The Great Game

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 quixotic and half-hearted 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.Although the Great Game is usually taken to refer to the conflict of British and Russian interests in Afghanistan, there was also intense rivalry in Persia and (later) in Tibet. Britain was alarmed by Russian expansion into Transcaucasia at the expense of Persia. The Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmanchai (1826) resulted in substantial territorial gains for the Tsar. In order to contain Russia's expansion, the British set themselves the task of reorganizing the outdated Persian army into an effective fighting force. There was a chain of Persian-Russian diplomatic crises, to a large degree instigated by the British embassy in Tehran. One of these resulted in the assassination of the Russian ambassador Alexander Griboyedov.By the early 20th century, Northern Iran had become for all practical purposes a protectorate of the Russian Empire. At one point during the Persian Constitutional Revolution, Cossack colonel Vladimir Liakhov ruled Tehran as a military governor with dictatorial powers. The focus of the Great Game shifted considerably to the east. The British were impressed by the semi-military expeditions of Nikolai Przhevalsky, Pyotr Kozlov, and other Russian explorers that roamed the vast expanses of Dzungaria and Xinjiang. There was a growing fear that Russia would annex this remote part of the Qing Empire. In order to forestall Russia's prospective claims to the area, Britain mounted a small-scale expedition to Tibet, driving the Dalai-Lama from Lhasa in 1904.Fom the British perspective, the Russian conquest of Central Asia threatened to destroy the so-called "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, India. As the Tsar's troops began to subdue one Khanate after another the British feared that Afghanistan would become a staging post for a Russian invasion of India. It was with these thoughts in mind that in 1838 the British launched the First Anglo-Afghan War and attempted to impose a puppet regime under Shuja Shah. The regime was short lived, and unsustainable without British military support. By 1842, mobs were attacking the British on the streets of Kabul and the British garrison agreed to a retreat from Kabul with guaranteed safe passage. Unfortunately for the British, the guarantee proved to be worthless. The retreating British column consisted of approximately 16,500 military personnel and one escapee. During a series of ruthless attacks, all but one Dr William Brydon were killed on the march back to India.The British curbed their ambitions in Afghanistan following the humiliating retreat from Kabul. After the Indian rebellion of 1857, successive British governments saw Afghanistan as a buffer state. The Russians, led by Konstantin Kaufman, Mikhail Skobelev, and Mikhail Chernyayev, continued to advance steadily southward toward Afghanistan and by 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed. Samarkand became part of the Russian Empire three years later and the independence of Bukhara was virtually stripped away in a peace treaty the same year. Russian control now extended as far as the northern bank of the Amu Darya river.In a letter to Queen Victoria, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli proposed "to clear Central Asia of Muscovites and drive them into the Caspian".[2] He introduced the Royal Titles Act, which added to Victoria's titles that of Empress of India, putting her at the same level as the Russian Emperor. After the Great Eastern Crisis broke out and the Russians sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul in 1878, Britain demanded that the ruler of Afghanistan (Sher Ali) accept a British diplomatic mission. The mission was turned back and in retaliation a force of 40,000 men was sent across the border, launching the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The second war was almost as disastrous as the first for the British, and by 1881, they again pulled out of Kabul. They left Abdur Rahman Khan on the throne, and he agreed to let the British maintain Afghanistan's foreign policy while he consolidated his position on the throne. He managed to suppress internal rebellions with ruthless efficiency and brought much of the country under central control.Russian expansion brought about another crisis — the Panjdeh Incident — when they seized the oasis of Merv in 1884. The Russians claimed all of the former ruler's territory and fought with Afghan troops over the oasis of Panjdeh. On the brink of war between the two great powers, the British decided to accept the Russian possession as a fait accompli. Without any Afghan say in the matter, the Joint Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission agreed the Russians would relinquish the farthest territory captured in their advance, but retain Panjdeh. The agreement delineated a permanent northern Afghan frontier at the Amu Darya, with the loss of a large amount of territory, especially around Panjdeh, however Britain continued to have troubles in the region towards the end of the 1800s.