The Great Game

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Britain had become the dominant European power in India, whose people and riches did much to contribute to the power and prestige of the British Empire for the next two centuries. With its hegemony in India also came fears that other powers would wrest the Jewel in the Crown away from Britain. The fears dominated much of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, and the rivalry with Russia, an expanding power in Central Asia, became known as the Great Game.
A statue in Saint Petersburg commemorates the exploits of Nikolai Przhevalsky, a Russian officer who explored vast territories in Russia and Central Asia (note his camel!) On the heels of Przhevalsky and other adventurers came the Russian army conquering new domains for the Czar including lands that have emerged as new independent nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union (e.g., Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).

The conquests of the Czar led Britain to fear that Russia would invade Afghanistan, which then bordered on India. In fact, such an invasion did take place, but this happened in 1979, thirty-two years after the British departure from India. Although the rivalry over Central Asia primarily concerned Britain and Russia, some Americans not only paid attention but wrote vivid accounts of the changes in the region. One of them was the Ohioan J.A. MacGahan.