The Pic Collage above shows the two countries involved.
"The Great Game"
Russia vs. Britain
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The map depicts the area (Central Asia) that the British and Russian were fighting for. Many of the lands of Central Asia provided abundant supplies of needed raw materials, which was why the two countries wanted control of the land.
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Russia
- Tried to take over central Asia since the 16th century, but only in the 19th century did they actually undertake a systematic effort to extend Russian authority south of the Caucasus
- Weakened Ottoman and Qing empires turned central Asia into a political vacuum and invited Russian expansion
- By the 1860s cossacks had overcome Tashkent, Bokhara and Samarkand (great caravan cities of the silk roads) and approached the ill-defined northern frontier of British India
- Russian and British explorers ventured into parts of central Asia never before visited by European
- Mapped terrain, scouted mountain passes, and sought alliances with local rulers from Afghanistan to Aral Sea- all in an effort to prepare for the anticipated war for India
- Outbreak of global war in 1914 and the collapse of the tsarist stated in 1917 ensured that the contest for India never took place between Britain and Russia
- Imperial expansion brought much central Asia into the Russian empire and subjected the region to Russian rule that persisted until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991
- Competition among European powers led also to further imperialism in southeast Asia
British
- In the 1820s, colonial officials in India conflicted with the kings of Burma (modern Myanmar) while seeking to extend their influence to the Irrawaddy River delta
- By the 1880s they had established colonial authority in Burma, which became a source of teak, ivory, rubies, and jade
- Thoman Stamford Raffles
- In 1824 he founded the port of Singapore, which soon became the busiest center of trade in the Strait of Melaka
- Administered by the colonial regime in India, Singapore served as at the base for the British conquest of Malaya(Modern Malaysia) in the 1870s and 1880s
- Offered outstanding post that enabled the British navy to control sea-lanes linking the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea,
- Malaya provided abundant supplies of tin and rubber
This is a very quick, simple overview of the "Great Game."