Download or read book The Great Game written by Peter Hopkirk and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2006-03-27 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.
Download or read book The Great Game in Afghanistan written by Kallol Bhattacherjee and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a complex multinational diplomacy had proposed setting up a coalition government in Kabul as a solution to the 'Afghan problem'. Even as all sides worked on the coalition, the US took steps that India considered a 'stab in the back'. With the help of the official papers collected by US ambassador John Gunther Dean and conversations with Ronen Sen, Rajiv Gandhi's diplomatic aide during those crucial years, the author recreates the falling apart of the India-US cooperation and the catastrophic effect it had on South Asian history.
Download or read book The Great Game written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Games without Rules written by Tamim Ansary and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Destiny Disrupted: an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation
Download or read book Tournament of Shadows written by Karl E. Meyer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the romantic conflicts of the Victorian Great Game to the war-torn history of the region in recent decades, Tournament of Shadows traces the struggle for control of Central Asia and Tibet from the 1830s to the present. The original Great Game, the clandestine struggle between Russia and Britain for mastery of Central Asia, has long been regarded as one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history. Many believed that control of the vast Eurasian heartland was the key to world dominion. The original Great Game ended with the Russian Revolution, but the geopolitical struggles in Central Asia continue to the present day. In this updated edition, the authors reflect on Central Asia's history since the end of the Russo-Afghan war, and particularly in the wake of 9/11.
Download or read book A Military History of Afghanistan written by Ali Ahmad Jalali and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Afghanistan is largely military history. From the Persians and Greeks of antiquity to the British, Soviet, and American powers in modern times, outsiders have led military conquests into the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, leaving their indelible marks on this ancient land at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In this book Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister of Afghanistan, taps a deep understanding of his country's distant and recent past to explore Afghanistan's military history during the last two hundred years. With an introductory chapter highlighting the major military developments from early times to the foundation of the modern Afghan state, Jalali's account focuses primarily on the era of British conquest and Anglo-Afghan wars; the Soviet invasion; the civil war and the rise of the Taliban; and the subsequent U.S. invasion. Looking beyond persistent stereotypes and generalizations—e.g., the "graveyard of empires" designation emerging from the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century and the Soviet experience of the 1980s—Jalali offers a nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of the way of war pursued by both state and non-state actors in Afghanistan against different domestic and foreign enemies, under changing social, political, and technological conditions. He reveals how the structure of states, tribes, and social communities in Afghanistan, along with the scope of their controlled space, has shaped their modes of fighting throughout history. In particular, his account shows how dynastic wars and foreign conquests differ in principle, strategy, and method from wars initiated by non-state actors including tribal and community militias against foreign invasions or repressive government. Written by a professional soldier, politician, and noted scholar with a keen analytical grasp of his country's military and political history, this magisterial work offers unique insight into the military history of Afghanistan—and thus, into Afghanistan itself.
Download or read book Return of a King written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.
Download or read book The Small Players of the Great Game written by Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the 19th century Anglo-Russian Great Game played out on the territorial chessboard of eastern and north-eastern parts of the waning Persian empire. The Great Game itself has been written about extensively, but never from a Persian angle and from the point of view of the local players in that game. Looking at the territorial consequences of the Great Game for the local players is a unique approach, which deserves a special place in the studies of history, geography, politics and geopolitics of the age of modernity.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Richard F. Nyrop and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Imagining Afghanistan written by Nivi Manchanda and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative exploration of how colonial interventions in Afghanistan have been made possible through representations of the country as 'backward'.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Ali Ahmad Jalali and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan: A Military History from the Ancient Empires to the Great Game covers the military history of a region encompassing Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, and West Asia, over some 2,500 years. This is the first comprehensive study in any language published on the millennia-long competition for domination and influence in one of the key regions of the Eurasian continent. Jalali’s work covers some of the most important events and figures in world military history, including the armies commanded by Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, the Muslim conquerors, Chinggis Khan, Tamerlane, and Babur. Afghanistan was the site of their campaigns and the numerous military conquests that facilitated exchange of military culture and technology that influenced military developments far beyond the region. An enduring theme throughout Afghanistan is the strong influence of the geography and the often extreme nature of the local terrain. Invaders mostly failed because the locals outmaneuvered them in an unforgiving environment. Important segments include Alexander the Great, remembered to this day as a great victor, though not a grand builder; the rise of Islam in the early seventh century in the Arabian Peninsula and the monumental and enduring shift in the social and political map of the world brought by its conquering armies; the medieval Islamic era, when the constant rise and fall of ruling dynasties and the prevalence of an unstable security environment reinforced localism in political, social, and military life; the centuries-long impact of the destruction caused by Chinggis Khan’s thirteenth century; early eighteenth century, when the Afghans achieved a remarkable military victory with extremely limited means leading to the downfall of the Persian Safavid dynasty; and the Battle of Panipat (1761), where Afghan Emperor Ahmad Shah Abdali decisively routed the Hindu confederacy under Maratha leadership, widely considered as one of the decisive battles of the world. It was in this period when the Afghans founded their modern state and a vast empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani, which shaped the environment for the arrival of the European powers and the Great Game.
Download or read book Afghanistan and the Defence of Empire written by Christopher M. Wyatt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the 'Great Game' in Central Asia, in the run up to World War I and the aftermath of the second Afghan War, the region of Afghanistan became particularly significant for both Great Britain and Russia. Afghanistan and the Defence of Empire explores the relationship between British and Afghan rulers, during the crucial period of the reign of Amir Habibullah Khan, as the British sought to safeguard their Indian Empire from the threat of Imperial Russia. With Russia's defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 and the rise of Germany as a superpower, the need to end the rivalry took on the utmost importance: efforts which culminated in the singing of the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907. As the history of Afghanistan becomes ever more crucial for the understanding of its present military and political situation, this book will be of vital interest for students of History, Central Asian Studies, Military History and International Relations.
Download or read book The Great Game written by G. S. Goraya and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Game refers to the hundred year geostrategic contest between Britain and Russia for control of Eurasia in the 19th century. The arena for the Great Game was all the lands, kingdoms and nations between the two Empires. At the beginning of the Great Game the territories of British India and Tsarist Russia were separated by a distance of almost 1,500 miles. At the end, all that remained between the two was Afghanistan - which at its narrowest, was a sliver of a 15 mile corridor, agreed upon mutually by the two behemoths to keep them apart. Afghanistan emerged as a modern nation, with its current territorial form, during the era of the Great Game. As a frontier state, Afghanistan was the stage on which the most powerful actors in this greatest geopolitical drama in the history of the world played their roles and left lasting legacies which resonate even in our age. The nationalist historiography of Afghanistan traces the origins of modern Afghanistan to 1747, the year in which Ahmad Shah Abdali established the Durrani Empire with its capital at Kabul. The British Colonial State was emerged as a power in South Asia not much later, when the East India Company acquired territorial rights in Bengal, after the Battle of Plassey, in 1757. The first official, diplomatic contact between the two was established in 1809. In the interceding half century or so, the Durrani Empire had expanded up to the borders of Delhi and subsequently shrunk to a much smaller core around the twin capitals of Kabul and Peshawar, after which the British Colonial State itself expanded to incorporate not just Delhi, but also territories beyond. By the middle of the 19th century, the British Colonial State had expanded its borders further north, across the Punjab, defeating and annexing the Sikh Empire. From 1849 onwards, Afghanistan and the British in India were geopolitical neighbours and rivals. The book traces the interactions between Afghanistan and the emerging British power in India, from the first contacts to the construction of the final territorial form of the region which come to be known as British India's northwest frontier.*Excerpt: In 1808, the Governor General of the East India Company despatched three embassies from India to secure a system of alliances with one single purpose: to prevent the march of an overseas army from Europe through the southern quadrant of Middle Asia into India.At the turn of the 19th century, the spectre of Europe cast a shadow of unease over Asia. After the collapse of the French Revolution, Europe had been gripped by war as French armies led Napoleon Bonaparte marched across European frontiers. While the wars in Europe are beyond the scope of this essay, their effect on Asian diplomacy and strategic thought about the defence of India is important. In 1798, France had invaded Egypt. Was there a possibility of an invasion of India? Napoleon Bonaparte had, after all, openly proclaimed his intention of forging a pan-Asian Empire. ("I was full of dreams... I saw myself founding a new religion, marching into Asia riding on an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hands the new Koran I would have written to suit my needs." - Napoleon.) Ultimately, the French fleet in the Mediterranean was destroyed by a British naval fleet even as the threats of continental war in Europe continued to rage. If there ever was to be a French invasion of India from Egypt, the plausible route would have been through the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Or, overland, through Persia, possibly across Afghanistan, and further through Punjab or Sind. The three embassies were tasked with building an alliance system to prevent this, and secure India's frontiers for the British Colonial State of the East India Company.(Excerpt from Chapter 2)*ABOUT THE AUTHORG.S. Goraya is Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Geopolitics at the Department of Political Science, Panjab University, India.
Download or read book The Great Gamble written by Gregory Feifer and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. A riveting account as seen through the eyes of the men who fought in the war, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.
Download or read book The End of the Great Game written by Hasan M. Sadiq and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Great Games Local Rules written by Alexander Cooley and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over one of the volatile areas in the world: the long border region stretching from Iran through Pakistan to Kashmir. In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, one of America's most respected Central Asia experts, explores the dynamics of the new competition over the region since 9/11. All three great powers are pursuing important goals: basing rights for the US, access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians. But Central Asian governments have proven themselves powerful forces in their own right, establishing local rules that serve to fend off foreign involvement, enrich themselves and reinforce their sovereign authority. Cooley's careful and surprising explanation of how small states interact with great powers in this vital region greatly advances our understanding of how world politics actually works in this contemporary era.
Download or read book The New Great Game written by Lutz Kleveman and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of The Prize, a contemporary look at the history, passion, and politics of oil and gas resources, and the struggle to control them. Using the concept of the “Great Game” that Rudyard Kipling immortalized in his novel Kim, Kleveman argues that there is now a new Great Game in the region, a modern variant of the nineteenth-century clash of imperial ambitions of Great Britain and Tsarist Russia. Traveling thousands of miles, from Turkmenistan (where statues of the country’s leader are made of gold and line the thoroughfares) to the Afghan Hindu Kush, Kleveman met with the principal Great Game actors between Kabul and Moscow: oil barons, generals, diplomats, and warlords. Based on extensive research and travel in the Caucasus, the Caspian, and Central Asia, The New Great Game is a thrilling travel narrative through one of the world’s last unexplored frontiers, and a savvy and incisive analysis of the power struggle for the world’s remaining energy resources. “[Kleveman] can take credit for a book that is essential for those seeking as many views as possible on this complicated moment in history.” —The Seattle Times
