page_title: The Great Game
hierarchical_section_title: The Great Game
caption_attribution_description: "Map to Illustrate the Travels of General Ferrier in Persia and Afghanistan" from Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia, Afghanistan, Turkistan, and Beloochistan; with Historical Notices of the Countries Lying Between Russia and India by Joseph Pierre Ferrier. Second Edition 1857.
context_page_description: "The Great Game" was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century between the United Kingdom and Russia over Afghanistan and neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia. Britain was fearful of Russia invading India to add to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. As a result, there was a deep atmosphere of distrust and the talk of war between the two empires. Britain made it a high priority to protect all the approaches to India, and the "great game" is primarily how the British did this. Historians with access to the archives have concluded that Russia had no plans involving India, as the Russians repeatedly stated.
  The Great Game began on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both empires.
context_section_description: "The Great Game" was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century between the United Kingdom and Russia over Afghanistan and neighbouring territories in Central and South Asia.  Britain was fearful of Russia invading India to add to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia.  As a result, there was a deep atmosphere of distrust and the talk of war between the two empires. Britain made it a high priority to protect all the approaches to India, and the "great game" is primarily how the British did this.  Historians with access to the archives have concluded that Russia had no plans involving India, as the Russians repeatedly stated.
  The Great Game began on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both empires. This would protect India and also key British sea trade routes by stopping Russia from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. Russia proposed Afghanistan as the neutral zone. The results included the failed First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838, the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845, the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848, the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878, and the annexation of Kokand by Russia.
  Historians consider the end of the Great Game to be the 10 September 1895 signing of the Pamir Boundary Commission protocols, when the border between Afghanistan and the Russian empire was defined. The 1901 novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling made the term popular and introduced the new implication of great power rivalry. It became even more popular after the 1979 advent of the Soviet–Afghan War.
caption: Map of northern Persia and northern Afghanistan in 1857 showing Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand that form modern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
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