Victorian
Tournament
of Shadows - by Shareen Brysac, Karl Meyer .
In 1800 the frontier bases of the British and Russian empires were 2,000
miles apart; by 1900 the gap had diminished to a few hundred miles. Such
was the nature of the struggle, or the "Great Game" as it became
known, for mastery of Central Asia between Victorian Britain and Tsarist
Russia. The very name the "Great Game" has romantic echoes and
Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac's fascinating and readable account is peopled
with long-forgotten adventurers and explorers who have left more than conquest
to the generations that follow. There's the Russian Nikolai Przhevalsky
who left his name to scores of flora and fauna, including the ancestor to
the horse; not to mention the scores of plucky cartographic Brits who solved
most of the riddles of Asia's geography. But behind the romance lies a darker
more serious purpose. Although the Russians and the British never actually
went to war over Asia, they fought a propaganda war, both at home and abroad,
that has echoes of the Cold War. And as in the Cold War, there were scores
of innocent victims. To protect its right--and it was seen as a right--to
Empire, and India in particular, Britain brought about two wars in Afghanistan,
invaded Tibet, took over Egypt and divided Persia into different spheres
of influence. All this Meyer and Brysac recount with a loving, unfussy attention
to detail but where they come into their own is in bringing the story up
to date. For the Great Game continues, even though Britain has been replaced
by the US. Throughout the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s the
Americans were happy to fund anti-democratic guerrilla groups on the grounds
they were more opposed to the Soviets than they were to the US. Ever since
the Soviets withdrew, the American influence has lingered as dozens of well-armed
rival factions continue to tear their country apart. As before, the Great
Game is anything but a game for those directly involved. For them it is
a matter of life and death. --John Crace.
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