The Great Game

I find it interesting how Wood speaks about "the Great Game"; Chapter 10 would have the reader believe that the Great Game was some inter-personal duel between foreign dignitaries out in the back-of-beyond of Central Asia... and in a certain way, it was. But Wood doesn't give us the stakes. The term "Great Game" more usually refers to the struggle for supremacy between the great powers of Europe, especially from the Treaty of Vienna onwards. What is often forgotten is that the second half of the 19th century in Europe was actually a time of unbroken peace. From the end of the Crimean War until the first World War, aggression between the five great powers was defused by a complex system of treaties... or, of course, exported and enacted vicariously in the colonies. What Wood doesn't mention is the international ramifications of the an incautious remark between adventurers. Literally, world (well, European anyway) peace was at stake.

Wood's book is excellent on many fronts, but I have always felt that it doesn't really get at the motivations behind the many explorers who risked life and limb to retrieve treasures (and human skulls!) from some of the most inhospitable places in the world. Glory, yes... but also specifically European political interests.