By the start of the twenteith century both Britain and Russia, suspicious of Imperial Germany, decided to stabilize relations and replace their rivalry in Central Asia - the 'Great Game' - with rapprochement. Jennifer Siegel demonstrates that reality in the field told a different story: the momentum of imperial rivalry, spiced by oil and railway development, could not be arrested and various interests on both sides continued to stoke the fire with increasing aggressiveness. By 1914, Britain and Russia were on the brink of war once again, to be saved only by the outbreak of the First World War. This book is a ground-breaking and original study, based on hitherto unseen archival sources in Moscow and St Petersburg and original research in London.

Jennifer Siegel undertook her research at Yale University and now teaches at Boston University.