On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire

by PeterHopkirk (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $4.24

  Under the banner of a Holy War, masterminded in Berlin and unleashed from Constantinople, the Germans and Turks set out in 1914 to foment violent revolutionary uprisings against the British in India and the Russians in Central Asia. It was a new and more sinister version of the old Great Game, with world domination as its ultimate aim. German hawks dreamed of driving the British out of India and creating a vast new Teutonic empire in the east, using their Turkish ally as a springboard. At the same time Turkey's leaders aimed to free the Muslim peoples of Central Asia from the Tsarist yoke - and rule them themselves as part of a new Ottoman empire. The shadowy and often bloody struggle which followed was fought out between the intelligence services of King, Kaiser, Sultan and Tsar. It was to spill over into Persia, Afghanistan, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and be felt as far afield as the United States and China. It was around this colossal conspiracy that John Buchan wove his spy story Greenmantle . Here, told for the first time, is the extraordinary story of the Turco-German jihad of World War I recounted through the adventures and misadventures of the secret agents and others who took part in it. Pieced together from the secret intelligence reports of the day and the long-forgotten memoirs of the participants, Peter Hopkirk's narrative is a sequel to his best-selling The Great Game and his three earlier works set in Central Asia. It is also a highly topical one in view of recent events in this volatile region where the Great Game has never really ceased.