Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game & the Race for Empire in Central Asia

by Shareen Blair Brysac, Karl E. Meyer

The original Great Game (1800-1917), the clandestine struggle between Russia & Britain for mastery of Central Asia, has long been regarded as one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history. The prize, control of the vast Eurasian heartland, was believed by some to be key to world dominion. Teeming with improbable drama & exaggerated tensions, the conflict featured soldiers, mystics, archeologists & spies, among them some of history’s most colorful characters. While the original Great Game ended with the Russian Revolution, the geopolitical struggles in Central Asia continue to the present day. Beginning with the soldiers & propagandists of the Victorian era, Tournament of Shadows chronicles nearly two centuries of conflict in the Eurasian heartland, conflict that has spawned wars in Afghanistan, the invasion of Tibet & economic scrambles for control of Caspian oil. Karl E. Meyer, formerly of the NY Times, & his wife, Shareen Blair Brysac, formerly of CBS News, have created a vivid narrative that brings to life the engaging personalities in this colorful conflict: Russia’s greatest explorer, Nicholas Przhevalsky, who died trying to shoot his way to Lhasa; Nicholas Roerich, the Russian artist & mystic who searched for fabled Shambhala under the patronage of Henry Wallace, the American Secretary of Agriculture; Philadelphia socialite Brooke Dolan, like a figure out of Hemingway, who reached Lhasa as an OSS operative; SS Captain Ernst Schäfer, who led an expedition to Tibet in the late 30s in an attempt to confirm Nazi racial theories; Wm Rockhill, the first American to befriend & advise a Dalai Lama; Sarat Chandra Das, the Bengali explorer who went to Lhasa in the secret service of the Raj. Revealing a wealth of new material that has never before been published, Meyer & Brysac have written a sweeping history of a riveting tournament, a two-century joust with political & economic implications that remain topical today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Asia, Russia, Politics, Middle East, India

646 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac's Tournament of Shadows recounts the Anglo-Russian struggle for mastery of Central Asia (particularly Afghanistan and Tibet) in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Immortalized by Kipling as "the Great Game," fictionalized in novels as diverse as Flashman and The Far Pavilions, this imperial rivalry is well-trod ground. Which the authors, to their immense credit, make fresh and fascinating. British statesmen jealous over India entertain paranoid fears of Russian conquest, leading to a contest of espionage, exploration and warfare that go hand-in-hand. Some topics covered are well-known: Britain's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan are recounted in graphic detail, along with the Indian Mutiny and adventures of British and Indian "pundits" along the Northwest Frontier. Equally fascinating are fresher subjects: Russia's own "Great Game," trying to expand their central Asian empire against recalcitrant natives; Britain's attempts to open Tibet, culminating in Younghusband's bloody 1903 invasion; the exploits of explorers from William Moorcraft and Alexander Burns to American William Rockhill and Nazi official Eric Schaeffer. Meyer and Brysac depict not only these events and people but their outsized impact on the world, inspiring fiction (Kipling's Kim, Lost Horizons), mysticism (Madame Blavatsky's bizarre, but widespread Theosophy movement) and international politics (Hitler's obsession with Tibet, Cold War squabbling over Tibet). As the authors show, the clashes continued under new guises into the Cold War, from China's occupation of Tibet to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Published in 1999, the book can only foreshadow the decades-long war which has ensnared the United States and its allies, reviving old arguments and forcing Westerners to confront the same assumptions learned a century earlier. A masterful, sweeping work, as entertaining as it is educational.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The literature of The Great Game, maybe only twenty years back a fairly esoteric field, has now gone viral with what is being called 'Great Game Studies'. Like anything intriguing and underappreciated, it seems like it was better, back then, when only known in some circles.

The Great Game was the office slang used to refer to the several-hundred year contest for influence and regional control in Central Asia, as practiced mainly by the British Empire and Czarist Russia. And also as it affected the broader arenas of the middle east, south asia and the far east, and the myriad sects, movements and militant causes in between. It interests contemporary readers because it dwells on the current preoccupations with political motive, intelligence, strategy and covert operations --- in what are still the world's most volatile areas.

Basically the Czar and the Queen (Victoria, at the start) both acceded to what was called the "forward policy" by their ministers in the regions seen as no-man's-land that buffered India's northern edges and Russia's southern extremities. Which provided cover for what was essentially backstage expansionist manoeuvering, posing as a thorough defense against hostile neighbors. Something along the lines of what would be styled as "preemptive" today. Thus the Caucasus, the 'stans', the Khanates of the wide swath known then as Turkistan -- became the real-life chessboard for the fixers, intel-personnel, cartographers, agents-provocateur, their proxies, and their pawns -- of both empires.

If it sounds like today, it should; the tactical approaches are steeped in the murk of misdirection and deniability, the players are largely the same, several hundred years later; and the lands that now comprise Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet are at the heart of the story. For the reader, though, what manages to come across on the page are not just oblique allegiances, clever ruses, potentially disastrous disguises and pretexts ... but most of all the sheer romance of very dangerous situations in the most exotic locales in the world. Often in caravan armed with full chemical darkrooms, surveying instruments, and primitive telegraphic gear in later days.

Here at the start of 'Tournament Of Shadows' is an example of one William Moorcroft, born in Lancashire, that launches this account :

"Moorcroft was still separated from the rest of his caravan as he proceeded during drenching rains in June through a patchwork of once independent hill-states, each with its own Hindu Rajah.... His first call was at the court of Rajah Sansar Chand in the Rajput kingdom of Kangra. The Rajah, then in his summer palace at Alampur, was known for his lavish hospitality. Rajah Sansar Chand was close to Moorcroft's age and a friendship developed. They talked at length about schemes for economic improvement.. They examined the Rajah's choice collection of colored drawings and played chess, while Moorcroft took time to record local alphabets for Calcutta's Asiatic Society... Small wonder that Moorcroft, being treated as a friend of kings, began to behave as if he were an envoy plenipotentiary.

As he headed toward the Himalayas, far from the (East India) Company's scrutiny, Moorcroft by insensible degrees saw himself as a potential shaper as well as a chronicler of history... These folies de grandeur were surely encouraged by the matchless scenery unwinding before him. Arriving at Sultanpur, the capital of the Kulu region... Moorcroft recruited more than a hundred additional bearers for the trek through Kulanthapitha, the valley's traditional name, meaning 'the end of the habitable world". The terminus itself was Rohtang Pass, whose 13,300-foot height ... separated green hill country from Himalayan crags. Climbing zigzag past the gorges o f the River Of The Moon, the party reached a lofty saddle that opened out upon an enormous crescent of snow-peaked mountains. The caravan inched downward into the Lahul Valley, and the Buddhist Kingdom of Ladakh..."

The overall history of great-games-playing starts with the incorporation of the British East India Company in the seventeenth century and progresses well into the first World War. Keen observers will quickly reach the conclusion that the Cold War and Gulf Wars to follow were certainly the later incarnations of the same basic confrontation. Which is the triangular interaction between the western superpowers, the aboriginal cultures, and the perceived specter of an eventual Eastern superpower.

I've got a couple issues with this history. One is the lack of a proper Bibliography --- footnotes alone don't tell at a glance what the real central sources were, and major influential predecessors -- like the author Peter Hopkirk's groundbreaking histories, or even primary-source Peter Fleming's memoirs -- are glossed. A fair case could be made that Hopkirk pretty much originated the wide-scope great-games history in the late 20th century, and that 'Tournament' is a re-telling. Listing a trillion micro-sources buried in footnotes doesn't really properly credit the original movers. And to miss the oppurtunity to recommend the ur-texts on the subject ('Kim' 'Road To Oxiana' 'Mission To Tashkent' 'Seven Years In Tibet' et al) by providing a short, select bibliography --is a needless exclusion.

An unlikely issue, but of critical import in a great-games book is the subject of Maps. Not only large-scale area maps, but detail-maps, inserts, and campaign-maps become very important in a close reading of what is geographically foreign terrain to most readers. I kept wondering at the broadly uninformative set of maps in 'Tournament' and finally found what I think is the culprit. Other than the endpaper maps, all the maps in the book, says the verso of the title page, are "copyright Mapquest". And they are largely useless beyond illustrating isolated areas without context, or a single point in time.

Part of the allure of Greatgaming is in the atmosphere of the locations of the Silk Road and even the names themselves of the Old Orient.... The muslim-chinese outpost Khotan, remote Kashgar ("at night, the great gongs of the chinese guardhouses sounded the hours and at nine o'clock the gates of the city were closed"...), Simla the hilltop peyton-place of the pampered, summering british Raj, persian Herat, russian Tashkent, Samarkand, Bokhara, Khiva, Lhasa, the forbidden city of the Dalai Lama .... some now abandoned, buried under desert sands... Inadequate mapping definitely impoverishes the experience.

Overall, the early promise of 'Tournament' seems to dissipate; a slightly disinterested tone prevails throughout the book that only occasionally wakes up to it's own subject matter. Though rudimentary items are added (students of sig-int will warm to the information that Genghis Khan's mongol horsemen could transmit intelligence at the rate of 200 miles a day by covering stages on numerous fresh horses prewarned of the riders approach by a bugle blast).. and there's extra color added, as with the backstory of Professor Jowett, Master Of Balliol College at Oxford, mentor to three successive Viceroys Of India ("I should like to govern the world through my pupils.")... and, overall, the timeframe is expanded, all to good effect.
As history, this introductory pass on the events of the Great Game is probably a good one, though it sometimes trudges. As for a gripping & compelling read, well, everything else only gets better, and more convoluted. Which is a plus.

[Elaine Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm vacillating whether to go with 2 or 3 stars -- parts of this book were fantastic, great narrative, crazy crazy characters in a vast story. Maybe that's the problem: the story was a little TOO vast, so there was no single theme that seemed to hold it together, just a chronicle of one thing after another.

I will single out the maps as a particular irritation: the book has lots and lots of locations which are likely to be unfamiliar to the general reader, and the maps were just not good enough to keep track of where all the players were going; neither the inside cover map nor the smaller maps in the text had enough place names. There was much gnashing of teeth every time a place was mentioned, and I flipped to a map, and: nope, not there.

On the other hand, it was interesting to get a slightly different angle on the events in The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, and to go a little farther forward in time. The combination of the two books gave me a much better understanding of the backstory of Great Game era empire messing around with Afghanistan (et al), which these days is a damn good thing to know.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 2 out of 5]

573 pages to tell me that "the Great Game really was a game, with scores but no substantive prizes"? Get out of here!
But yes indeed, that is the conclusion of the book, a well researched study on the European (mostly British and Russian) explorations/colonization/imperial maneuvers in Central Asia. I have learned quite a bit about explorers to Afghanistan and Tibet during the XVIII-XX centuries, but the interesting part, the study of why this region is pivotal to modern geopolitical issues is missing. The British could not control it, neither could the Soviets and now cannot the Americans...
Somebody, please, summarize this book and continue where it finishes.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bottom Line First
Like others I came to Meyers and Brysac’s Tournament of Shadows in an effort to learn about what is still referred to as the Great Game. Tournament is mostly about British efforts to colonize the farther reaches of the Indian Sub-Continent. There are lessor amounts about the Russians, American, German and Chinese involvements in these same remote lands. The result includes a number of profiles of mostly British explorers, adventurer’s political and military men. The results is either imbalanced or incomplete or mostly the Great Game was one England was playing with the native populations and occasionally with or against other, non-Indian Frontier nations. I liked Tournament if Shadows. I am not certain that it is that helpful to those seeking to understand why and how the United States is, over 150 years later the inheritors of the Geo-political mess that is Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet and the peoples that The British Raj called the Northwest Territories.

Formally the British Raj (Rule) begins in 1858, but extends, like this book back to the period after the fall of Napoleon. By definition the Great Game was the political, diplomatic and military maneuvering between England and Russia over dominance in the areas between India and whatever borders the Russian Empire achieved in any given year across this period. In fact the Russian Empire was growing by a combination of military expeditions and executive Imperial Decree, but much of this land was uninhabited or loosely held by widely scatted tribal peoples.

Exactly what the Russian Court desired to wrest from under British influence in the Greater Indian Sub-Continent is not made clear. For much of this book, British fears from the Russians seem imaginary.

The two powers did reduce the distance between their common borders from many hundreds of miles to as little as 50 , in some places. Both powers attempted to place countries like Tibet and Mongolia into their respective spheres of influence, but this still indirect confrontation is not a palpable feature of Meyer and Brysac’s narrative until late in the book. By this time China would begin to reassert its historic control of these countries and the Communist Revolution would make the Great Game more complex.

Going only by Tournament of Shadows, the Great Game was mostly about how the Raj, explored, studied and occasionally fought for control over the many peoples in this part of Asia. This telling of the Great Game is mostly about the hazards taken by British Explorers and the use of local peoples to further English Imperial Designs at the expense of local populations, cultures, and cultural heritage.

As a discussion of grand strategy Tournament of Shadows Fails. It does not make clear the reasons for America’s continuing involvement in this region and perhaps this was never an intention. There is little discussion of what the local interests or the history of relationships between various local populations, or followers of the equally diverse religious followers.

What Tournament of Shadows does best is to provide a number of short biographies of the individuals who were seeking to map out the “white “, blank areas on the map. Expeditions well-funded and barely funded would slowly and at great risk moved toward what was thought of as the roof of the world. Highly trained intellects and possible frauds had as a common goal reaching the capitals of Mongolia and Tibet. Religious and scientific minds wanted to know.

For these people the Great Game was part of the psychology they had to address if they were to gain imperial, Russian or British support and then had to play against the religious and national politics of peoples who had little understanding, or need to know what interested these mostly European interlopers. Eventually locals would become aware that explorers, actin in the name of science were removing national treasure and that a good argument for these thefts was the inability or lack of national passion that would have motivated these same peoples to appreciate these artifacts and documents. Part of what Tournament of Shadows documents, if unintentionally is the assumption by otherwise romanticized or discounted people into the respected and proper managers of their national heritage.

[Huw Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

The borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan have always been a troubled zone. One hundred years ago three great powers at their zenith were competing for security of their empires. Referred to as the Great Game, information gathering was the key to trying to exert preferential influence in the area. By a mixture of bribery, corruption, infiltration and blackmail Russia, France and the UK tried to maintain the balance in their own favour. This is a fascinating, well researched read and one hundred years later we appear to have learned nothing. This bookj typifies the management cliche, "if you do what you have always done, you get what you have always got".

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good counterpart to Peter Hopkirk’s classic work that tells the story the Great Game and its major players up to the CIA’s covert support for Tibetan guerrillas against China. There’s more in here about exploration than I expected, and surprisingly less about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan than I had hoped. Those are minor quibbles, though. This is a fun and probably essential read for anyone interested in the topic.

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was my “before-bed” read for the greater part of a year. I enjoyed the long march through the history of empire in Central Asia, learning about the bitter struggle between the British and Russian empires spanning over two centuries. I certainly learned far more about the history of this region than I had ever learned in school, but would be curious to hear it told from the perspective of particularly the Indians and several other peoples who lived under the competing empires. This is a dense read, and more textbook in style than story, but quite interesting if you enjoy history.

[Robert Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I, like a lot of reviewers, found this book a bit frustrating at times. But having finished it, I think it's probably the best single source book on the Great Game I have ever read. The book is frustrating, because the Great Game is frustrating. The "Great Game", primarily between the British and Russian empires for the control of Central Asia, was, and remains to this day, wrapped in layers of imperial myth-making, puffery and propaganda. Simply put, the Great Game was bullshit. Though this book would never be that dismissive, it does a much better job than earlier and later accounts of seeing through the bullshit, and describing the "competition" as being as nonexistent as it always was.

The book compares very favorably to Peter Hopkirk's 1992 "Great Game" and Peter Frankopan's various recent "Silk Roads" books. Perhaps the virtue of Meyer and Brysac's book stems from the fact that it was published in 1999. It's been over a decade since I read Hopkirk's book, but I vaguely recall it to be deeply rooted in the Cold War, and the idea that the 19th century imperial conflict was a direct antecedents of the vastly more serious US-Soviet conflict. Frankopan's coverage, which I have read more recently, is essentially British imperial stenography, with a worldview that wouldn't seem strange to a Empire-mad teenage Winston Churchill in the 1890s. Frankopan's books are valuable, just deeply rooted in the current myth that NATO was doing something useful in Afghanistan, and that the competition for the 'stans is supremely valuable to "great power competition" between the US, China and Russia. It's certainly wearing off now, but in the first two decades of this century, the Great Game has been frequently unearthed in the futile search to justify US adventuring. I'm afraid Frankopan, wittingly or not, has fallen into that trap. "Tournament of Shadows" was written and published in the sunny 1990s, when imperial propaganda briefly receded, and people could see things more clearly.

The first thing that this book gets very right, more through emphasis than stating it outright, is that the "Great Game" was almost entirely a British show, on every level. I would say that Russia brought a knife to a gun fight, here, but that would be unfair to knives. What little there was of the Russian effort is covered extensively in this book. There just wasn't much of it. With armies rarely amounting to more than a few thousand beleaguered soldiers, after two centuries of trying, the Russians finally managed to take a few dusty Central Asian Khanates in the latter half of the 1800s. I've just visited the capitals of all three, in modern Uzbekistan. They're very pretty, but most of what impresses was extensively "restored" by the Soviets.

The British took modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Afghanistan (kinda) and no doubt a number of other countries I have forgotten. A key part of the British justification for conquering all of this fantastically lucrative territory, was the farcical idea that Russia was always on the cusp of marching over the horizon and snatching it all away. So the British simply had no choice but to take over a significant chunk of the world. This is a risible rationalization, was ridiculous to those in the know at the time, and it's a real failing of modern history writers like Frankopan that they are still pushing it.

This book's exhaustive account makes it clear that the "Great Game" propaganda was even more farcical than I thought. I had assumed that, finally, by the 20th century, with Russian industrialization, and a few rail lines snaking across their vast, unpopulated domains, maybe there was a bit of real competition. "Tournament of Shadows" makes it clear that it just wasn't so. It seems like half the book covers this last era of the Great Game, and the battle for Tibet. Even in the 20th century, the Russians were barely playing. The last Tsar Nicholas II had great aspirations for Tibet, and a Buddhist monk with a direct line to the Dalai Lama, the ruler of that isolated theocracy, sparking great fear in London! So the British simply invaded in 1903, with a well supplied force of 10,000 that quickly forced Tibet into a quasi-protectorate status which lasted two years longer than British India itself (1949). Nicholas II no doubt had some frustrating conversations with his monk-envoy. Monk to a gun fight.

I initially found this book frustrating because I wanted more geopolitics! But the fact is that there simply wasn't much geopolitics going on. What there was, was a series of fascinating imperial, archaeological, botanical, geographical expeditions carried out by vast divisions of the British military and civilian bureaucracies... and a handful of charismatic Russian cranks. The Russian who made it the furthest into Tibet, the mystic Nicholas Roerich, was largely funded by New Yorkers. Once you settle in and realize that there wasn't any real competition, the book becomes a pleasant series of biographies of the mostly British people who tried and often failed to understand the magical-seeming places they were conquering. This is what the Great Game always was, a mostly British show. There is plenty of drama in this book, but it's the fight against the unknown, the rightly hostile & doomed natives, and the unforgiving nature of some of the world's most inhospitable places. The fight against the Russians was entirely imaginary.

The thing I enjoyed most about the book, was the deep vein of lunacy animating these imperial fantasies. The initial elite response to the undermining of Christianity in the 19th century, by folks like Charles Darwin, wasn't atheism, it was plunge off the deep end into any kind of esoteric superstition that could act as a substitute for the old verities. A surprising amount of surprisingly powerful people, including one of FDR's Vice Presidents, wanted to play the Great Game for some very odd mystical, quasi-masonic reasons. The book's unearthing of all of this is delightful.

This book is long, but easily chunked into engaging, self contained chapters, usually centered on an expedition, or the life story of a significant figure. It's always charming, and very well written. Deep research shines on every page. I think it should be the last word on the Great Game, and I wish more Washington, DC pundits would read it.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up as the latest bit of my personal journey to the East, with some particular concern for obtaining more knowledge about Afghanistan which, with India, Pakistan, Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan, is one of the book's center's of attention. Like most public-schooled kids in the States, I obtained a good grounding in the history of the West, of North America and of Europe, but very little about the rest of the world except as they concerned the Western powers. The eastern movement of my studies has been towards Asia, Africa and Oceania and them in the period before the Second World War.

What I'm really interested in obtaining are English language histories written and published overseas for foreign audiences. I recently read a German history of Latin America--a real revelation, quite different than the usual English-language studies.

[Tim P · Rating 4 out of 5]

A narrative style history of "The Great Game"...this thing is about a million pages long, but brings historical figures to life in a way that makes you feel as if you are with them for every furrowed brow, every political chess move, every agonizing decision about the fate of peoples and foreign policy. Provides an excellent framework for understanding the current war in Afghanistan as well as the economic Wild West that is Central Asia.

Highly recommend, although my buddy Carlos swears "The Great Game" is better.

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is why many people hate reading history. It is an unnecessarily long recitation of facts without any coherent narrative. The only reason this book gets two stars instead of one is that it covers a subject that I think is under-served in most history texts. For at least being full of information I did not previously know, even if the vast majority of that information is meaningless, it gets +1.

[David Iverson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully detailed & researched account of the "great game" in the 19th & early 20th century...I purchased a couple of dozen books from the interesting notes at the end of the book.

[The Final Chapter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Low 3. The authors describe the 'Great Game' as the 'Victorian prologue to the Cold War'. British imperialism regarded Russian expansion into Central Asia as a real threat to the 'jewel in the crown': the Indian subcontinent. The first central character to emerge in this history was William Moorcroft who had arrived in India in 1808, abandoning his successful veterinary practice in London (he had been the first Englishman to qualify as a veterinarian and helped establish the first veterinary college). Ostensibly charged with improving the blood stock of the horses of the East India Company's cavalry, he would flout his narrowly defined duties to march his own private army into Central Asia, parleying with princes and kings, and leading the way for subsequent intrepid explorers at the margin of Empire. Taking advantage of a communications delay with his employers, Moorcroft's sense of adventure led him to lead a small party, disguised as a pilgrim, into the Tibetan plateau. Tibet had been closed to foreigners since the 1790s, having previously been the subject of British interest. This had profited from the rivalry between the Dalai Lama and the second most important spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama, who had requested such a visit to seal a treaty of amity and commerce. Warren Hastings had entrusted this mission in 1774 to George Bogle, commanded to secure trading links and determine whether, as rumoured, Tibet housed hordes of gold and silver. Among the gifts Bogle returned with were strips of Russian leather stamped with the Tsar's insignia, while the deaths of both the Panchen Lama and Bogle, who had taken a Tibetan wife, derailed this productive relationship, before, with pressure from China, Tibet sealed its borders. On its return Moorcroft's party would be captured by Gurkha warriors until a smuggled letter to Calcutta led to an appeal from the Governor General to the rajah of Nepal securing their release. The authors reveal that these warrior gendarmes of the Nepalese rajah made the frontier regions so dangerous that the British declared war on Nepal in 1814 and only after having three expeditionary forces repulsed would the firepower of British artillery secure victory, gaining the Himalayan foothills and the site of Simla, the future summer capital of the Raj. Criticised for abandoning his duties and for his unauthorised exploits, Moorcroft's thirst for adventure would still imbibe his desire to obtain horses from Central Asia. After seven tireless years of petitioning, Moorcroft gained official sanction for a mission to the provinces to the north-west of India. He would use his surgical expertise to open the road to fostering relations with these frontier peoples, encountering individuals who would have impact on the future political map of this region. Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Lahore, had forged a Sikh kingdom whose might was only rivalled by the Raj, and secured a treaty with the latter giving him a free hand in return for recognising British sovereignty of the provinces further south. Moorcroft would endanger this fragile understanding, by calling for British protection of provinces held under Sikh control so as to secure a trading corridor through Central Asia to China, for which he was thoroughly reprimanded. Moorcroft proceeded to Afghanistan, becoming the first Englishman to travel through the Khyber Pass, to find the country embroiled in yet another civil war from which Dost Mohammed Khan would emerge as ruler. Moorcroft would die in 1825 still pursuing the fabled horses of Turkmenestan, and convinced that Russian interests in the region signified a real threat. During the 1830s the Russian presence in the region caused far greater concern, with nobody more alert to the danger than Melbourne's brother-in-law and Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. Prone to patriotic hyperbole and eager for crusades, Palmerston was convinced a weak, corrupt, Persian throne already was subject to Russian influence, as was Dost Mohammed in Kabul. Here lay the genesis of the First Afghan War of 1839-42. The plan envisioned was to oust the Afghan ruler with Ranjit Singh's Sikhs doing most of the fighting. Yet, the war would cost 20,000 lives due to military blunder and complacency. The speed with which the British force reached and occupied Kabul, installing their puppet ruler with his enormous entourage of servants and concubines, blinded them to the seething unrest which surrounded them, believing local tribes would be bribed into submission. Moreover, they surrendered the impressive citadel to their puppet ruler, garrisoning the troops on a low plain overlooked by surrounding hillsides. The scapegoat for this fiasco would be the British Resident in Kabul, Alexander Burnes. Kinsman of poet Robert Burns and outstanding linguist, Burnes gained invaluable insights together with lasting respect for the frontier people of the North Western regions during his travels in the 1830s. As such, he frequently raised concerns at plans to oust Dost Mohammed in dispatches to the powers that be, which not only were blithely ignored, but also had their content edited or tampered with. As the British occupation lingered into the winter of 1841, native resentment grew, and Burnes would be its first victim, hacked to pieces by rioters, while the ensuing riot was not quelled by the military force. Emboldened by such inactivity, and led by Dost Mohammed's eldest son, the rebels utilised their unmatched sharp-shooters to decimate the ranks of their occupiers. Eventually, the British accepted Afghan terms for a withdrawal from Kabul as the year drew to a close, but succumbing to the harsh weather and withering Afghan fire, only one British survivor, Dr William Brydon, immortalised in the famous Victorian painting by Lady Butler, would emerge from the over 14,000 soldiers, wives, and camp followers who started the march. Though an 'Army of Retribution' would force through the Khyber Pass and retake Kabul in 1842, the scale and manner of the previous defeat led to calls for investigations into who should be blamed for such an ignominious event, especially when Palmerstone became Prime Minister in 1861. Yet, the latter would never face official questions on his role, regarding it as a matter to never apologise for or explain. Two far-reaching events on the world stage would now influence the course of the 'Great Game'. For the Russians, the costly Crimean War eventually led to the new Tsar, Alexander II, suing for peace, which confirmed Turkish independence at the Treaty of Paris in 1856, together with the demilitarisation of the ports of the Black Sea. The Tsar's recognition of defeat was influenced by the opinion of one of his combat veteran officers, Dmitrii Miliutin, who he named his Minister of War in 1860. A visionary, Miliutin iniated a ten-year programme to correct those weaknesses the Crimean war had unveiled. Such steps included the building of over 35,000 miles of railway, the emancipation of the serfs, leading to great reform of the citizen army, and diverting attention to the possibilities of conquest in Central Asia. Thus, Russian territorial ambitions would lead to the subjugation of Asiatic tribes throughout Turkmenestan in the 1860s, which Dostoyevsky in his final writings would defend as Russia's right to accrue land and markets. For the British, the brutality unleashed by the Indian Mutiny of 1856 led to the ending of the Company's rule of India and the rise of the Raj. With regard to policy, opinion was divided between two camps - Sir Henry Rawlinson was a soldier and scholar who had fought with distinction in the First Afghan War, and travelled extensively throughout Persia deciphering cuneiform script, becoming president of the Royal Geographical Society. He would argue that Russia's hostile expansionism would lead to designs on India and that the Mutiny had revealed weaknesses in the Raj whereby native rulers could succumb to foreign machinations. Moreover, Afghanistan had now become essential to the securing of British interests as a buffer-state. The opposing theory was espoused by Sir John Lawrence, or 'Plain John', whose understanding of the native peoples of India, especially the Sikhs of the Punjab, enabled him to maintain order within the latter province during the Mutiny, but also to plead for amnesty for the defeated rebels upon victory. In his opinion the security of the Raj lay in the quality of British rule and the contentment of it's native subjects, not in acquiring more territory. Indeed, Russian occupation of Afghanistan, to his mind, would embroil their rival in a costly native insurrection. Unfortunately, those who would influence policy in the 1870s adhered to the former viewpoint, especially the lover of imperial pomp and ceremony that was the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton. Seeking redress for the Emir of Afghanistan's refusal to countenance a British presence in his country, Lytton urged Disraeli's cabinet to issue a declaration of war, and when this proved too slow to appear, had an army march through the Khyber Pass in October 1878. The subsequent murder of the British resident would precipitate the Second Afghan War, ending in ignoble stalemate, and dividing domestic opinion to such an extent that disastrous losses led to Disraeli's dramatic defeat in the 1880 election. One of the greatest threats to the Raj would come from Queen Victoria's favourite maharajah, Duleep Singh. Heir of the Lion of Lahore, whose death in 1839 had spawned years of instability in the struggle for succession, Duleep was his youngest son, though rumours circulated that he was illegitimate. His ambitious mother had in her desire to gain support for his succession waged two wars against the British, which ultimately led to defeat and the annexation of the Sikh state - as well as the acquisition for the Queen of the 'Koh-i-Noor' diamond. The young Maharajah came under British tutelage and renounced his religion, adopting the Christian faith, before sailing to England and enchanting Victoria. Suffering a mid-life crisis, Duleep Singh's frustration and resentment grew and he turned again to his native religion. Thus, when he sailed in 1886 to visit Calcutta, intelligence reports maintained the existence of a secret plot in league with the Russsians for the Maharajah to incite rebellion across the Punjab and Central Asia. Detained at Aden, the enraged maharajah refused to return to England without a fair hearing and embarked for Paris, and so disaffected had he become that he offered his services to the Russians. Fortunately, the Tsar, Alexander III was reluctant to unleash such bloodshed and his offer remained unaccepted, and he eventually sought and was granted Victoria's pardon. What eventually would spark military action would be the crisis created by the influence of a Buddhist monk and Russian subject, Agvan Dorzhiev. The latter's campaign for Tibetan nationhood, freeing them from both Chinese suzerainty and British designs, was also part of this Mongolian's project to create a pan-Buddhist federation across Central Asia supported by Russia - he would die in Stalin's gulags. Thus, his audiences with Tsar Nicholas II at the turn of the twentieth century greatly troubled the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, especially given the instability in Peking with the Boxer rebellion, and Russia's penetration into both Mongolia and Manchuria. Enter centre-stage Francis Edward Younghusband, the frontiersman's frontiersman as described by the authors. Born to a military officer in an Indian hill town, Younghusband had extensively travelled across Afghanistan, China, and the Gobi desert. Charged with crossing the border into Tibet accompanied by a military escort in November 1903, Younghusband used the full force of his military advantage to quell dissent and march to Lhasa. Having just disentangled itself from the disastrous quagmire that was the Boer War, and facing an arms escalation against both Germany and Russia, the Balfour government quickly regarded this Tibetan adventure as a cause for concern. Moreover, Curzon's regal attitude lost support, with Balfour complaining that Curzon acted as if India were an independent country and an unfriendly one at that. Younghusband became the scapegoat, finding his peace terms with Tibet, gaining far more than his superiors had thought possible, were watered down and he was mired in dishonour and controversy which effectively ended his public career - he would head the Royal Geographical Society and promote the first British expeditions to conquer Everest. Curzon, who had been regarded as the man of the moment with a golden future, was excluded from politics, serving only as Foreign Secretary after World War I, before being passed over for selection to campaign for Prime Minister and dying in 1925. This marks the end of the authors' treatment of this period of imperial rivalry and the book descends into less focused territory, making it far too ambitious in scope, and resulting in a loss of interest on the part of this reader.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

A broad and not always interesting book on a very interesting time in history. The focus on different people's expeditions to Tibet becomes very repetitive after a while. Several of the chapters in part 3 could have been deleted as they were basically irrelevant. Some of the people in the book have remained obscure for a reason!

[Kellyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is perhaps better read as a choose-your-own-adventure given the massive cast of characters and tendency to give time to individuals of little to no relevance. It's clearly a Herculean research effort, and for that I give it two stars. Too often the book got distracted and the central thesis often suffered. It also devolves into purely a discussion of Tibet for the last 200 plus pages, a disappointment for a book that claimed to address Central Asia as a whole. It does have some interesting historical anecdotes along the way, but overall the book was a difficult read.

[Thomas Hager · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great topic, deep knowledge base, but disappointing book structure/writing from the author. Instead of a clear, compelling central narrative of the struggle between Britain and Russia for Central Asia, the book lurches here and there, from person to person, forward and back in time. Ends up unnecessarily confusing and somewhat tedious.

[Dirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't get my hand on enough about this era but despite being a more accomplished wordsmith KEM never quite manages to conjure up the brand of gas lit magic Peter Hopkirk brought to the same subject.

[Kenneth · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was about archeology, no, about Tibet, or was it Afghanistan? Bery confusing and not focused. I did learn that many of the problems in Afghanistan are the result of the colonial powers, particularly Great Britain, doing their thing in the 19th and early 20th century.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It traces the history of Central Asia by following the lives of the European explorers. At once depressing, edifying and entertaining. Should be required reading for all politicians and State Dept. personnel.

[Mark Singer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent companion to Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game (which I also own), Tournament of Shadows continues the story of British, Russian, and later American ambitions in Central Asia up through the Cold War.

[Ronan Conroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

TikTokkery and meme-speak will glady attempt to ‘educate’ you about complex nuanced geopolitics and regional conflict, but I still maintain that nothing beats going deep and detailed to bypass the superficial emotionality of fast takes and simplified sanctimony.


Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac’s “Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia” is an immensely readable and rewarding primer in over two hundred years of imperial power struggle in central Asia, a region once thought to be the key to world dominion. The British and Russian Empires competed with each other, and to lesser degrees with the Chinese, German, and Americans, attempting to gain control of states and regions that had their own ideas and stake in the game. While not a complete and comprehensive history, tending to illustrate larger historical trends by focusing heavily on the biographies of key explorers, statesmen and military men, “Tournament of Shadows” nonetheless has an expansive sweep and touches on many of the key themes of the age, some of which remain entirely relevant today.


In the age of empires, it was commonly held orthodoxy that states must expand or die. Explorers, as much as military expeditions, formed the vanguard of imperial intrusions into new territory, often acting under the banner of geographical surveying or simple adventurism, but paving the way for deeper economic and military ties that followed. As the president of the French Société de Géographie said in 1877, “A country has no lasting value except by its force of expansion and … the study of geographical sciences is one of the most active elements of this expansion.” Once the explorers had mapped routes into regions previously unexplored by their countrymen, trade could follow. Once trade was established, armed protection for that trade could be justified, and so followed the establishment of official trading posts, ports of call, then colonies. The public interest in the age of exploration certainly softened any mass introspection into topics like colonialism and expansion. “The average Victorian knew little of the mountains of Tibet or the deserts of Central Asia,” and various geographical societies sprang up, claiming “public education” as their central goal – “improving the teaching of geography, inspiring the next generation of explorers.” Granted, it can be somewhat wistful to lament a time when geographical journals were seen as “the fountain-head, the source from which information subsequently filtered down, via word of mouth, via libraries, via other journals and societies, via books, magic lantern lectures, photographs, newspapers and finally via schools, to a public who the more information they were given the more they wanted.” One can hardly describe our current societies in this way – “the more information they were given the more they wanted.” Quite the opposite – they often want one story, repeated in soundbites, to reassure them of a safely unassailable one-track moral high ground, a sort of monotheism of political worldview. And who could fault the eager readers of the age, breathlessly consuming reports of far-flung inaccessible places beyond their own reach, tales of high adventure and risk, and the inspiring stories of heroic men facing great odds in the name of knowledge and science. And empire, of course. The blasé presumption of the time was that western powers, by virtue of their military might, had the right to determine the fate of foreign nations and continents:

“China’s devastating defeat in the war with Japan (1894-95) exposed the feebleness of the Manchu Empire, the powers vied to carve out fresh leaseholds and spheres of influence. The heady craze of imperialism was at its peak. A much-discussed best-seller, ‘The Breakup of China’ (1899) by Lord Charles Beresford, plausibly contended that China was soon to be parceled out, in the fashion of Africa.”

The Great Game examines this “objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion,” citing contemporary objections such as economist Joseph Schumpeter, “for whom imperialism was atavistic in character, a throwback to feudalism and the warrior state.”

Speaking of throwbacks, recent events including the nearly decade and a half of Russia’s intrusions into Ukraine make it clear that the Great Game is perhaps not entirely played out, making this nearly 600 page review of 1812 to the early 2000s sadly relevant today, given the long history of Russian’s imperialism in the region. It’s worth noting also that Russia’s use of Western imperialism as a cover and a precedent is not a new thing, but is in fact entirely predictable. Russia’s Minister of War in the mid-late 1800s, Miliutin, put it succinctly when he point out to the Foreign Ministry that “it is not necessary to apologize to the English Minister for our advance [towards Central Asia and the borderlands of China]” because the English did not “stand on ceremonies with us, conquering whole Kingdoms, occupying alien cities and islands […] and we do not ask them why they do it.” Indeed, one nation deciding to go it alone and treat all allies as burdensome expensive inconveniences, as Trump has done with America’s global network of allies, makes it extremely hard to expect other nations to respect any sort of precedent of international order. Any American administration keen on ripping up formerly signed deals and treaties and proving American word meaningless, or international institutions aimed at maintaining global peace, such as the UN or NATO, will surely continue to observe other nations also saying they can ignore treaties, deals, agreements, NATO, the UN. Appeals to China to not invade Taiwan may be as unheeded as were appeals to Russia to pull back from Ukraine.

China, for its part, has its own memory of the arrogance of imperial exploration’s disregard for national sovereignty and autonomy, as can be seen in this 1930 protestation from China’s National Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities at the “ruse at Dunhuang” of Sir Aurel Stein, perhaps the most preeminent Western scholar, explorer, and excavator of innermost Asia from the 1890’s until his death in 1943.

“‘Sir Aurel Stein, taking advantage of the ignorance and cupidity of the priest in charge, persuaded the latter to sell to him at a pittance what he considered the pick of the collection which, needless to say, did not in any way belong to the seller. It would be the same if some Chinese traveler pretending to be merely a student of religious history went to Canterbury and bought valuable relics from the cathedral caretaker. But Sir Aurel Stein, not knowing a word of Chinese, took away what he considered the most valuable, separating many manuscripts which really belonged together, thus destroying the value of the manuscripts themselves. Soon afterwards French and Japanese travelers followed his trail with the result that the unique collection is now divided up and scattered in London, Paris, and Tokyo. In the first two cities at least, the manuscripts lie unstudied for the last twenty years, and their rightful owners, the Chinese, who are the most competent scholars for their study, are deprived of their opportunity as well as their ownership.’”

And this was one of the milder examples of the morally questionable underbelly of empire, and the discovery and exploration that often preceded its fuller intrusions. As “The Great Game” puts it, “ours has not been an auspicious era for schoolboy ideals,” as it examines the impact of empire on the empires themselves, as they wore themselves out against intractable locals who committed the indignity of refusing to accept permanent occupation. From central Asia to Africa to Ireland, the imperial model was beginning to break down. The Boer War in South Africa “persuaded the German Kaiser that the British Lion was overrated and decrepit,” was described by the English writer Kipling as “no end of a lesson,” and “and prompted a prescient diary comment by the anti-imperialist poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: ‘I look upon the war as perhaps the first nail driven into the coffin of the British Empire.’”

“For Britain, the initial shock was the Boer War, which began on October 11, 1899, and was meant to be over by Christmas. It lasted for nearly three years, and it took 365,693 Imperial and 82,742 colonial soldiers to prevail over 88,000 whiskered farmers, at the expense of GBP200 million. The conflict also featured trench warfare, barbed wire (an American invention), and the first use of concentration camps.”

The war “presaged the ghastly slaughter of World War I, whose toll defeated the optimism of even the heartiest Newboltian.”

“When the Cenotaph, the Imperial war memorial [to WWI], was dedicated in Whitehall in 1920, it was reckoned that if all the war dead from the Empire were to march four abreast past the monument, the cortége would require three and a half days. To be sure, the British were victors, and after 1918 the Empire attained its greatest amplitude. But its rulers lost their swagger and certainty. Even the outsize figures dwindled on the postwar stage – as evidenced by Lord Curzon. Named Foreign Secretary in 1919, four years later he faded away, his high hopes (as Harold Nicolson writes) ‘gradually clouded by disillusion, mortification and defeat.’ Faced with the radical Bolshevik threat, shaken by an explosion of nationalism, resentful of upstart Americans, the governing elite seemed to veer fro paralysis to impulsive use of force.”

Meanwhile, in Amritsar, India, “a rattled British general massacred hundreds of civilians during the anti-colonial ferment of 1919,” while “Royal Air Force warplanes blasted Kabul in the Third Afghan War.” H.G.Wells’ label for WWI, the “War to End All Wars,” seemed inaccurate as “British forces were nevertheless fighting across half the world – battling nationalists and Communists in the Caucasus, bombing Kurdish villages in Iraq, embroiled in the Greek-Turkish struggle in Smyrna, machine-gunning demonstrators in Cairo.” In a note that touches a more personal nerve for me, “British security forces [operating in Ireland] – the notorious Black and Tans – helped give birth to partition [of the island into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland], civil war, and the avenging Irish Republican Army,” whose “retribution reached into the fashionable heart of London in 1922 when IRA gunmen killed Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, an Ulsterman, as he stepped from his doorway on Eaton Place.”

The heady days of fearless explorers at the vanguard of empire were petering out in monstrous global bloodshed, and perhaps nowhere was has been more symbolic of the ruin of imperial ambition that that graveyard of empires, Afghanistan, which has been the rock upon which the British, Russian and American empires have each experienced their own version of foundering. And a 20 year occupation ending in a collapsed nation at the cost of nearly 2,500 military deaths and two trillion dollars – it’s hard to argue that this was not some manner of serious foundering. That barren place has a long history of proving impossible to govern. Sir John Lawrence of the British India Council in the 1860s described Afghanistan as “a country too poor to support an occupying army; too fractious to be controlled by a smaller force.”

“‘We have men, and we have rocks in plenty,’ he remembered Dost Mohammed once telling him, ‘but we have nothing else.’ To attempt domination of such a people, Lawrence felt, was to court misfortune and calamity. ‘The Afghan will bear poverty, insecurity of life; but he will not tolerate foreign rule. The moment he has a chance, he will rebel.’ Nor would it make any difference if the British attempted to enter Afghanistan as friend: ‘The Afghans do not want us; they dread our appearance in the country. The circumstances connected with the last Afghan War have created in their hearts a deadly hatred to us as a people.”

American involvement, to be truthful, has been longer than 20 years – given that in 1838 “on the highest pass, that of Khazar, some 12,500 feet above sea level, [American adventurer Josiah] Harlan unfurled the American flag, and his troops fired a twenty-six gun salute.”

I’ve heard it said by seemingly intelligent people that you have to look at current events, and political players in those events, through the lens of what’s uniquely happening today. I utterly reject this notion, clear in the knowledge that history’s lessons remain valid and deafening for those who seek them. The ruin of empires that crashed upon each other in central Asia between 1800 and 2000 bears much relevance for us today, just as does the period in the late 1930s which “The Great Game” refers to Democracy’s “collective loss of nerve,” in which “in Asia as in Europe, the initiative seemed to lie with the dictators.” Are we entering yet another Great Game, which, as the last one proved, will not in fact make any nation Great? Or can those with eyes to view the lessons of the past have sufficient voting power to steer us away from the abyss into which perhaps half of the population is hurtling us?

[Anderson Sulewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first review in a while, which is a shame because this book wasn't great. The overall thesis is strong and the evidence generally, if tangentially supports it, however, it's a fairly hard book to engage with. Well-written and researched the book's fault isn't in its analysis but rather its method. Choosing to gain insight through the actions of individual explorers or bureaucrats made it at times difficult to wade through. Each chapter outlining an action taken by either nation came with a lengthy section on the role of a particular individual. While this brought some interesting figures to the fore it weighs down this endeavour. Maybe it's less of a fault of the book and more so of this soulless reader who doesn’t appreciate the humanity of events.

In addition, the book spends roughly 40% of the pages on the subject of Tibet, outside of the traditional boundaries of Central Asia. Those interested in a book on this particular topic will be at home here, however, this reader is largely uninterested. Obliviously, Tibet is a fascinating place with a deep history and complex identity but it lies so far from the orbit of power that is role in international affairs is non-existent at best. I suspect that the centrality of Tibet in this book is likely a reflection of the fact that the 'Great Game' was more farce than factual; something openly admitted and reinforced throughout Tournament of Shadows. The Great Game is traditionally conceived as an existential conflict between Russia and the UK over hegemony in Asia, being one of the intellectual basis's for 'Great Power Competition'. The 'game' played by these two powers was anything but peaceful but it was fundamentally an illusion. Tibet was largely inaccessible to the outside world and thus made it the envy of both powers, providing a little more credence to the ‘Great Game’. Neither actor could realistically threaten the other despite the worst fears of the English Statesman. The Russians could only ever muster forces in the thousands to conquer Central Asia while the UK proved the accuracy of the epithet given to Afghanistan; the 'Graveyard of Empires'. Failing to assert dominion over the mountainous nation twice, Russia couldn't be (and still can't be) invaded through the Hindu Kush or the Himalayas. It's refreshing to see this book offer some scepticism of what traditionally is taken as gospel, I just wish it was less of a slog.

Overall, I can't recommend this book but I appreciated the intellectual candour.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of Russia and the UK jostling for who gets to control central Asia up to roughly the Second World War. Some real characters on both sides, plus a lot of pointless violence, loss of life and misery all to control the vast riches of...the mountains of Afghanistan? The snowy mountains of Tibet? Seems almost like the whole history was one big dick-measuring competition. And reading about the individuals involved makes that interpretation sound even more on the money. Some of these guys were totally obsessed crackpots who thought nothing of losing half their party of guides and cooks and porters so that they could be the "first" to cross that; desert or enter Lhasa or whatever. Testosterone poisoning, as my old chemistry teacher used to say.
Also, the writing was weird--the authors can tell a good yarn (and they had some great material to work with!) but a lot of the phrases just didn't make sense.

[Hizonfire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sprawling and tantalizing account of The Great Game that spans centuries. Starting with the intrigue of two imperialist ambitions of Great Britain and Russia concerning Central Asia as the overlap of two empires, it tells of implications that spreads beyond the borders of both empires. Riveting history that tells tales of various explorers, adventurers, spies, government dandies, locals, royalty, brigands, warlords, holy men and more, serving as non-fiction inspirations of the works from the Victorian era to the pulp era to Indiana Jones. Would’ve been perfect if there was a chapter on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as it is compressed into a paragraph in the Epilogue despite its publication in 1999, 10 years after the Soviet withdrawal. Would’ve been interesting if there is a volume 2 or an updated version especially with the events that happened 2 years after publication.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The exploreres, scientists, geographers, cartographers, adventurers and chancers who ranged across India's North West Frontier into Afhanistan and Tibet while the British and Russian Emprie faced off in ultimately futile advances and retreats and feints and skirmishes over the heart of Asia is an absoutely fascinating, if not always edifying, and all too often tragic tale. The men who ranged back and forth driven by fascination, obsession and ambition are not all admirable, but most of them had admirable qualities of endurance and courage and an affinity for the rugged terrain and its peoples, while the powers that be wrangled and manouvered and often as not worked hard to restrain them or just throw away their work. Also, there were Nazis.

[Greg Beier · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want the full story - the real story - then you can do NO BETTER than Tournament of Shadows. I say this as I read this in 2000 - and then spent nearly 4 years living in Central Asia. It was always a great aid to my experience there.

My favorite passage in the book talks about how the British were shutting down their intelligence service in the Persian Gulf after the end of World War 2 and they quite literally handed over boxes and boxes of files to the Americans. The authors described it as the baton being passed.

And I still think about the Bug Pit of Bukhara and the poor Brits who were thrown in there.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/tit...

[Woolfhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good companion read to Hopkirk as it went into a lot more detail about some of the events and players. I appreciated the occasional connections to art (The Rites of Spring) and literature (Bloomsbury group). I also appreciated the expanded time period and geography covered.

But even though the authors warned of this in the introduction, the jumping around chronologically and circling back to the same people in different chapters was a challenge after Hopkirk’s straightforward march through history. And the maps, as other reviews have noted, were not adequate.

Still, a solid and effective companion to Hopkirk.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too ambitious in scope and too cursory in its treatment of the hundreds of historical actors who parade across its pages. This isn’t longue durée history, but writing about a 150-year period should at least cover overarching economic and social trends that drove change, and not focus exclusively on individuals and their personalities. Meyer and Brysac have a pleasant prose style, but would be better suited to writing biography.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

As fascinating as the subject material is, I think the scope is a little too wide. Tournament of Shadows spans such a vast stretch of time and encompasses so many stories that the authors seem to lose sight of their thesis. On the whole, however, I found this to be an engaging and edifying read and I learned a great deal that surprised and intrigued me.