''The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia'' (US title ''The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia'' is a
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...
by
Peter Hopkirk
Peter Stuart Hopkirk (15 December 1930 – 22 August 2014) was a British journalist, author and historian who wrote six books about the British Empire, Russia and Central Asia.
Biography
Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank St ...
on "
the Great Game
The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...
", a series of conflicts in the 1800s between the UK and Russian powers to control
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
.
Description
In this work, the author relates the story of a time best described by Captain
Arthur Connolly, of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
before he was beheaded in
Bokhara
Bukhara ( Uzbek: /, ; tg, Бухоро, ) is the seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan, with a population of 280,187 , and the capital of Bukhara Region.
People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and the city h ...
for spying in 1842, as "
The Great Game
The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...
".
The Great Game was played between the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
and
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
for supremacy in
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
. At stake was the preservation of India, key to the wealth of the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
. When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated the two rivals.
Najibullah translation
After the fall of Kabul to
Afghan mujahideen forces in 1992, the last Soviet-backed president of Afghanistan,
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (Pashto/ prs, محمد نجیبالله احمدزی, ; 6 August 1947 – 27 September 1996), commonly known as Dr. Najib, was an Afghan politician who served as the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Par ...
, sought refuge in the capital's UN compound. In 1996, when the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
took the city, they promptly seized and murdered him. However, during his time at the UN compound, he began translating ''The Great Game'' into his mother tongue
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...
, so that "They
fghanscan see how our history has repeated itself...Only if we understand our history can we take steps to break the cycle". Years later, Hopkirk was quoted as saying, "I’m not sure what became of Najibullah’s translation...I know that it found its way to India where his wife and children had been given asylum. Sadly, after that the trail goes cold.”
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
1992 non-fiction books
20th-century history books
Books about foreign relations of the United Kingdom
History books about India
History books about Afghanistan
History of Pakistan
Non-fiction books about The Great Game