Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India’s Independence, and the Defense of Asia

The Great Game originally described Britain’s efforts to maintain India as a base from which to defend the Persian Gulf and south-east Asia against rival Empires. As British India’s leading geostrategist during the end of the imperial rule, as well as the last British governor on the Afghan frontier, Sir Olaf Caroe saw the future of the Great Game. He predicted with remarkable acuity how the struggle for mastery in South Asia’s borderlands would play out beyond the end of the Raj. In the aftermath of 9/11, much as Caroe foretold, flashpoints continue to light up from Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf to Nepal and Burma; threats range from terrorism and insurgency to naval expansion and nuclear rivalry. India commands the vital centre, its power key to the overall stability and defence of Asia. The book examines Caroe’s thinking to illuminate both the geopolitics behind India’s independence in 1947 and the historical precedents of contemporary South Asian Strategy.