/sci/ - Science & Math

>The Russian threat to India seemed real enough at the time, whatever historians may say with hindsight today. The evidence, after all, was there for anyone who chose to look at the map. For four centuries the Russian Empire had been steadily expanding at the rate of some 55 square miles a day, or around 20,000 square miles a year. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, more than 2,000 miles separated the British and Russian empires in Asia. By the end of it this had shrunk to a few hundred, and in parts of the Pamir region to less than twenty. No wonder many feared that the Cossacks would only rein in their horses when India too was theirs.
>Besides those professionally involved in the Great Game, at home a host of amateur strategists followed it from the sidelines, giving freely of their advice in a torrent of books, articles, impassioned pamphlets and letters to the newspapers. For the most part these commentators and critics were Russophobes of strongly hawkish views. They argued that the only way to halt the Russian advance was by ‘forward’ policies. This meant getting there first, either by invasion, or by creating compliant ‘buffer’ states, or satellites, astride the likely invasion routes.