While on vacation to the Indian Subcontinent they visited the Khyber Pass in December 1990, not long after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan but before the now decade-old civil-sectarian-ethnic war in that country. Husband and wife authors Meyer and Brysac begin this latest synthesis of the "Game/Tournament" around 1810 and carry it through into the post-World War II period. In 1837, Count Karl Vasilyevich Nesselrode, the Tsar's Foreign Minister from 1822 to 1856, created another descriptive term for this conflict, "Tournament of Shadows." Lieutenant Arthur Conolly (1807-1842) of the 6th Bengal Native Light Cavalry, who initiated British reconnaissance and mapmaking in the region, published a popular version of his exploits in 1834 in which he coined the term. "The Great Game," the geopolitical contest between Tsarist Russia and Victorian Britain for the control of Central Asia, is well known to scholars of Asian history and culture. Tournament or Great Game: The Struggle for the Mastery of CentralAsia Kolb (National Endowment for the Humanities) Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia.
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