The Great Game: Britain and Russia in Central Asia by Martin s> Ewans (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS i6i Ewans,Martin (ed.). TheGreat Game: BritainandRussiainCentral Asia.Vols I-8. RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York,2004. 2,280 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Appendices. [750.00. A new look at the 'Great Game' is timely. While the Cold War persisted, it was difficultto examine the earlierrivalrywithout dubiousparallelsleaping to mind at every stage. This ambitious serieswill help to ensure that the earlier 'Game' is viewed within the general international history of Eurasia. These volumes of documents and other writingsfrom the period I 798-1842 are to initiate a seriesof such collections about Russo-Britishrivalryin Asia down to the settlementof 1907. The Britishcontributionpredominatesin this opening group. Of the documents constituting volume one (Documents), fourteen are from Britishsources,three are Russian and one is French.Of the other seven volumes, five contain British works (H. Pottinger, Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde;J. Macdonald Kinneir, A Geographical Memoirof thePersianEmpire,A Dissertation ontheInvasion ofIndia;R. Wilson, A Sketch oftheMilitaryandPolitical Powerof Russiain therearI8I7; G. de Lacy Evans, OnthePracticability of an Invasion ofBritishIndia; J. MacNeill, 7heProgress andPresent Position ofRussiain theEast)and two Russian (N. N. Muraviev,journeytoKhiva through theTurkoman Country, i819-20, Baron von Meyendorf, A J7ourneyfrom Orenburg toBokhara in therearI820; General Perovskii,A Narrative oftheRussian MilitaryExpedition to Khiva,under General Perofski in I839). This is appropriate.While the need for Russian expansion towards its natural or political frontiers in Asia was so takenforgrantedas to be only a matterof timingand circumstance,the extent to which the British should seek control of the Asian mainland was a matter forpublishedexplanation and debate, in which a potential threatfrom Russia alwaysloomed large once rivalrywith Francehad temporarilyfaded with the defeat of Napoleon. In keeping with the editor's expressed admiration for Collingwood, the present volumes indicate, above all, the thinking of prominent participantsin these earlierstages of the Great Game. They have also considerablevalue as accounts of the explorationswhich both gave riseto the Great Game and were an essentialfeatureof it throughoutthe nineteenth century and beyond. Each government disturbed the other by the presence and activitiesof its agents in the territoriesbetween theirAsian empires. Both governments,therefore,wantedmore thantravellers'talesaboutthesefrontier regions, and their agents obliged them with what were claimed to be the first detailed descriptionsof the terrainand itspeoples since the time of Alexander the Great. Accounts of the region from the Russian side are here provided by Nikolai Muraviev (I8I9-20), Baron von Meyendorf (I820) and General V. A. Perovskii(I839). Muraviev had been assigned by the Military Governor of Georgia to negotiate an alliance with the Khan of Khiva and to provide an account of the country and its inhabitants. He obliged with a detailed descriptionof the people, their clothing, customs, behaviour and ceremonies. The population included 30,000 Persian and 3,ooo Russian slaves, whose barbaric treatment ensured, in Muraviev's opinion, that they would do all they could to help Russian troops;a mere 3,000 of the latterwould, therefore, be sufficient to conquer Khiva. By its conquest, 'the whole trade of Asia, I62 SEER, 84, I, 2006 including India, could be directedthrough the Khanate to Astraccan,and the countryitselfwould benefit in everyway by the change of masters'(5, p. I48). Meyendorf, who travelled from Orenburg to Bokhara in I820, saw it as Russia's duty 'to impart to the Khanates of Central Asia a healthy moral impulse and to spreadin these countriesthe benefitsof European civilization' (5, p. 66). Gruesome details of current practices there were provided to reinforcethe case for intervention. In I839, Perovskiiled an expedition to control the steppe, free the prisoners and put a stop to attacks by Kirghiz tribesmen on trading caravans. The expedition was aborted when soldiers and camels alike sufferedheavy losses through disease and exhaustion in severewinter conditions, though the Khan was sufficiently intimidated to make commercial concessions and to free Russian slaves. In countering British claims of a Russian threat to India implicit in this advance, Perovskiioffered the interestinghistorical reflection that the British were the latest in a long line of maritime and commercial states,such as the Phoenicians, Carthaginians,Venetians, Genoese, Spaniards and Dutch, which were 'always troubled and dissatisfiedif fate allows any other nation to have influence over the progress of mankind' (8, pp. 70-7 '). Presumablyhe meant that continental imperialismdeservedparityof...