Tournament of shadows : the great game and the race for empire in Central Asia Cover Image

Tournament of shadows : the great game and the race for empire in Central Asia / Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac.

Great game and the race for empire in Central Asia (portion title)

Meyer, Karl E. (Karl Ernest), 1928-2019 (Author). Brysac, Shareen Blair. (Added Author).

Summary:

"The world's oldest established imperial rivalry had its start during the Napoleonic age when British agents came upon the tracks of Russian rivals in snowbound Tibet, and then again in mythic Bokhara, deep in Central Asia. Was the Tsar planning to invade India, or even worse, was Russia bent on global dominion? To foil these real or imagined schemes, the British twice invaded Afghanistan, and in 1904 dispatched an army to Lhasa to check Tsarist designs on Tibet."--BOOK JACKET. "This was classic Great Game, which took on fresh life after the Russian Revolution and as Americans joined in, and which continues today in the covert struggle for mastery of the Caspian Sea and its oil riches. The whole story is here retold in a flowing narrative crammed with revealing detail, drawing on newly opened archives and recent research, a canvas filled with memorable men and women, taking the reader over Himalayan passes and through the world's deadliest deserts."--BOOK JACKET.

Record details

ISBN: 1582430284
ISBN: 9781582430287
ISBN: 158243106X
ISBN: 9781582431062
Physical Description: xxv, 646 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : Counterpoint : [publisher not identified], [1999]
Copyright: ©1999

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 579-631) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue: The View from the Khyber -- Ch. 1. The Horse Doctor -- Ch. 2. A River Too Far -- Ch. 3. The Road to Kabul -- Ch. 4. "Here Comes the Messenger" -- Ch. 5. The Russians Are Coming -- Ch. 6. The Raj Imperiled -- Ch. 7. Bloomsbury's War -- Ch. 8. Her Majesty's Indian Secret Service -- Ch. 9. "A Carbine in One Hand, A Whip in the Other" -- Ch. 10. Mystical Imperialism -- Ch. 11. Emissary to the White Tsar -- Ch. 12. Curzon's Hour -- Ch. 13. The Desert Wanderer -- Ch. 14. The Spoils of Serindia -- Ch. 15. The Last of the "Foreign Devils" -- Ch. 16. First Encounters of an American Kind -- Ch. 17. On the Playing Fields of Lhasa -- Ch. 18. The "Shambhala Project" -- Ch. 19. The Guru -- Ch. 20. The Cousins Discover Tibet -- Ch. 21. Swastikas to Lhasa -- Ch. 22. High Mischief -- Epilogue: The Owl of Minerva.