The Great Game

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Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia, 1980 China initiates enormous Yangtze water diversion scheme : Although not on the scale of the Grand Canal or the... by GoKunming Also, super-relevant for our time with the silent struggle for oil in Central Asia. Every now and again, one comes across an article about Central Asia, but the coverage is hardly in proportion to the intensity of business, political, criminal, and petro-economical activity in that region. There's a lot of unknown knowledge in this area and it's pretty fun to read about it before it's been totally containerized. This is to be sure a rather blood-soaked tale, with grim betrayals, frequent beheadings but also uncommon bravery. Hopkirk contends that while the British may have had their Achilles' heel in India, the Russians had theirs in the Caucasus where the local Muslim tribes were still holding out fiercely against the might of the Czar.

Peter Hopkirk’s spellbinding account of the great imperial struggle for supremacy in Central Asoa has been hailed as essential reading with that era’s legacy playing itself out today. This is a great book and I fully agree with the quote on the front cover of the book by Jan Morris "Peter Hopkirk is truly the laureate of the Great Game." If you ever wanted to learn something about this large and remote area then this is the book to start with. If you enjoy military history then this book has it, if you enjoy historical accounts of exploration then this book has it, if you just enjoy good history then this book has it all.There are typically two kinds of history books: those that are extensively researched and cover every relevant event in comprehensive and precise detail but are dry and stylistically boring, and those that are engagingly written but gloss over the minor or complicated details for the sake of appealing to readers. Very rarely does an author succeed in achieving both. The Great Game is one of those rare books that do. The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (US title The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia is a book by Peter Hopkirk on " the Great Game", a series of conflicts in the 1800s between the UK and Russian powers to control Central Asia.

Di diritto nello scaffale (virtuale) della Storia, questo corposo saggio di scuola inglese ci trasporta in un territorio pressoché inedito per le nostre conoscenze, scolastiche e non, in un “Grande Gioco” che è la metafora dell’interminabile lotta per la supremazia in Asia Centrale nei secoli XVIII e XIX fino alle soglie della rivoluzione bolscevica.Uno dei lati positivi della ricostruzione fedele e documentata è nel poter quasi toccare con mano l'eleganza dei modi di questi ufficiali che sanno di doversi scannare il giorno successivo, ma il giorno prima conversano amabilmente e si offrono a vicenda il pranzo e la cena. Una certa cavalleria ed eleganza sono veramente morte e sepolte con il XIX sec., spariti la grazia e il garbo oggi ci restano solo fanatismo e ipocrisia.