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The Myths and Realities of the Great Game, 1856-1907

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The Myths and Realities of the Great Game, 1856-1907 WPF Historic Publication The Myths and Realities of the Great Game, 1856-1907 Evgeny Sergeev December 31, 2010 Original copyright © 2010 by World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations Copyright © 2016 by Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute The right of Evgeny Sergeev to be identified as the author of this publication is hereby asserted. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the original author(s) and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views and opinions of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, its co-founders, or its staff members. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher: Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute gGmbH Französische Straße 23 10117 Berlin Germany +49 30 209677900 [email protected] The Myths and Realities of the Great Game, 1856-1907 Evgeny Sergeev Head of the Research Center ‘The Twentieth Century’, The Russian Academy of Scienes Institute of World History Originally published 2010 in World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations Bulletin 7, 357–76. 1 We are on the eve of stirring times; but if we play the great game that is before us, the events will be incalculably beneficial to us and to the tribes whose destinies may change from turmoil, violence, ignorance and poverty to peace, enlightenment and varied happiness. Arthur Connolly in a mail to his friend, 1840 Since the obscure, prehistoric times, the mankind has known countless conflicts which divided people. Yet, alongside with bloody clashes, there developed cooperation between individuals, social groups of various kinds and states in general. This intermixture of mutual revulsion and tolerance, hatred and affection has been accompanying human beings for more than five thousands years of the recorded history. And it often formed a kind of a Game, or to put it differently, a competition of two, rarely of three and more, opponents for a supremacy over territories, resources, and residents. Being a typical paragon of the aforementioned dialectical circulation, the Great Game played by both the great powers and regional potentates in Central and East Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century must be re-examined by historians from temporal, geographic, socio-political, economic and cultural points of view. The need for a fresh, unbiased and complex research of this historical phenomenon seems multifaceted. First, the end of the Cold War epoch symbolized the break through obscurant ideological, “black- and-white” mental stereotypes, especially through the interpretations of Russo-Western relations, which obviously contradict available documentary testimonies. Second, the present acceleration of international tension in the contact zones of civilizations, populated with Christian, Muslim or Buddhist confessionals, so brilliantly investigated by Samuel Huntington, accentuated the importance of a more scrupulous analyses of the historic background and mainsprings of current developments. Lastly, the cross-use of archival sources deposited in Britain, Russia, India, Iran, and Central Asian republics by academic scholars, has definitely expanded the very scope of research and furnished present humanitarians with principally new approaches to the history of the Great Game. If an ordinary reader, keen on understanding “the hidden agenda” of historic events, is asked to explain how he or she views the problem of the Great Game, the response may be calculated in advance. Most probably, we are told that this definition deals with the 2 Russo-British military-political rivalry from early the nineteenth to early the twentieth centuries, when the United Kingdom, facing the challenge launched against the British supremacy in Asia, or to be more precise, in Central Asia, by the Russian Empire, had to rebuff the aggression from the north with means of various kinds, nominated by contemporaries as both “forward” or “masterly inactivity” politics. However, despite series of publications by historians, journalists, and even former intelligencers, the question of origins, development, and closure of the Great Game together with its essential role in the course of not just bilateral Russo-British contacts, but also relations on a regional and global scale, remains understudied or misinterpreted. We still lack a broader panorama of the multi-sided intercourse, which great powers maintained with each other and some minor, traditional Asiatic states in the age of industrial modernization. To fill this gap is the main task of the study. Another aim, the present author is seeking to attain, consists in the reappraisal of chronological stages and activities of some prominent Great Game players in political, economic and cultural fields of contest. Finally, the attempt is made in the study to shatter false notions, expose myths or if only to correct existing conceptions of how undeveloped, peripheral, from the Eurocentric point of view, pre-industrial societies had been more or less gradually and successfully incorporated in the global system of multilateral relations by the outbreak of the First World War. As a prelude to the further context, one should analyze the definition of the Great Game itself. Presumably, we are to answer such questions of prior importance as: who originally articulated this phrase; what this definition truly meant; where its geographical scope protracted and for how long the activities of the players, including those of the upper status or lower-ranking persons on the spot, promoted the dynamics of process. It seems a well established fact that Captain Arthur Connolly of the Sixth Bengal Native Light Cavalry, a ‘daring, resourceful and ambitious’ subaltern in the service of the East India Company, according to Peter Hopkirk, was the first who articulated the idiom “the Great Game”.1 Connolly mentioned it in private correspondence with Henry Rawlinson, a military officer and later a diplomat of minister ranking, then President of the Royal Geographical and Asiatic Societies and a founder of Assyriology. In the letter of 1837, prior to a secret mission to Bokhara, this intrepid explorer had written to his friend: ‘You have a great game, a noble one, before you’. Later he reiterated this expression (see 1 Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game. On Secret Service in High Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 123. 3 the epigraph of the paper) or slightly modified it as ‘the grand game’ in subsequent messages addressed not solely to Rawlinson, but, most probably, to some other fellow officers and relatives.2 But why did Connolly regard his mission to be a game after all, albeit his epistles to friends and scrap-books contained reverberations of a spiritual, anti-slavery, liberatory crusade in Central Asia? Some experts, like Peter Hopkirk, argued that Connolly did have in mind the play of rugby which was invented by William Ellis at Rugby school in the early 1820’s.3 Yet this argumentation does not seem convincing and appropriate enough. The adequate explanation may be found in the impressions of Alexander Burnes, another famous British traveler and Political Resident in Central Asia, which he jotted down after the meeting with Connoly: “He [Connolly, E.S.] is a flighty, though a very nice fellow. He is to regenerate Turkestan, dismiss all the slaves, and looks upon our advent as a design of providence to spread Christianity.”4 According to John Kaye, the British historian of the First Anglo-Afghan War, who have discovered the reference to the Great (or Grand) Game in Connoly’s epistolary heritage,5 the latter even complotted to mould an Anti-Slavery Confederation in 1838, including the khanates of Bokhara, Khiva, and Khokand, under the auspices of a group of Christian volunteers who would enter ‘the remote regions of Central Asia as Champions of Humanity and Pioneers of Civilization’. Thus, the British would take an upper hand in checking up the Russian penetration and reshaping the Middle East.6 Consequently, we may conclude that the idea of propagating Christian values among Muslims dominated Captain Connolly’s belief system, whereas he fatalistically regarded himself as a tool of Providence ‘playing’ with him and similar individuals in the ‘game’ which passed human understanding. Apart from such a theological interpretation, another, more secularized version may be represented. In the times of Connolly’s activity in Central Asia, the East India Company continued to be, at least de jure, a private joint venture, though being supervised by the British government. However, most of the 2 Gerald Morgan, ‘Myth and Reality in the Great Game’, Asian Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 1973, vol. 60, pt. 1, p. 55; Karl E. Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows. The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia, London: Abacus, 1999, pp.126-7; Robert Johnson, Spying for Empire. The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947, London: Green Hill Books, 2006, p. 53. 3 Peter Hopkirk, Quest for Kim, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 6-7. 4 Meyer, Brysac, op. cit., p. 127. 5 Milan Hauner, ‘The Last Great Game’, The Middle East Journal,1984, vol. 38, no. 1, p. 72. 6 Meyer,
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