The Great Game

The Great Game PDF Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848544774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 661

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Book Description
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.

The Great Game

The Great Game PDF Author: Peter Hopkirk
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 1848544774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Get Book Here

Book Description
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.

Mapping the Great Game

Mapping the Great Game PDF Author: Riaz Dean
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9353057078
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The Great Game raged through the wilds of Central Asia during the nineteenth century, as Imperial Russia and Great Britain jostled for power. Tsarist armies gobbled up large tracts of Turkestan, advancing inexorably towards their ultimate prize, India. These rivals understood well that the first need of an army in a strange land is a reliable map, prompting desperate efforts to explore and chart out uncharted regions. Two distinct groups would rise to this challenge: a band of army officers, who would become the classic Great Game players; and an obscure group of natives employed by the Survey of India, known as the Pundits. While 'the game' played out, a self-educated cartographer named William Lambton began mapping the Great Arc, attempting to measure the actual shape of the Indian subcontinent. The Great Arc would then lauded as 'one of the most stupendous works in the whole history of science'. Meanwhile, the Pundits, travelling entirely on foot and with meagre resources, would be among the first to enter Tibet and reveal the mysteries of its forbidden capital, Lhasa. Featuring forgotten, enthralling episodes of derring-do combined with the most sincere efforts to map India's boundaries, Mapping the Great Game is the thrilling story of espionage and cartography which shrouded the Great Game and helped map a large part of Asian as we know it today.

Spying for Empire

Spying for Empire PDF Author: Robert Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The Great Game in Central and South Asia, 1757-1947. The Story of the struggle between Russia and Britain for imperial influence over southern and central Asia.

The Great Game

The Great Game PDF Author: Frederick P. Hitz
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307428702
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In this riveting insider’s account, a former inspector general of the CIA compares actual espionage cases and practices with classic and popular spy fiction, showing that the real world of espionage is nearly always stranger and more complicated than even the best spy fiction.Exploring everything from tradecraft and recruitment to bureaucracy and betrayal, The Great Game contrasts fictional spies created by such authors as John Le Carr?, Tom Clancy and Joseph Conrad with their real-life counterparts from Kim Philby to Aldrich Ames. Drawing on his thirty year career with the CIA, Frederick P. Hitz shows that even the most imaginative authors fail to capture the profound human dilemmas raised by real-life cases. Engaging and insightful, The Great Game shines a fascinating light on the veiled history of intelligence.

America's Great Game

America's Great Game PDF Author: Hugh Wilford
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 046501965X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
From the 9/11 attacks to waterboarding to drone strikes, relations between the United States and the Middle East seem caught in a downward spiral. And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitability—far from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the region’s staunchest western ally. In America’s Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East. Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station. The two Roosevelts joined combined forces with Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. Yet they were also fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the “Great Game,” the nineteenth-century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. Despite their good intentions, these “Arabists” propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. Their efforts, and ultimate failure, would shape the course of U.S.–Middle Eastern relations for decades to come. Based on a vast array of declassified government records, private papers, and personal interviews, America’s Great Game tells the riveting story of the merry band of CIA officers whose spy games forever changed U.S. foreign policy.

Espionage—The Great Game

Espionage—The Great Game PDF Author: Robert Thompson
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546204717
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Stan, handsome, six feet two inches tall, with dark-brown hair and piercing blue eyes, and neighbor Pete, six feet, 180 pounds, met in scouting at twelve and became brothers in spirit. Their intertwined lives and adventures carry them through college and beyond. Their high school friend Butch leads them astray, but they are redeemed when they meet again at Quanticos CIA training and SEAL training facilities. They are paired in CIA mission assignments. They are EMT noncombatants in Iraq and Iran. Their last assignment is in Afghanistan at which time they are separatedButch is assigned to Damascus and Stan in Kabul. They are in reality espionage agents (spies). Stan sacrifices everything to fulfill his most dangerous secret assignment to infiltrate the highest level of opposition. In the process, physical requirement to ingratiate himself turns into emotional commitment, and he is caught in the trap of his own making. The subject of his surveillance is Prince Mohammed, whose illegitimate brother, Sayed, frees him from Taliban imprisonment. And there begins the beginning of the end.

Armies of the Raj

Armies of the Raj PDF Author: Byron Farwell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393308020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
With a profusion of anecdotes conveying the character of India under British rule. Farwell offers a panoramic survey of the Indian army during the 90 years between the Sepoy Revolt and the births of independent India and Pakistan ...

The Great Game in West Asia

The Great Game in West Asia PDF Author: Mehran Kamrava
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190673605
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The Great Game in West Asia examines the strategic competition between Iran and Turkey for power and influence in the South Caucasus. These neighbouring Middle East powers have vied for supremacy and influence throughout the region and especially in their immediate vicinity, while both contending with ethnic heterogeneity within their own territories and across their borders. Turkey has long conceived of itself as not just a bridge between Asia and Europe but in more substantive terms as a central player in regional and global affairs. If somewhat more modest in its public statements, Iran's parallel ambitions for strategic centrality and influence have only been masked by its own inarticulate foreign policy agendas and the repeated missteps of its revolutionary leaders. But both have sought to deepen their regional influence and power, and in the South Caucasus each has achieved a modicum of success. In fact, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, as much of the world's attention has been diverted to conflicts and flashpoints near and far, a new great game has been unravelling between Iran and Turkey in the South Caucasus.

Tournament of Shadows

Tournament of Shadows PDF Author: Karl E. Meyer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 078673678X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
From the romantic conflicts of the Victorian Great Game to the war-torn history of the region in recent decades, Tournament of Shadows traces the struggle for control of Central Asia and Tibet from the 1830s to the present. The original Great Game, the clandestine struggle between Russia and Britain for mastery of Central Asia, has long been regarded as one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history. Many believed that control of the vast Eurasian heartland was the key to world dominion. The original Great Game ended with the Russian Revolution, but the geopolitical struggles in Central Asia continue to the present day. In this updated edition, the authors reflect on Central Asia's history since the end of the Russo-Afghan war, and particularly in the wake of 9/11.

The Spy and the Traitor

The Spy and the Traitor PDF Author: Ben Macintyre
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101904208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. “The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.