The Great Game

Frances Wood has dedicated a large part of her book depicting the struggle to conquer Central Asia in the early 20th century. A struggle that turned into a race or as she refers to it the Great Game between archaeologists and historians to conquer the culture, art and history of this region and take it back with them to the West. She depicts tales of explorers that traveled through Central Asia looking for fame, respect and to collect exotic relics of the East.

Their struggle turned into the Great Game. A race between the British and Russian explorers for Central Asia and its wonders, relics and culture. The stage for this race stretched from modern day Tajikistan off to Western regions of modern China. Each explorer brought a new technique to the art of exploration. But, it is sad to know how ugly and devastating this art was! While each traveled the region in the name of history, survey and exploration, the affect of their travels included some troubling decimations of Asian relics, arts and sites. To some cases, it even included a loss of culture for the local inhabitants as they took away bits of their history and culture in the shape of manuscripts, paintings and relics.

It is interesting to note that the explorers themselves were sometimes as characteristic and individual as the cultures they explored. Sven Hedin's friendship with Adolf Hitler is just one example!!! More fascinating is the fact that they each built up on the knowledge and experience of their predecessors. They re-traced each others travels, used each others maps and accounts to navigate through the deadly deserts and find remote sites.

But there was another side to the many explorations of this region. While some cherished the art and culture of the place, others went looking for exotic Asian relics, artifacts and goods praised by Westerners and who were ready to pay a high price to own them. So as long as there was a demand there was a need to raid these ancient sites for the search of exotic and ancients relics and devastating local culture and history.

What is even more troublesome, is that by this reading one understands how little understanding there existed of the the local inhabitants and their cultures. Among the explorers that went into these regions, most of them cared or paid very little attention to the local inhabitants, their concerns and needs. They mostly viewed them as inferior, perceived it their right and duty to not only study their cultures but tho also take parts of it back for studying. Some may argue that they saved these artifacts and in fact their culture by taking their paintings and relics and protecting them from raids and natural decay, due to ill care by the locals. But, this is by far a excuse for the affects these explorations had on the history and culture of the region. They have lost parts of their culture and past to, they have lost ownership of their culture and may have even lost links to their past. A hefty price for being protected.