Editing Great Game (section)

== Historiographical dating ==
[[File:Letts's bird's eye view of the approaches to India LOC 2006636637.jpg|thumb|1920s bird's eye map depicting the approaches to British India through Afghanistan including then Soviet territory]]
Historians do not agree on dating the beginning or end of the Great Game. Konstantin Penzev believes that the Great Game commenced with Russia's victory in the [[Russo-Persian War (1804–13)]] and the signing of the [[Treaty of Gulistan]] of 1813 or the [[Treaty of Turkmenchay]] of 1828.<ref name=penzev2010/> Edward Ingram believes that it began between 1832 and 1834 as an attempt to negotiate trade deals with Ranjit Singh and the Amirs of Sind.<ref name=ingram1980/><ref name=ingram1984/> [[Peter Hopkirk|Hopkirk]] views "unofficial" British support for [[Circassians|Circassian]] anti-Russian fighters in the [[Caucasus]] ({{circa}} 1836 – involving [[David Urquhart]] and (for example) [[Mission of the Vixen|the ''Vixen'' affair]] – in the context of the Great Game.<ref name=":19">
{{cite book
 | last1 = Hopkirk
 | first1 = Peter
 | author-link1 = Peter Hopkirk
 | year = 1990
 | title = The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=IUykBj4qLUgC
 | location = London
 | publisher = Hachette UKJohn Murray
 | publication-date = 2006
 | isbn = 9781848544772
 | access-date = 14 June 2019
| quote = The Caucasus, thanks to Urquhart and his friends, had thus become part of the Great Game battlefield.
}}
</ref> Sergeev believes that the Great Game started in the aftermath of the [[Caucasian War|Caucasus War]] (1828–59) and intensified with the [[Crimean War]] (1853–56).<ref name=sergeev2013/>{{rp|94}}{{qn|date=June 2019}} [[Edward Ingram (historian)|Edward Ingram]] proposes that The Great Game was over at the end of the First Anglo-Afghanistan war in 1842 with the British withdrawal from Afghanistan.<ref name=ingram1980/><ref name=ingram1984/>

British fears ended in 1907 and the Great Game came to a close in 1907 when Britain and Russia became military allies (with France). They made [[Anglo-Russian Entente|three Anglo-Russian agreements]] which delineated spheres of interest between British India and Russian Central Asia in the borderland areas of Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.<ref name=penzev2010/><ref name=sergeev2013/>{{rp|276–298}}<ref name=seigel2002/> However historian Elena Andreeva sets the endpoint with the [[Bolshevik Revolution]] in 1917 and the temporary end of Russia's interest in Persia.<ref name=Andreeva2007/> Konstantin Penzev has stated, echoing Kipling's fictional summary ("When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before."),<ref name="kipling" /> that unofficially the Great Game in Central Asia will never end.<ref>{{cite journal
 |last1        = Penzev
 |first1       = Konstantin
 |title        = When Will the Great Game End?
 |url          = http://orientalreview.org/2010/11/15/when-will-the-great-game-end/
 |journal      = Oriental Review
 |date         = 15 November 2010
 |access-date  = 14 June 2019
 |quote        = Unofficially, the Great Game is still going on; and as Rudyard Kipling said, it will end when everyone is dead, i.e. it will never end. Of that we can be sure.
 |archive-date = 13 February 2017
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20170213202528/http://orientalreview.org/2010/11/15/when-will-the-great-game-end/
 |url-status   = live
}}</ref>

=== Soviet Great Game ===
According to German historian David X. Noack, the Great Game resumed from 1919 to 1933 as a conflict between Britain and the Soviet Union, with the [[Weimar Republic]] and Japan as additional players. Noack calls it a "Second Tournament of Shadows" over the territory composing the border of British India, China, the Soviet Union and Japanese Manchuria. To Britain, the Germans initially appeared to be a secret Soviet ally. In 1933–1934 it "ended with Mongolia, Soviet Central Asia, [[Tuvan People's Republic|Tannu-Tuva]] and Xinjiang isolated from non-Soviet influence."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Noack|first=David|date=14 December 2020|title=The Second Tournament of Shadows and British Invasion Scares in Central Asia, 1919–1933|url=https://oxussociety.org/the-second-tournament-of-shadows-and-british-invasion-scares-in-central-asia-1919-1933/|access-date=2021-09-14|website=The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs|language=en-US|archive-date=14 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210914022752/https://oxussociety.org/the-second-tournament-of-shadows-and-british-invasion-scares-in-central-asia-1919-1933/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZzr04qb7z4 ''The Second Tournament of Shadows: Perceptions of great power politics in Turkestan, 1919–1933'', youtube.com 18.11.2022.]</ref> Authors Andrei Znamenski and Alexandre Andreyev also describe the continuation of elements of the Great Game by the Soviet Union until the 1930s, focused on secret diplomacy and espionage in Tibet and Mongolia.<ref name=":11" /><ref name=":42" />