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The Great Game, 1856–1907

Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia

Evgeny Sergeev

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The Great Game sheds new light on Asia’s political influence on Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL

The Great Game, 1856–1907 presents a new view of the British-Russian competition for dominance in Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Evgeny Sergeev offers a complex and novel point of view by synthesizing official collections of documents, parliamentary papers, political pamphlets, memoirs, contemporary journalism, and guidebooks from unpublished and less studied primary sources in Russian, British...

The Great Game sheds new light on Asia’s political influence on Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL

The Great Game, 1856–1907 presents a new view of the British-Russian competition for dominance in Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Evgeny Sergeev offers a complex and novel point of view by synthesizing official collections of documents, parliamentary papers, political pamphlets, memoirs, contemporary journalism, and guidebooks from unpublished and less studied primary sources in Russian, British, Indian, Georgian, Uzbek, and Turkmen archives. His efforts amplify our knowledge of Russia by considering the important influences of local Asian powers.

Ultimately, this book disputes the characterization of the Great Game as a proto–Cold War between East and West. By relating it to other regional actors, Sergeev creates a more accurate view of the game’s impact on later wars and on the shape of post–World War I Asia.

Reviews

Reviews

[Sergeev] is able to move beyond the Game to its players, to the architects of strategy. The reader is at the table with senior policy-makers, listening to them balance possibilities and practicalities within the structures of shifting relations between Russia and Britain.

An important contribution to the field and offers valuable insights into its complexities. Subsequent examinations of this topic will have to contend with Sergeev's recontextualization of the Great Game.

The Great Game is an important contribution to the field and offers valuable insights into its complexities. Subsequent examinations of this topic will have to contend with Sergeev's recontextualization of the Great Game.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
552
ISBN
9781421415574
Illustration Description
5 b&w illus., 2 maps
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Selected Chronology
Introduction: Reconsidering Anglo-Russian Relations in Asia
1. The Prologue of the Great Game
2. Russia's Challenge and Britain's Response, 1856–1864
3. The Road to the

Acknowledgments
Selected Chronology
Introduction: Reconsidering Anglo-Russian Relations in Asia
1. The Prologue of the Great Game
2. Russia's Challenge and Britain's Response, 1856–1864
3. The Road to the Oxus, 1864–1873
4. The Climax of the Great Game, 1874–1885
5. Strategic Stalemate, 1886–1903
6. The End of the Game
Epilogue: Reverberations of the Great Game
Appendix: A Nominal Roll of the Rulers, Statesmen, Diplomats, and Military Officers Engaged in the Great Game, 1856–1907
Notes
Selected Archival Sources and Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
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Evgeny Sergeev

Evgeny Sergeev is a professor of history and head of the Twentieth Century: Socio-Political and Economic Problems Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of World History. He is author of Russian Military Intelligence in the War with Japan, 1904–05: Secret Operations on Land and at Sea. He was a short-term scholar at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in 2006.