Registan.net

I was somewhat chagrined the other month to realize I had never before read The Great Game in its entirety. I have certainly mined it for anecdotes and sources, as any undergrad must do, in my papers on Central Asia. I had read certain sections of it before. But I had never actually read Hopkirk’s history of Western meddling in 19th century Central Asia all the way through.

This is probably a bit shocking coming from someone who fancies himself a Central Asia watcher. But, perhaps because I’m catching it relatively late in my Central Asian obsession, I can say that it’s okay. Though Hopkirk provides a good background of the actions and mistakes of Britain and Russia in the area, and how they interacted with each other, and how they treated the natives, the book wasn’t full of the deep insights into the local cultures I would have expected given its hype. It is, to use a term I don’t much like, rather Orientalist in outlook, in which all the dirty little brown people are servants or savages, cultures are quaint so long as they can be controlled, and the cool, detached, quite violent realpolitik of the Brits and Russians was perfectly moral.

It is a history of an age when Empire building was perhaps alarming but not seen as morally repugnant—the largest outrages came from lying to England over a certain annexation here and there, or a needless massacre, but not the act of expanding borders. The tragedy was merely in the needless or excessive death, not the usurpation of the natives’ right to live independently of foreign overlords, that created the occasional outrage.

As you guessed or already knew, it is unabashedly biased toward the British, though I don’t believe Hopkirk is unfair in his treatment of the Russians. Regardless, I was fascinated by the stories on hand: Hopkirk is a masterful writer, and he makes every little expedition seem the grandest adventure, from Pottinger’s sleuthing across Afghanistan to the sad (and cruel) imprisonment and execution of Stoddart in Bokhara.

Indeed, the entire thing reads like a century-long spy novel, with secret disguises, cloak-and-dagger machinations between British and Russian agents in far-flung and isolated khanates, and unbelievable feats of bravery or foolishness that would seem idiotic today. It is also a story of conquest, of how Russia lied to the West as it conquered Central Asia, of how Britain brutally occupied what is now Pakistan in the name of security. It invaded Afghanistan three times before the end of World War I, each time at great cost (there is supposedly still an old citadel near the Khyber pass where you can find the bones of British troops cut down as they retreated).

Indeed, there are fascinating parallels to find, for example during Britain’s second invasion, they tried to install Abdur Rahman to the throne as Emir. Rahman was living in exile in Russia, and there were fears he would be a Russian vassal, though this wound up not being the case. After he was installed as Emir, though, the situation felt remarkably familiar.

He only controlled the Kabul region and parts of the north. Much of the rest of Afghanistan was still in turmoil, for his accession to the throne had not gone unchallenged. Moreover, he dared not show himself to be friendly with the British, who had put him on the throne, lest, like, Shah Shujah, he be accused of being their puppet and of being kept in power by the force of their bayonets… His trump card, however, was the face that the British were going, and he did not hesitate to make it appear to his people as though this was all his doing.

As far as general interest books go, one that would be considered accessible to an American reader without any (or much) background in the history or culture of the area, it’s hard to think of something better. Hopkirk makes what would otherwise be a boring history into something not intensely human, but intensely exciting. It was, in a very real sense, Russia’s other big Cold War with the West. There is probably a deeper point to be made from the observation that over the last two centuries Russia has been in a state of near constant low-level conflict with Britain and her descendants… But I don’t feel like digging into that at the moment.

Regardless, I would consider this is required reading for anyone with a budding interest in the region—it is not exhaustive by any means, but it is certainly an excellent place to start.

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