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When Everyone Is Dead the Great Game Is Finished

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When Everyone Is Dead the Great Game Is Finished Peter John Brobst. The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India's Independence, and the Defense of Asia. Akron: University of Akron Press, 2005. xx + 199 pp. $39.99, cloth, ISBN 978-1-931968-10-2. Reviewed by Michael Silvestri Published on H-Albion (April, 2006) The "Great Game," Britain's struggle with Rus‐ Sir Olaf Caroe, "British India's leading geopo‐ sia for imperial supremacy in central Asia, seems litical thinker during the fnal years of the Raj" (p. at frst glance to belong to the age of the "New Im‐ xiv), came from a background that epitomized the perialism" of the late nineteenth century. First "official mind" of the British Empire. The son of a and foremost, it evokes the romantic--and fction‐ prominent architect, he was educated at Winches‐ al--exploits of Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali and, ter and Oxford (where he read classics) and saw of course, the title character of Rudyard Kipling's action on the Afghan frontier during the First Kim on India's Northwest frontier. In reality, the World War. Caroe enjoyed a distinguished career Great Game continued into the era of decoloniza‐ in the Indian Political Service, and served in the tion and the Cold War. In the closing years of the North-West Frontier (acquiring fuency in Pashto), British Raj, the Government of India wrestled Baluchistan and the Persian Gulf. In 1939 he took with the question of how Britain could continue charge of the External Affairs Department as for‐ to project influence in the region following a eign secretary to the Government of India. In this transfer of power in South Asia. How one impor‐ role, Caroe became "Britain's point man for ques‐ tant imperial servant conceptualized the ways in tions arising along India's three thousand-mile in‐ which Britain might continue to play the Great ternational frontier" (p. xvii). In 1942, Caroe con‐ Game following Indian independence is the sub‐ vened a group of high-level imperial servants ject of Peter John Brobst's The Future of the Great known as the "Viceroy's Study Group," whose se‐ Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India's Independence, and cret deliberations on the future of the Great Game the Defense of Asia. As Brobst observes, "The following a transfer of power in South Asia form Great Game did not end with British rule in Au‐ the core of Brobst's study. In March 1946, Caroe gust 1947. Nor did officials of the late Raj expect became governor of the North-West Frontier that it would" (p. xiii). Province, the office to which he had aspired since the beginning of his career in the service of the British Raj. After his retirement, Caroe became an H-Net Reviews influential member of the Round Table group and in holding its multiethnic empire forcibly togeth‐ the author of several books and numerous articles er" (p. 146). In particular, he noted the vulnerabil‐ on topics related to the Great Game. ity of the Soviet Union's empire in central Asia. Brobst's clear, cogent and concise study Caroe was also one of the frst official analysts to demonstrates why the ideas of this late imperial prophecy the resurgence of China as a Great Pow‐ proconsul merit our attention today. "No authori‐ er, at a time when British authorities tended to ty saw the transcendence of the Great Game more think that, in Winston Churchill's words, "China clearly than Sir Olaf Caroe. He believed that its as a great power was rather a fraud" (pp. 60, 138). rules, that the imperatives of Asian defense, re‐ Lastly, Caroe anticipated "the resilience of Islam flected the permanence of geography versus the in the face of communism and secularizing ide‐ vicissitudes of empire and ideology" (pp. xiii-xiv). ologies more generally in an era when fashions Brobst aptly characterizes Caroe's geopolitical were disposed to dismiss religious motivation as a outlook as a "combination of anachronism and spent force" (p. xx). prescience" (p. 143). On the one hand, Caroe's India comprised the core of Caroe's concep‐ views reflected "a certain amount of romanticism tion of the Great Game, and he envisioned inde‐ and a more definite paternalism typical among pendent India as a key element in Asian defense. British administrators in South Asia" (p. xix). As Brobst writes, "He imagined that through an Throughout his time as foreign secretary, Caroe Indian Dominion--independent but linked to presumed that Indian independence meant Do‐ Britain through the Commonwealth--Britain could minion status, in which Britain maintained a mea‐ continue to exercise influence along the Asian rim sure of control of foreign policy and defense is‐ sufficient to hold the global balance against power sues (pp. 78-79). He anticipated, for example, that based in the heartland" (p. 15). The views of Caroe Britain would have no difficulty in maintaining and other members of the Viceroy's Study Group military bases in independent India for the pur‐ often accorded with those of contemporary Indi‐ poses of imperial defense. As Brobst observes, an analysts such as K. M. Panikkar, who, for ex‐ "The fatal faw in Caroe's idea was the presump‐ ample, advocated a strong naval policy for India tion that the coming transfer of power would en‐ in close collaboration with Britain (p. 29). Brobst tail something less than a complete break be‐ also points out how modern Indian strategic ini‐ tween Britain and India" (p. 96). Yet on the whole, tiatives, such as the "containment" of China Caroe's conception of an ongoing Great Game was through the acquisition of nuclear weapons and remarkably forward-looking. Although his frst the projection of Indian naval power into the and foremost concern was to ensure the contin‐ South China Sea, echo the wartime deliberations ued projection of British power in Asia, his out‐ of Caroe and other members of his study group look was not as Eurocentric as other colonial offi‐ (pp. 149-150). cials who "broke Asia and the Indian Ocean into In spite of its prescience, Caroe's vision of the separate regions attached only to the margins of Great Game did not, however, always fnd favor the world's principal strategic areas" (p. 13). In with policymakers in London and Delhi. Although contrast, Caroe viewed the Indian Ocean as a uni‐ secretary of state for India Leo Amery was deeply fied political and economic region, and consid‐ interested in Caroe's study group, plans for the ered the defense of Asia to be a "single, inter‐ publication of articles in American journals such locked question." Caroe was a staunch anticom‐ as Foreign Affairs during the Second World War munist, but at a time when many predicted the in‐ came to naught. Amery hoped that such articles exorable advance of Soviet communism, "Caroe would bolster U.S. support for British interests in recognized the Soviet Union's ultimate difficulty 2 H-Net Reviews India, but India Office officials objected to what The Future of the Great Game demonstrates how they regarded as the "blunt defeatism" of some of the issues that motivated one colonial official on the study group's papers (pp. 10-13). Lord Wavell this subject continue to resonate today. considered Caroe "too narrow, theoretical and pedantic" to be an effective Governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (p. 105), and Caroe's appointment as Governor there ended in his sack‐ ing by Lord Mountbatten in June, 1947, after he quarreled with Nehru. Caroe's plan to resolve ten‐ sions between the Pathans of the Northwest Fron‐ tier and the Congress, an approach dictated by the concerns of Great Game strategy, appeared to au‐ thorities in London and New Delhi to be political‐ ly inexpedient and "hopelessly anachronistic" and was shelved (p. 110). As Brobst observes, "Caroe's Great Game perspective on the postcolonial world contributes substantially to the lasting interest of his thought, but according to some British officials at the time, it was also the basic weakness" (p. 13). Brobst's study is concise, well oganized and clearly argued, and he has thoroughly mined sources in the Oriental and India Office Collec‐ tions of the British Library, and the National Ar‐ chives in London to trace the contours of Caroe's thought. Considering the importance of the Great Game as an organizing principle for his book, Brobst says surprisingly little about the wider his‐ tory of the Great Game, either in strategic or cul‐ tural terms. The latter dimension clearly engaged Caroe, and his lifelong interest in the Indian fron‐ tier was in part sparked by reading Rudyard Kip‐ ing (p. xvi). In his history of The Pathans: 550 B.C.--A.D. 1957 (1958), for example, Caroe devoted a chapter to a stirring account of the British "Pal‐ adins" of the Northwest Frontier, Victorian heroes such as John Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes. Brobst's book thus will be of the most interest to specialists in the modern British Empire. Caroe also clearly recognized, however, as he said in a 1949 speech, that the Great Game extend‐ ed far beyond "the old romance of the North-West Frontier with its forts, its Khyber Pass, its militia, its 'King of the Khyber Rifles' and so on" (p. 99). 3 H-Net Reviews If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-albion Citation: Michael Silvestri. Review of Brobst, Peter John. The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India's Independence, and the Defense of Asia. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
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