The official mind of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, Indian independence, and world power, 1939-1954

摘要

This dissertation examines the strategic outlook of the British Raj in India. It does so in the dual context of decolonization and the rise of air and mechanized warfare. The vantage is that of Sir Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe. Strategist, proconsul, and pamphleteer, Caroe was an archetypal master of the Great Game, as the contest of modern empires for supremacy in Asia became popularly known. Caroe served as Foreign Secretary to Britain's Government of India throughout the Second World War and afterwards became Britain's last Governor of India's North-West Frontier Province. In retirement, he became a prominent critic of Imperial policy, Asian affairs, and Western security. Caroe left a substantial archive of confidential as well as published writings that uniquely embodies the official mind of Great Game--the vision of world power shared collectively by the British soldiers and civil servants who ruled India over the century-and-a-half from the Napoleonic Wars through the Second World War. Where historians conventionally stress money, markets, and manpower, Caroe's thought helps to elucidate a geopolitical interpretation of British imperialism that emphasizes the intrinsic importance of Indian space in relation to power based in Central Asia. It suggests the lasting utility of the Great Game as a frame reference for both the Cold War and a much anticipated Pacific Century.