Editing Great Game (section)

==Historiographical interpretations of the Great Game==

===Allegation that "Britain had lost the Great Game by 1842"===
[[Edward Ingram (historian)|Edward Ingram]]<ref>{{cite book|title=In Defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775–1842|last=Ingram|first=Edward|page=7|publisher=Routledge.|year=1984|isbn=978-0714632469|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fr9cAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA7|access-date=23 October 2020|archive-date=24 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230124202713/https://books.google.com/books?id=Fr9cAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA7|url-status=live}}</ref> proposes that Britain lost the Great Game. "The Great Game was an aspect of British history rather than international relations: the phrase describes what the British were doing, not the actions of Russians and Chinese." The Great Game was an attempt made in the 1830s by the British to impose their view on the world. If Khiva and Bukhara were to become buffer states, then trade routes to Afghanistan, as a protectorate, along the Indus and Sutlej rivers would be necessary and therefore access through the Sind and Punjab regions would be required. The Great Game began between 1832 and 1834 as an attempt to negotiate trade deals with Ranjit Singh and the Amirs of Sind, and the "first interruption of this magnificent British daydream was caused by the determination of the Amirs of Sind to be left alone." Its failure occurred at the end of the First Anglo-Afghanistan war in 1842 with the British withdrawal from Afghanistan. The failure to turn Afghanistan into a client state meant that The Great Game could not be won.<ref name=ingram1980/><ref name=ingram1984/>

Nonetheless, Britain would win a decisive victory in the Second Anglo-Afghan War which occurred between 1878 and 1880.<ref>{{Cite web |date=5 November 1878 |title=Ali Masjid and the British Camp, 1878 |url=https://www.wdl.org/en/item/11471/ |website=www.wdl.org |access-date=29 February 2020 |archive-date=29 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200229015908/https://www.wdl.org/en/item/11471/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Second Anglo-Afghan War &#124; 1878–1880 |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Second-Anglo-Afghan-War |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=29 February 2020 |archive-date=19 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220719061811/https://www.britannica.com/event/Second-Anglo-Afghan-War |url-status=live }}</ref> The victory also strengthened Britain's influence in Afghanistan, which had become a British protectorate.<ref>{{cite book |last=Barfield |first=Thomas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fqRFCkpTdUcC&pg=PA145 |title=Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-691-14568-6 |pages=145–146 |access-date=28 February 2020 |archive-date=24 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230124202714/https://books.google.com/books?id=fqRFCkpTdUcC&pg=PA145 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1889, [[George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston|Lord Curzon]], who later became Viceroy of India (1899-1905), wrote a book on the strategic balance between the Russian and British Empires, as well as his travels on the [[Trans-Caspian railway]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Russia in Central Asia in 1889, and the Anglo-Russian question. |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/03019109/ |access-date=2022-06-06 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=16 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211216105141/https://www.loc.gov/item/03019109/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In that book, ''Russia in Central Asia in 1889 & the Anglo-Russian Question'', he commented:

<blockquote>Our relations with Afghanistan in the forty years between 1838 and 1878 were successively those of blundering interference and of unmasterly inactivity.<ref name=curzon1889/></blockquote>However, he also portrayed the great game as a then-ongoing and future event in 1889, stating:<blockquote>...the Transcaspian conquests of the Czar have brought about, and the seal upon which has been set by the completion of the new railway. The power of menace, which the ability to take Herat involves, has passed from English to Russian hands; the Russian seizure of Herat is now a matter not so much of war as of time; and that the Russians will thus, without an effort, win the first hand in the great game that is destined to be played for the empire of the East.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Curzon |first=George Nathaniel Curzon |url=http://archive.org/details/russiaincentral00curzgoog |title=Russia in central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian question |date=1967 |publisher=New York, Barnes & Noble |pages=296–297}}</ref></blockquote>Russia remained a focus for Curzon through and after his time as Viceroy of India.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Heather A. |date=3 July 2021 |title=Great Game Thinking: The British Foreign Office and Revolutionary Russia |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/09546545.2021.1978638 |journal=Revolutionary Russia |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=239–258 |doi=10.1080/09546545.2021.1978638 |s2cid=242884810 |issn=0954-6545 |access-date=6 June 2022 |archive-date=24 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230124202715/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546545.2021.1978638?cookieSet=1 |url-status=live }}</ref>

==="The British colluded with the Russians over Central Asia"===
In the 1850s, [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]] accused [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]] and [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|PM]] [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]] of colluding with Russia during the Crimean War. At the time, Marx alleged that Palmerston weakened Britain's defense of the Ottoman Empire.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/russia/crimean-war.htm |title=The Russian Menace to Europe |last2=Engels |first2=Frederick |date=1953 |publisher=George Allen and Unwin |editor=Paul W. Blackstock |editor-link=Paul W. Blackstock |location=London |pages=121–202 |quote=Originally published in ''[[New-York Tribune|New York Tribune]]'', 7 April 1853 |author1-link=Karl Marx |author2-link=Frederick Engels |access-date=2021-06-16 |editor-last2=Hoselitz |editor-first2=Bert |via=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Wheen |first=Francis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RY85Wf7jeEMC&pg=PA211 |title=Karl Marx: A Life |date=2000 |publisher=W. W. Norton |isbn=978-0-393-04923-7 |pages=211 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Kissin |first=S. F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-gzMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT29 |title=War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars, 1848–1918 |date=2020-01-23 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-00980-4 |quote=Marx and Engels were certainly not defeatist for Britain; they wanted her to wage offensive war against Russia and to conduct it with the utmost determination. A crushing Russian defeat seemed to them to be both in the power-political interests of Britain and in the revolutionary interests of 'European democracy'. They believed the British people wanted all-out war but that their rulers were guilty of treachery. [...] However they felt no sympathy for Britain in her colonial and semi-colonial ventures in Asia. In Marx's eyes, the Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-1842 was 'infamous' (although the containment of Russian expansion was one of Britain's motives) [...] In Britain's wars against Persia and China, between 1856 and 1860, Marx and Engels backed the Asian side against what Marxists would now call 'British imperialism'. But they never feigned affection for the regimes or the ruling strata [...] nor did they play down the atrocities committed by the Chinese or by the sepoys [...]}}</ref> Although this view was not otherwise widespread, the same accusation was levied by [[David Urquhart]] (1805-1877).<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch06.htm |access-date=2022-05-21 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref name=":02" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Karl Marx: A Life—ch07 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/marx/wheen/ch07.htm |access-date=2022-05-21 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>[[File:Политическая карта Азии начало XX века.jpg|thumb|300px|1912 map of [[Central Asia|Central]] and South Asia]]
[[File:Indienueberblick 3 91.jpg|thumb|The [[Indo-European telegraph line|Indo-European Telegraph Line]], which allowed London to communicate with its colony in India from 1870 onward, was built through the territory of the Russian Empire, during the 'Great Game' between Russia and Britain.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Halfway around the world in 28 minutes |url=https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/history/stories/indo-european-telegraph-line.html |access-date=2023-03-07 |website=siemens.com Global Website |language=en}}</ref> Nevertheless, an all-British-owned line [[Cable & Wireless plc|Eastern Telegraph Company]] also completed its first India connection in 1870, the same year.]]
Mail communications between London and Calcutta could take as long as three months either way.{{sfn|Ewans|2002|p=62}} Long-distance telegraph lines were built across Russia in the 1850s. In 1870, the Indo-European Telegraph Line was completed and it provided a communication link between London and Calcutta after passing through Russia.<ref name="siemens" /> For the first time, the India Office within the British Foreign Office could telegraph its orders and have them acted on in a timely manner. The Government in Westminster now had complete control over foreign policy in India and the Governor-General of India lost the discretion that he once enjoyed.<ref name="dodswell1935" />

In 1868, Russia moved against Bukhara and occupied Samarkand. Prince Gorchakov wrote in the ''Gorchakov Memorandum of 1874'' that the Russian Ambassador to Britain offered an explanation that satisfied [[George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon|Clarendon]], the British Foreign Secretary. Clarendon replied that the rapid advance of Russian troops neither alarmed nor surprised the British Government, however it did the British public and the Indian Government. Clarendon proposed a neutral zone between Britain and Russia in the region, a view that was shared by the Russian Government. This led to a confidential meeting in [[Wiesbaden]] between Clarendon and Count Brunow, the Russian Imperial Secretary.{{sfn|Ewans|2012|p=154}}

After the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1873 that was followed by Russia's occupation of Khiva, Gorchakov wrote in the ''Gorchakov Memorandum of 1874'' that "Although ... the Khanate of Khiva remained entirely in our sphere of action, we thought we would make an act of courtesy of not adopting any decisive measure against Khiva before having informed Britain of it."{{sfn|Ewans|2012|p=158}} In November 1874, [[Lord Augustus Loftus]], British ambassador to Russia called on Russia's V. Westmann, Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, and told him that "The advance of Russia in Central Asia of late years was a subject of watchful interest, although it was not one of either jealousy or fear to the Government of India."<ref name="loftus1874" /><ref name="kazemzadeh1968" />

In December 1874, long before Russia annexed Merv in 1884, [[Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook|Northbrook]], the Viceroy of India, wrote to [[Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury|Salisbury]], the Secretary of State for India, that he accepted an eventual Russian annexation of Merv.<ref>Quoted in Ira Klein, "English Free Traders and Indian Tariffs, 1874—96," ''Modern Asian Studies'' (1971). 5(3), 251–271, note 13.</ref> In the following year he wrote to [[Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet|Rawlinson]], a member of the Council of India, "Our engagement with Russia with respect to the frontier of Afghanistan precludes us from promoting the incorporation of the Turkomans of Merv in the territories subject to the Ameer of Kabul". Northbrook would not accept any extension of Persia towards Merv.<ref name="chakravarty1973" /><ref name="viceroy1875" /> It has been proposed that from Sher Ali's (Afghanistan's) point of view, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan by Britain in the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878, that there was evidence of the beginnings of a growing understanding between Britain and Russia to divide Central Asia between themselves.<ref name="chakravarty1973" /><ref name="bayly2016" />

Britain and Russia officially ended their dispute with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, and afterward cooperated to enforce its provisions on Qajar Iran, while covert rivalry continued.<ref name=":8" />