The Great Game: Britain and Russia's Imperial Rivalry
The Great Game describes the rivalry between the British and Russian empires through the 19th century. The game was primarily concerned with the control of certain regions in Central Asia and the defence of British India. The rivalry, although sometimes overimagined and exaggerated, took the form of international diplomacy, troop movements and invasions, espionage, and one instance of open warfare. The game had indirect consequences, too, in other areas of the world, such as in the Scramble for Africa. The Great Game effectively ended following Russia's embarrassing loss to Japan in 1905 and the arrival of the much more real and dangerous threat posed by Imperial Germany's ambitions in Europe.
Origin of the Term
The term 'Great Game' was coined in the 19th century by Arthur Connolly, a British officer and explorer, but became more widely used following its appearance in the 1901 novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The term refers to the relations between the British and Russian empires and their efforts to undermine each other and their respective alliances.
The game ran through the 19th century, beginning in the 1820s and ending prior to the First World War (1914-18). It has been described by such historians as L. James as a type of cold war, since, like the more modern Cold War between the USA and USSR, it involved no direct conflicts but rather the moves of the game involved wars by proxy, espionage, diplomatic strategies, and bluff. The exception to this is the Crimean War (1853-56), when both sides fought directly against each other to establish naval supremacy, particularly in the Black Sea.
The Russian Empire included around 160 million people and was ruled by the authoritarian tsar. Britain, in contrast, was a well-established parliamentary democracy. The British Empire enclosed some 400 million people in over 50 countries. Although British rule in its colonies was far from being as democratic as in the home country, British rulers and diplomats regarded themselves as superior to their Russian counterparts because Russia was ruled by an unelected autocrat, and Russia was far behind in terms of the Industrial Revolution.
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⇒ The Great Game: Britain and Russia's Imperial Rivalry
