In the 19th century, when the rivalry between Imperial Russia and Great Britain was at its peak, both powers tried to survey, explore and expand regions under their rule, particularly the Indian subcontinent and its neighbours. Several writers including Peter Hopkirk ( The Great Game ) and John Keay ( The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of how India was Mapped and Everest was Named ) recounted this rivalry as also the story of the two men who undertook the measurement of the Himalayas and the mapping of the Indian subcontinent. Riaz Dean’s Mapping the Great Game is a thrilling story of espionage and cartography played out against the backdrop of imperial ambitions of powerful players.
Ground report
Dean travelled much of the area described in the book, including the two halves of Turkestan (western or Russian Turkestan and eastern or Chinese Turkestan), and to the roof of the world. Set in four parts and arranged chronologically, with five informative maps, the first part deals with political intrigues and the roles played by some adventurous young people like William Moorcroft, a veterinary surgeon, in securing details of regions considered strategically important. Appointed Superintendent of the Stud for the East India Company’s large horse-breeding farm in Patna in 1808, Moorcroft soon realised he would need to travel beyond the subcontinent’s borders in the north and west to get better breeding stock, and that is how his exploration began.
With more twists and turns in the political system of Europe, and Napoleon’s defeat, Britain was worried about the Tsar’s intentions. The author introduces important players in this game like Arthur Conolly, the British intelligence officer sent to get more information. Among the others sent to explore and spy was Lieutenant Alexander Burnes, an enthusiastic young officer and a brilliant linguist. The ultimate prize of this Great Game was India; the target was the northern neighbours as they offered the gateway.
A name for Everest
In the second part, Dean describes the survey work in detail, undertaken by William Lambton and his cartographers. Lambton laid the baseline, which stretched across 12 km between St. Thomas Mount in Madras and another hillock and measured the length of a degree of latitude along a longitude in peninsular India. This alone took 42 days to measure, indicating the hard task ahead. By 1810, Lambton could produce a map of the southern peninsula. The entire team looked upon him as a father figure of the survey and when he died near Nagpur on January 20, 1823, George Everest took over the job of measuring the length of the subcontinent, from peninsular India to the Himalayas. For his hard work, Everest was known as ‘Neverest’ but he was recalled before he could finish the task due to failing health. In 1844, he recorded all his findings in two volumes.
‘Pundits’ at work
When the highest peak was measured and found to be 29,030 feet (8,848 metres) above sea level, the surveyors knew it by its various local names, prompting the surveyor-general Andrew Waugh to call it Mount Everest, after his predecessor George Everest.
Part three is dedicated to the Pundits, “an obscure group of natives,” who were the pillars of the Great Trigonometrical Survey and its exploration and mapping programme. They travelled entirely on foot and with meagre resources. Captain Thomas George Montgomerie, who followed Waugh, used the Pundits to the best of their abilities. He produced the first accurate map of the Jammu and Kashmir region. The fourth part deals with Tibet, and Russia and Britain’s tussle over this important location and its consequences. The book is remarkable for packing in so many details between its covers.
Mapping the Great Game: Explorers, Spies & Maps in Nineteenth Century Asia; Riaz Dean; Viking/ Penguin; ₹599.
The writer is an author and historian.
