Table of Contents

Foreword; Prologue; 1. THE YELLOW PERIL; 2. Napoleonic Nightmare; 3. Rehearsal for the Great Game; 4. The Russian Bogy; 5. All Roads Lead to India; 6. The First of the Russian Players; 7. A Strange Tale of Two Dogs; 8. Death on the Oxus; 9. The Barometer Falls; 10. 'THE GREAT GAME'; 11. Enter 'Bokhara' Burnes; 12. The Greatest Fortress in the World; 13. The Mysterious Vitkevich; 14. Hero of Herat; 15. The Kingmakers; 16. The Race for Khiva; 17. The Freeing of the Slaves; 18. Night of the Long Knives; 19. Catastrophe; 20. Massacre in the Passes; 21. The Last Hours of Connolly and Stoddart; 22. Half-time; 23. THE GREAT RUSSIAN ADVANCE BEGINS; 24. Lion of Tashkent; 25. Spies Along the Silk Road; 26. The Feel of Cold Steel Across His Throat; 27. 'A Physician from the North'; 28. Captain Burnaby's Ride to Khiva; 29. Bloodbath at the Bala Hissar; 30. The Last Stand of the Turcomans; 31. To the Brink of War; 32. The Railway Race to the East; 33. Where Three Empires Meet; 34. Flashpoint in the High Pamirs; 35. The Race for Chitral; 36. The Beginning of the End; 37. End-game; Bibliography; Index

Reviews

Half-mad Russian czar Paul I dispatched an invasion force to India in 1801. It was hastily recalled upon his assassination. But 70 years later a succession of ambitious czars had crushed the Muslim peoples of Central Asia, and confident St. Petersburg again cast a covetous eye southward on India. Fearing a Russian invasion, the British rulers of India sent English spies disguised as holy men to find out what the Russians were up to. In 1880, after bloody fighting, the British eradicated Russian influence in Afghanistan and established a buffer state. The Great Game, as the Anglo-Russian struggle in Central Asia was called, unfolds in Hopkirk's ( Setting the East Ablaze ) intricate narrative as an incredible tale of high adventure and political intrigue, conveyed here through the exploits of Cossacks, Muslim guerrillas, courageous travelers, spies, mapmakers and soldiers. The Great Game ended in 1907 with an Anglo-Russian pact, but as Hopkirk notes in a foreword, a new imperialist rivalry is underway in Central Asia, pitting the U.S. against Russia, Turkey, China and Iran. Photos. (Sept.)