various ethnic groups in the region. For example, he sees Turkmens as hospitable and
trustworthy, but sees Uzbeks as untrustworthy. His travels also include descriptions of
Cossacks who accompanied the Russian mission, as well as his travels on Russian trains. From his
letters, we see a keen interest of the imperial powers into surveying the territory, producing
accurate maps but also searching for minerals and coal to plunder. It is from texts like these
that we see both the vogue that inspired the idea of the Great Game, but also the realpolitik
that dictated imperial expansion in the region. In addition to all this, Yates also described the
difficult negotiations between Britain and Russia, including the Panjdeh Incident of 1885,
which occurred when Russia took over some of the forts in the Pamir Mountains, which were
heavily populated and very fertile. As a result, Britain prepared for war in an attempt to honour
its obligations in the Treaty of Gandarmak. However, tensions were eventually diffused,
and the Boundary Commission continued its work. Soon, the northern border of Afghanistan was
set, with the Russian conquests in Central Asia acknowledged, and the region of Badakhshan
receiving a thin line as a way to completely separate Russian Turkestan from the British Raj.
It should be noted that throughout this process, Afghan ambassadors were present, but held
little to no say over the border divisions. Another lesser-known theater of Anglo-Russian
expansion was the Kingdom of Tibet. In the 19th century, the Buddhist Kingdom was
under the rule of China’s Qing dynasty, but had a certain level of autonomy within
it. Wars with the British had resulted in the southern flank of the Kingdom to be exposed, so
the Dalai Lamas preferred a policy of isolation. British attempts in the late 1700s to establish
relations were for naught, with very few Europeans going into the kingdom. For many foreigners,
Tibet was perceived as a mystical land. In typical Orientalist notions of the time, many
thought of it as a land of mystical magic. Russia initially had an advantage, having begun a centre
of Tibetan Studies in St Petersburg in the early 1700s. Many of the ethnic groups under Russian
control, such as the Kalmyks, Buryats and Tuvans, also practiced Vajrayana Buddhism, the
same Buddhist school as the Tibetans. Some Russian explorers such as Nikolay
Przhevalsky, managed to travel to Tibet in the 1870s and recorded many flora and fauna
species unknown to Europeans. His descriptions of the locals, especially the Chinese,
show typical racist attitudes of the time. Other Russian explorers include the Buryat Ngawang
Dorjee, who established friendly diplomatic relations, taught a future Dalai Lama, and even
studied in the prestigious Drepung Monastery. Britain was also keen to extend its influence over
Tibet, and did so through both clandestine and military means. To survey the Kingdom undetected,
the British employed specialist geographers known as pundits. These were local Indian men who were
trained in surveying and effectively mapping the Tibetan plateau. The most famous of these men
was a man called Nain Singh. Born to a family of Bhotian Indians, he was trained in astronomical
survey and military marching by Major Thomas Montgomerie. Disguised as a Buddhist monk, he
traveled across Tibet and visited major cities. He secretly surveyed the land by counting his steps
using a modifying Buddhist rosary of 100 beads, and by hiding notes in scrolls in a Tibetan
prayer wheel. His travels helped the British map Tibet and find the location of its capital:
Lhasa. Singh’s travels resulted in fatigue and snow-blindness, but he continued to train many
others who continued the job he conducted. Other forms of expeditions were done by
archeologists, such as Sir Aurel Stein, who discovered many Buddhist and Manichaean texts in
the dry Taklamakan Desert of Xinjiang. Ultimately, British intelligence operations in Tibet
led to a military expansion into the region, led by Sir Francis Youngshusband, which attacked
Lhasa in 1904. This left the Tibetans devastated, and resulted in the Lhasa Convention of 1904,
which essentially made Tibet a British puppet state, with Qing China acting as an intermediary
for relations with other major world powers. The Great Game broadly ended in 1907
with the Anglo-Russian Convention. Iran was recognized as being partially
in both countries’ spheres of influence with the north under Russian and
the south under British control. Tibet was agreed to be a special neutral zone
for both powers, with special diplomatic rights for Russia and special mercantile rights for
Britain. Iran’s 1908 Constitutional Revolution initially tried to make Iran a freer and more
democratic country, free of foreign influence. However, the Russians intervened and ensured the
Shah would remain aligned with imperial interests. The idea of a Great Game has been invoked in many
similar competitions since, from the Soviet-Afghan War to the post-Soviet Republics of Central
Asia. Whatever the narrative, the Great Game has remained an evocative concept for many imperial
powers fighting proxies in a far-off land. The reality of the Game was one of
clandestine operations and diplomacy, colonial expansions and brutal conquests. As for
the region itself, the various interventions and demarcations that were imposed by foreign Great
Powers produced consequences that reverberate to this day. We are planning on making more videos
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