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Maiwand 1880

The History Press

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The origins of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) and the great disaster of Maiwand can traced back to the outbreak of 'Russophobia' in the early nineteenth century, Britain's prolonged fears of a Russian invasion of India, the 'jewel in the Crown' of her expanding empire. After successfully repelling and deterring French Napoleonic threats to India before 1815, Britain entered into an increasingly tense relationship with the Russian Empire, her erstwhile ally in the struggle against Napoleon. By the mid-1830s the deepening Russian friendship with Persia and the alleged pro-Russian sympathies of the neighbouring Afghan Amir, Dost Mohammed, seriously alarmed the British authorities. In what became known as the 'Great Game', Britain again launched a number of diplomatic missions to neighbouring independent states such as Persia, Sind and the Sikh Kingdom in the Punjab to secure influence against perceived Russian political infiltration. Matters came to a head when the hard-pressed Dost Mohammed allowed a Russian envoy, Lieutenant Vitkevitch, to officially reside at his court in Kabul. The invasion of Afghanistan by a Russian-backed Persian army seeking to capture the long-claimed key strategic city of Herat in September 1837 proved to be the final straw. It convinced Lord Auckland, the recently arrived British Governor General in Calcutta, that this was the prelude to a major Russian invasion of Afghanistan with dire implications for the future security of the Raj.

On 1 October 1838, Auckland issued his Simla Manifesto, which, by accusing Dost Mohammed of organising a conspiracy against British India, effectively represented a declaration of war against Afghanistan. An alliance under the Tripartite Treaty had been earlier constructed (June 1838) with the powerful Sikh Kingdom and an Afghan army-in-exile led by the deposed Afghan Amir, Shah Shuja. During the next few months an invading and supporting army totalling over 40,000 men was mobilised and, after an arduous 1,200-mile (2,000km) journey and a major victory at Ghazni in July 1839, the 'puppet' Amir Shuja entered Kabul on the back of British gold and bayonets for what turned out to be a corrupt rule lasting barely three years and culminated in his own brutal assassination. The infamous and tragic story of the British occupation (see Yorke, Kabul 1841–2) has been recounted many times before, but a combination of political, military and financial overstretch and incompetence, combined with an underlying fundamental misunderstanding of Afghan culture, led to a jihad, or national religious uprising, spearheaded by the exiled Dost Mohammed's son, Akbar Khan, which surrounded and eventually destroyed the main 5,500-strong British garrison at Kabul. The Deputy Envoy, Sir Alexander Burnes, and the Envoy himself, Sir William MacNaghten, were murdered and their dismembered remains ostentatiously displayed on the gates of Kabul's great medieval bazaar. Of the 16,500-strong Kabul Brigade, barely 100 Europeans and a few hundred sepoys (Indian soldiers in British service) and camp-followers survived the subsequent 90-mile (145km) winter retreat or 'death march' from Kabul to Jalalabad in January 1842.

The final curtain to Britain's first disastrous Afghan adventure was one of brutal revenge as, between April and October 1842, two invading armies led by Major Generals Pollock and Nott carved a swathe of destruction along the return route to Kabul, culminating in the sack, or virtual sack, of the major city of Istaliff and of Kabul itself.

Thus, the First Anglo-Afghan War left a bitter legacy in Afghanistan. As the weary British Army slowly demobilised, 'all that they left behind of the work of the previous four years was the ruined bazaars, the skeletons piled high in the grim Khurd–Kabul Pass and a wound that rankled for fifty years ... more than fifty years. It has never quite been healed'. (Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan, p.120)

The myth of British invincibility had been visibly punctured and the loss of British prestige undoubtedly had an impact on the outbreak of the great 1857 Indian Mutiny, barely fifteen years later. The overall human cost had been stupendous, with 15,000 officers and soldiers dead. Unknown numbers of camp-followers, certainly in their thousands, had perished. Fifty-thousand camels were lost and around £20,000,000 of Indian revenue had been spent. Politically, little had been achieved with, after Shah Shuja's assassination, Britain's arch enemy Dost Mohammed now firmly ensconced on the throne of Afghanistan.

Uneasy Peace 1843–63

The next two decades of Anglo-Afghan relations was a period aptly termed by Governor General Lord Dalhousie as 'sullen quiescence on either side, without offence but without goodwill or intercourse.' (Fraser-Tytler, p.121) There were several reasons for this ensuing 'phoney war'. Britain was soon diverted by two major conflicts between 1843 and 1849, first against the Sind Emirate, and second against the fractious Sikh kingdom which, as widely feared, had largely disintegrated after strongman Ranjit Singh's death. The restored Afghan ruler, Dost Mohammed, was similarly preoccupied with reconstructing his country, consolidating his borders and re-establishing overall political control. However, this did not deter him from provocatively and disastrously allowing hundreds of irregular Afghan Horse from assisting the Sikh cause at the Battle of Goojerat. The decisive British victory there led to the rout and hot pursuit of his forces across the Indus River and back into Afghanistan. It was a timely lesson and no major Afghan incursions occurred again until the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919.

Anglo-Afghan relations were briefly and tentatively revived in 1855 as Anglo-Russian relations plunged to a new low on the outbreak of the Crimean War (1854–56). With renewed fears of a Russian invasion of India, Britain needed an ally. Their old enemy, Amir Dost Mohammed, possibly prompted by the earlier Goojerat debacle, was disposed to forget the past if the British would do the same. By the mid-1850s, he was prepared to ally himself with the British as a counter to both Russian pressure on himself and a recent Persian attempt to reassert their primacy over Afghanistan's western territories, notably Herat. Consequently, in March 1855, the new British Governor of Sind, Sir Herbert Edwardes, met Dost Mohammed's envoy, his own son, Ghulam Haider, in Peshawar where a friendship treaty was signed. While doing little more than re-opening Anglo-Afghan relations, the treaty gave assurances of British non-aggression and pledged the Amir to be 'the friend of the friends and enemy of the enemies of the Honourable East India Company'.

Alleged Persian provocation and the actual seizure by them of Herat in October 1856, provided the casus belli for the British to intervene. Britain's resounding victory in the brief Anglo-Persian War reassured the Afghan Amir of his old enemy's fidelity. In 1856, the Amir accordingly signed a supplement to the 1855 Treaty by which he was to receive one lakh of rupees (£10,000) in return for maintaining a sufficient body of troops to defend his possessions. Nevertheless, Dost Mohammed's bitter memories of the 1838–42 war ensured that he successfully vetoed renewed British proposals to place an envoy in Kabul to administer the subsidy. In January 1857, relations progressed further when Dost Mohammed personally visited Peshawar to sign a treaty of friendship. 'I have now made an alliance with the British government,' he declared, 'and come what may I will keep it to death.' (Bosworth Smith, Life of Lawrence, p.XX)

The outbreak of the Indian Mutiny in May 1857 posed a potentially severe test for Anglo-Afghan relations, as initial British setbacks presented an unparalleled opportunity for the Afghan government to intervene on the side of the mutineers and regain lost territory, notably Peshawar. In fact, Dost Mohammed kept his word and remained strictly neutral. Britain had successfully walked a diplomatic tightrope. In the wake of the horrific massacres of British troops and civilians at Meerut, Cawnpore and Delhi, one officer, a most relieved Major Lumsden, subsequently recorded in his diary on 2 July 1857:

We ought indeed to be grateful to Providence for having permitted our relations with Afghanistan to be so successfully arranged before the arrival of this crisis, for I am convinced that, had it not been that the minds of the Afghans were in a measure prepared for the Amir's non-interference, he could not have prevented a serial rush down the passes, which must have added gravely to our embarrassment at Peshawar and along the frontier.

(Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan, p.125)

'Russophobia' Revived

The Russian 'bogey', however, remained and it was a new outbreak of 'Russophobia' in the mid/late 1860s which, after the death of Dost Mohammed in 1863, introduced a far more fractious period in Anglo-Afghan relations. Despite the Crimean War, the 'long peace' between Britain and Russia in Central Asia had remarkably survived but, in 1864, Russian advances in the Middle and Near East and, more especially, towards the Pamirs mountain range of northern Afghanistan, suddenly resumed. In 1864 Russian authority was further extended to the borders of Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva. In 1865 Tashkent was occupied and, in 1867, the new province of Russian Turkestan was created and Bokhara became a subsidiary ally of the Tsar. Finally, in 1868, Samarkand, previously only temporarily occupied, was annexed by Russia.

The Gorchakov Manifesto

This surge of Russian expansionism was politically and militarily justified in the famous 'Gorchakov Manifesto' issued by Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov, the Russian Foreign Minister, on 21 November 1864. He asserted that the Russian advance in Central Asia was merely:

... that of all civilised states which come into contact with half-savage wandering tribes possessing no fixed social organisation. In order to cut short ... perpetual disorders we establish strong places in the midst of a hostile population ... But beyond this line there are other tribes which soon provoke the same dangers ... The state then finds itself in the horns of a dilemma. It must ... deliver its frontier over to disorder ... or it must plunge into the depths of savage countries.

Miller, Khyber, p.147

The manifesto represented a classic statement of the common imperial problem of 'turbulent frontiers'. Even more, Gorchakov claimed that it was simply an expression of 'manifest destiny' shared, he asserted, by other expanding or colonial powers such as the USA, under which 'all had been inevitably drawn into a course wherein ambition plays a smaller part than imperious necessity, and where the greatest difficulty is knowing where to stop'.

The 'Great Game' debate

Under such great political and military pressure the 'Great Game' was soon re-ignited. If the Russians were caught on the 'horns of a dilemma', internally, on the British side, an intense 'Great Game' had already emerged in terms of a furious debate about future policy towards Russian expansion in Central Asia. On the one side of this great debate was the so called 'masterly inactivity' school, which included Lords Lawrence, Mayo and Northbrook. They tacitly accepted Russian reassurances and advocated no further movement forward beyond the Indus River. On the other side were the 'forward policy' grouping, notably presented by Sir Bartle Frere and later by Lords Cranbrook and Lytton. They remained suspicious of Russian ambitions and strongly argued for a British advance to the Hindu Kush or even the Oxus River or, at the very least, some form of occupation or buffer zone which would include the British reoccupation of the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar.

In India, the action resulted in a furious debate over how to respond to Russian expansionism.

Descent into Conflict 1874–78

However, changes in British domestic politics and a new era of turbulence in Afghan politics following the death of Dost Mohammed in 1863 were to begin a fraught political journey towards a fresh crisis in Anglo-Afghan relations. In Britain the new, distinctly more imperialist-minded government led by Disraeli, 'would not be content with a policy of masterly inactivity'. The situation, Disraeli believed, 'had changed ... Lawrence's policy was safe and economical only while there was no hostile power pressing upon the furthest frontier of Afghanistan ... the Russian advance in Central Asia made this no longer true'. (Blake, Disraeli, p.659)

Disraeli's Secretary of State for India, the Marquis of Salisbury, whilst more relaxed and less fearful of a direct Russian invasion than Disraeli, still felt the need to gather intelligence about Russian designs in the region. Rather than rely, as before, on occasional policy statements from St Petersburg, or vague information filtering out from Kabul, he pressed for British agents to be stationed directly inside Afghanistan. He stressed the imperative need to watch and guide the new Amir, Sher Ali, 'for there is a double danger that he may play us false or, remaining true, may blunder into operations which will bring him into collision with Russia'. (Dilks and Bridge, Great Game, p.1320) The new Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook, however, strongly disagreed and chose to resign, rather than force a British Resident on the Amir. On his departure, he accurately predicted that 'doing so would subject us to the risk of another unnecessary and costly war in Afghanistan before many years are over'. (Edwardes, History of India, p.303)

Local Political Supremo: Edward Robert Bulwer, First Earl of Lytton (1831–91)

The man entrusted to carry out the Disraeli governments' new and more robust forward policies in Central Asia was admirably suited to the task. A staunch Conservative in his youth and a career diplomat since 1849, his posts had included Minister at Lisbon (1872–76).

Lytton's own personal character was also perfect for the role. As a confirmed member of the 'forward school' and armed with instructions for 'a more definite equilateral practical alliance with Afghanistan', he was a man in historian Edwardes' words, 'blinded with imperial illusions'. He set out 'to give his delusions reality with the utmost single-mindedness', a single-mindedness 'born out of intolerance of opposition and contemptuousness of those of inferior intellect'.

(Edwardes, History of India, p.277)

On Northbrook's resignation, in 1876, the more aggressive stance of his successor, Lord Lytton, chimed with Disraeli and heralded a new and more confrontational policy. Lytton's task was to persuade the already fearful and disillusioned Amir to receive a permanent British Mission, but he was to make little progress over the next two years.

His military adviser, Colonel George Pomeroy Colley, was a typical gung-ho member of the Wolseley ring and, with his subsequent boast that a single British regiment armed with breech-loaders could conquer Afghanistan, proved to be an appropriate collaborator in the more aggressive policies to follow.

Lytton's first major move towards breaking the political impasse was to secure British control over Kalat in Baluchistan. A mission led by the renowned, ambitious frontier agent from the Punjab, Captain Robert Sandeman, duly negotiated a treaty with the Khan of Kalat whereby a British agent was re-established at Kalat and later, one at Quetta, with a British garrison dispatched in support in 1876.

Administrative Lacunae

These aggressive policies were to be greatly facilitated by the Viceroy's political remoteness from the British government in London. In 1858, imperial control had been theoretically reasserted as, in the wake of the disastrous Indian Mutiny, East India Company rule had been abruptly and forcibly ended. The Crown assumed all authority over India via a Secretary of State for India who sat in the Cabinet, with a local civilian Viceroy appointed to India and a Commander-in-Chief established to run the newly established British-led Indian Army. Nevertheless, the slowness of communication still gave the Viceroy, as the man-on-the-spot, significant scope for independent action. In his war policies, Lytton was to exploit such a lacuna to the full.

Events outside Afghanistan now hastened the journey along the road to war. Once again, as in the build-up to the First Anglo-Afghan War, it was what was taking place in the Balkans and the Near East which greatly influenced matters. In 1878, Britain refused to accept the Treaty of San Stefano which concluded the recent Russo-Turkish War and gave unacceptable dominance to Russia over Turkey. To further deter Russian expansion in Europe and the Near East, Disraeli's government secured the occupation of the strategically placed island of Cyprus, and Indian troops were rushed to garrison this island, as well as Malta. As historian Edwardes has succinctly observed: 'The obvious Russian reply was to rumble in the vastness of Central Asia and force the government of India to the logical conclusions of its frontier tactics, an expedition against Afghanistan.' (Edwardes, History of India, p.303). On 22 July 1878, a mission led by Russian agent, Major General Stolietov, duly arrived in Kabul in an attempt to arrange a treaty with the new, now highly anxious Amir Sher Ali.

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Excerpted from Maiwand 1880 by Edmund Yorke. Copyright © 2013 The History Press. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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