1880s Great Game => Great War, who wins?

Britain could and might build railways into the area to improve their logistics.

The Russians can't. They don't have the industry.

OTOH, building railways is a long term proposition, and might be used more for holding Afghanistan down after the initial conflict than during the conflict itself.

OT3H, if the Brits DO build rail, then they're going to be MUCH better placed for round 2, if there is one.


However, if the Great Game goes hot, it will be a relatively minor brush war, not a 'Great War'.
 
The British might go and grab all of coastal Siberia and use it as a bartering chip for a pullback of Russia in Central Asia.

BUT a British Kamchatka would be pretty cool in the 20th century.
 
Daithi said:
Britain could and might build railways into the area to improve their logistics.

The Russians can't. They don't have the industry.

Except they did, they built a railway to Samarkand, although in the late century. They did so in harsh and barely conquered territory finishing around 1886 if my memory doesn't fail me (can't be bothered to check the exact year tbh), done by the general Annenkov.
The speed of construction and the general technical achievement was hailed globally and it made Britain extremely fearful as it greatly facilitated logistic in central asia
 
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The British might go and grab all of coastal Siberia and use it as a bartering chip for a pullback of Russia in Central Asia.

BUT a British Kamchatka would be pretty cool in the 20th century.

The British tried taking Petropavlovsk against fairly light Russian resistance in the Crimean War and failed spectacularly. Petropavlovsk in the 1880s is better defended and it's also not the only port on the Far Eastern coast.

It goes without question that Britain can take all of these ports if it really sets out to do it damn the costs, but given their historical record of taking coastal fortifications (not great, honestly), they'd probably need to pull off some major forces and some major naval assets from much more crucial theatres to actually succeed.

Do they want it enough, for the sake of Afghanistan?

Of course the Russians don't want Afghanistan itself either. They'd at that point just barely arrived to Turkmenistan. They have a lot of consolidating to do.
 
Except they did, they built a railway to Samarkand, although in the late century. They did so in harsh and barely conquered territory finishing around 1886 if my memory doesn't fail me (can't be bothered to check the exact year tbh), done by the general Annenkov.
The speed of construction and the general technical achievement was hailed globally and it made Britain extremely fearful as it greatly facilitated logistic in central asia

Wow! So they did! (Not finished until 1888, but close enough.)

Odd railway, not connected to anything else (except by boat across the Caspian), and well before the Trans-siberian was started.

Thank you for the information. I had never heard of this before.
 
@Daithi: Most welcome ;)
If you speak French I recommend "A toute vapeur vers Samarcande" by de Vogüe who was on the inaugural journey.

And yes, it was connected to the rest of the empire through the Caspian Sea. The goal was to unify the newly conquered territories and the khanates as well as making the English shit their pants basically. The Russians were master at show of force in the region, being ok to operate as feudal lords rather than enlightened rulers like the French or the brits liked to style themselves.

There were two big troubles: there was no infrastructure, no logistic there so all the iron and all timber had to be imported from the West of the Oural. Second problem were climatic conditions: that whole region is desertic and prone to sandstorm which buried the tracks. They had to plant special bushes to keep that from happening.

#themoreyouknow #happytoshare
 
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