1.3 Great power competition in the age of empire
As an academic discipline, IR has had a preoccupation with the affairs of so-called ‘great powers’. Great powers have, since Westphalia, had an arguably unequal representation and attained special rights in terms of setting the shape of international order (Donelly, 2006, p. 152). As two rival powers dominating international affairs in the nineteenth century, British and Russian imperial competition played a role in shaping territorial configurations that are still experienced in today’s geopolitics. It is therefore no surprise that ideas such as Mackinder’s (1904), formed as they were in the milieu of such competition, found traction as they provided a form of explanation for the land grabs that were taking place across the Eurasian land mass during this period. Figure 1, repeated here, shows how British and Russian imperial competition played out across much of Asia at that time.

By the mid nineteenth century Britain established control over much of what constitutes modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, with the so-called British Raj viewed as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. Imperial Russia had also been expanding its control, subsuming a number of territories across Siberia and into the vast Eurasian steppe, culminating in the seizure of the nominally independent emirates of Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand in the heart of Central Asia by the late nineteenth century.
This period, often referred to as the ‘Great Game’ – a term popularised through its usage in Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim – was characterised by mutual suspicion of the two imperial powers. This was largely based on British suspicion of Russian designs on India and Imperial Russia’s concern with British officials’ attempted inroads to Central Asia. This competition ultimately led to cooperation between Russia and Britain in demarcating (i.e. physically defining) the borders of Afghanistan to act as a ‘buffer state’ between their respective imperial possessions. Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, separating the present-day states of Pakistan and Tajikistan, and which branches off from the main rump of the modern Afghan state, was designed to prevent the two empires’ borders coming together, and is a territorial reminder of the great power political intrigue played out during this period.

The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 saw Imperial Russia replaced by the Soviet Union. In Central Asia this led to an eventual dissolution of the previous administrative divisions and the redrawing of the map of the region on the basis of ‘one group, one territory’. Though not the first instance of a colonial power bringing previously non-existent ‘states’ into being, it was arguably the first time that one had forged new entities alongside new languages, national histories and folklores (Roy, 2007, p. 61). These went on to become constituent republics of the Soviet Union, with the territorial demarcation of that time forming the contours of the region’s geopolitical divisions today. In some cases, the hangover from this period has led to conflict with significant international repercussions, most notably in the Russia–Ukraine conflict, whereas others have been of less interest to Western observers, including the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and conflict over water resources in Central Asia.
This briefest of whistle-stop tours of just one form of imperial rivalry demonstrates the cartographic impact of a form of great power competition. In the following case study, you will find out more about how the administration of imperial territories continues to have a resonance on today’s map of the world, and the relations between states in the modern international system.
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