British Imperialism, the Great Game and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80):
A Critical Appraisal

 Salman Bangash*
& Shahida Aman**

Asia is a living body and Afghanistan its heart
In the ruin of the heart lies the ruin of the body
 (Allama Muhammad Iqbal).

Introduction

British Empire at its zenith and peak was the leading imperialist and colonial power that the world had ever recognized and acknowledged. In the midst of its enormous and gigantic empire, India was one of its prize-worth possessions. Losing India would be therefore, a fatal blow to the British affluence, status and supremacy. For this very raison d'être and rationale the safety and protection of India became the prime objective of the successive governments in Great Britain.
Throughout the 19th century British government made enormous efforts to make sure that the Great Powers of Europe kept their hands not just off their empire in India but all the states located in the vicinity of India. The British perceived Russian advancement in Central Asia as a threat to India and feared that Afghanistan might become a staging post for a Russian invasion of India. As a consequence Afghanistan assumed importance for the British government in India. It was important for the British to secure Afghanistan and to make it a barrier and bulwark against British adversaries. To fulfil its objectives the British twice invaded Afghanistan; first in 1838 and then in 1878 when conservative government in Great Britain under Benjamin Disraeli decided to bring Afghanistan under the influence of British Empire to keep watchful eye on Russian movements and activities in Central Asia. This particular paper critically analyses factors behind the invasion of Afghanistan, its significance and outcome.
British Interventionist Policy in Afghanistan

By 1875 Great Britain was at the pinnacle of its imperial power. The archetypal Victorian, Benjamin Disraeli replaced the government of William Gladstone. The new cabinet, as energetic in foreign affairs, contained many members who had long chafed at the policy of masterly inactivity. Thus, the old policy was replaced by a forward foreign policy, imperialistic goals, and inspiring diplomacy. The new policy meant the extension of Great Britain sway right up to the frontiers of the Hindu Kush, to form a strong fence against Czarist Russia’s expansionism in Central Asia.
This new policy was communicated to Lord Northbrook, the Viceroy of India, who in returned opposed and raised a voice against expansionism. Lord Salisbury the new Secretary of State for India succeeded to hound Northbrook out of office, with an inexorable barrage of telegrams demanding that British agents be stationed on Afghan soil in order to keep a vigilant and watchful eye on Russian movements and activities in Central Asia, a diktat that Salisbury knew would fly in the face of Northbrook’s close border proclivities.
Northbrook as a result he resigned and was replaced by Edward Robert Bulwer- Lytton, Lytton came to India commissioned to inaugurate a new Afghan policy. The retirement of his predecessor and the vicissitudes of party government in England had thus replaced Glad­stone, the Duke of Argyll, and Lord Northbrook, as Premier, Secretary of State, and Viceroy respectively, by Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Lytton, and there ‘could hardly have been a more striking change in the personality of the men themselves or the ideas they represented,’ i.e a ‘spirited foreign policy, imperialistic aims, and a subtle and provocative diplomacy.’ To back their cause they were supported by the most distinguished proponents of the forward school, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Sir Robert Montgomery and Sir Bartle Frere, who were members of the powerful Council of India.
The Disraeli-Salisbury-Lytton triumvirate lost no time in pursuing their imperialistic and expansionist policy. Lytton immediately opened negotiations with Sher Ali and without any ground reality demanded that the Amir should accept a European-staffed mission in Kabul. Nur Muhammad, Amir’s envoy informed the British that the Afghans could not resist militarily the British might, but he warned that the Afghans were self-willed and independent and prized their homes above their lives. He further explained ‘You must not impose upon us a burden, which we cannot bear; if you overload us, the responsibility rests with you.’
 The problem with the British was that they demanded more but in return offered nothing substantial. Even on the issue of assistance in the event of foreign aggression, the British hedged and reserved the right to judge the situation, in order to provide material help to the Afghan Government.
The new Viceroy maneuvered his policies with great pace, the arguments advanced by John Jacob in 1850s that troops should be stationed at Quetta was given a practical shape. Quetta was occupied after a treaty with the Khan of Kalat in December, 1876.  Quetta became an important centre of military operation during the second Anglo-Afghan War. In the meantime efforts were made to establish closer relations with Sher Ali of Afghanistan in order to stem the tide of Russian advance toward India. Such rapid shifts in policy confused Sher Ali and he greeted these new British overtures with suspicion.
Lord Lytton wanted the co-operation of Amir as it would enable a British- Indian army to be fed as it marched through Afghanistan into Russian Central Asia in the event of war in Europe.
Lord Lytton believed as he wrote to Lord Cranbrook, a conservative politician that in case of war with Russia in Europe, the British Government in India could strike hard the Russian’s in Central Asia, because he believed that in India the British were very strong and the Russian were comparatively weak and he proposed to the high ups in London that the Government of India should at once take the offensive in Central Asia making ‘the disintegration of the Russian empire an object of British policy’
The forward school advocated that the only way to halt the Russian advances was by getting Afghanistan first, either by invasion or by creating a buffer or vassal state and control of the likely invasion routes.
During the height of the Russo-Turko crisis the Russians under pressure in an attempt to stave off the inevitable, played a move to weaken British resolve and secure more favourable terms at the conference table in Berlin. India was the projected target of this stratagem. At the beginning of the hostilities and in anticipation of British moves, General Mikhail Skobelev had proposed temporary occupation of Kabul. According to Foreign Minister Gir Russian advances in Central Asia were not to conquer India but to apply pressure to England and tie down its army.
In January 1878, with an exhausted Russian army checkmated outside Constantinople, General Kryjhanovsky, the Governor of Orenburg, suggested a diversionary expe­dition into Persia. The war ministry rejected this plan because funds were short and all available troops had to be concentrated in the Near East to face a possible Anglo-Austrian counter-offensive. The only alternative which was left was a small-scale demonstration on the Oxus and a well-publicised polit­ical mission to Kabul.
During the month of May General von Kaufman mobilised his entire force of 20,000 men and declared that he was ready to establish a Russian sphere of influence over Afghanistan. One of his officers said: ‘Now we march to India and drive out the English.’ At the same time, General Leonid Stoletov rode to Kabul, ignoring Afghan protests, and delivered the Czar's terms to the Amir, Sher Ali, but it was too late; the Berlin agreement was signed in July and he was immediately recalled to St Petersburg. In James Long words ‘The antagonism of England to Russia in Turkey means the hostility of Russia to England in India, the vulnerable Achilles heel.’
The issue of Central Asia, India, and Turkish Questions were closely connected in this respect, as much as the former used by Russia as a leverage to ease England's action against it in Turkey, or, as a Russian James long put it “the diplomatic dispute in Constantinople will be transferred to the slopes of Peshawur: antagonism to Russia in Turkey implies antagonism to England in India.” In the Duke of Wellington's view, “The Ottoman Empire exists not for the benefit of the Turks, but for the benefit of Europe; not to keep the Mahomedans in power, but to save the Christians from a war of which ‘it would be impossible to define either the object, extent, or duration.’ The matter; however was that if England opposes the Russian advance in Turkey; Russia will checkmate her by a policy in Central Asia disturbing the position and prestige of England in India.
Von Kaufman’s sabre-rattling on the Oxus and Stoletov's brief appearance at Kabul had far-reaching repercussions. As predicted, they created consternation in Calcutta, where Lytton was already considering ways to bring Afghanistan more closely into Britain's orbit. Lord Lytton, confidently, if perhaps naively, had developed grandiose plans to “flank the Russian power” and “sweep it out of Asia,” Lord Roberts in his secret military notes on the Central Asian Question and the Frontier Defences of India explained that “The true solution of the problem of the defence of India will be found in our troops, holding the country up to the Hindu Kush mountains, and our being in force at such points as will enable us to frustrate any attempts of the Russians to gain an entrance into Afghanistan proper by the passes over that range, or by the easier route via the Helmand to Kandahar.”
The Conservative government in London and Lord Lytton wanted Afghanistan to be transformed from a neutral buffer state into a British satellite, with an Amir firmly under the thumb of the British resident in Kabul. Sir Bartle Frere argued that the ill-appreciated danger to India was not of Russian invasion but of a Russianized Afghanistan.
Lord Lytton also wrote to the Secretary of State for India about his proposal to create a separate West Afghan Kingdom consisting of Merv, Maimena, Balkh, Kandahar and Herat under a ruler of British choice and dependent on British support for existence. In a letter to Frere Lytton wrote “Afghanistan must… be made POLITICALLY ours, before it can be of any use to us….from a MILITARY point of view.”
 On August 1878, the Viceroy demanded the Amir to accept a British mission in order to counter the Russian mission. Lytton dispatched a mission through the Khyber Pass, only to have it intercepted by Afghan troops and turn them back at Ali Masjid fort. The refusal of Sher Ali to allow Sir Neville Chamberlain’s mission to cross the frontier was more than diplomatic rebuff, the British accused the Amir of procrastination.
The government in London could not ignore the matter. It was not just a question of affront and insult to the government of India but of checking Russia's advance towards India's frontier. Many members of the Cabinet Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns, Home Secretary R.A. Cross and Salisbury expressed misgivings about the plan to invade Afghanistan. Disraeli was able to convince the Cabinet and particularly Salisbury to support the decision and the Cabinet asked the Viceroy to send another message to the Amir and required ‘in temperate language an apology and acceptance of a permanent mission within the Afghan territory.’ The Viceroy and his ‘war party’ were in control at Simla and determined upon military adventure. It is probable that the Viceroy would have ‘heard of the halting of the mission with satisfaction’. Lord Lytton once stated that Lord Auckland's expedition into Afghanistan had lasting misfortune upon India, ‘for it has paralysed the commonsense of all his successors, and bequeathed to the Government of India a perfectly unreasoning panic about everything that concerns our relations with Afghanistan.’ It seem like Lytton was seeking a casus belli rather than negotiation. The affront to Sir Neville Chamberlain was only the "pretext" for it.

Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80)

When Neville Chamberlain the leader of the mission was declined permission, he demanded from his government that the safety of British rule in India depended on British ability and determination to crush Sher Ali and prevent at any cost the establishment of Russian ascendancy in Afghanistan. The ultimatum was dispatched on 31st October, requiring him to apology for his conduct by 20th November. According to Noyce “a comparatively harmless incident was, by a dexterous concealment of material facts, magnified into an important rebuff, the only possible way of avenging which was by war.” Unfortunately the British chose to exert pressure at Kabul rather than at St. Petersburg. Once more Great Britain was committed to a war with Afghanistan. In British Parliament, Gladstone condemned Lytton’s policy in these words:
We made war in error upon Afghanistan in 1838. To err is human and pardonable. But we have erred a second time on the same ground and with no better justification…this error has been repeated in the face of every warning conceivable and imaginable,…May heaven avert a repetition of the calamity which befell our army in 1841.

Once again in the name of the security and protection of the Indian Empire against the aggressive and belligerent designs of Russia, the story of the thirties was repeated in the Second Afghan War.  On 21st November, 1878, thirty six years after Britain’s disaster and catastrophe on the retreat from Kabul, the British army once again crossed the Khyber Pass and as a consequence the Second Anglo-Afghan War broke out. .
 Columns of the Indian army marched concurrently towards Kabul and Kandahar, using the three famous passes Khyber, Kurram and Bolan. With prophetic insight Lord Northbrook once warned Lord Salisbury that to force Sher Ali to receive an agent against his will was probable to risk one more needless and costly war in Afghanistan.
Amir Sher Ali, who had earlier signed a defensive alliance with Russia in desperation, appealed for aid when the British invaded Afghanistan. General Kaufmann refused, tactfully and delicately emphasizing the impracticality and impossibility of transporting troops and material across the Hindu Kush in winter. While the Russians and the rest of the world watched the folly of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Sher Ali died in Balkh on February 21, 1879. The success of war ideally fitted the plans advocated by apostles of the forward policy. Afghanistan was to be transformed from a neutral buffer state into a British satellite, with an Amir firmly under the thumb of the British resident in Kabul.
Before his flight, Sher Ali had released his imprisoned son, Yaqub Khan, and appointed him governor of Kabul. After the death of his father, Yaqub Khan declared himself Amir and opened communication with the Government of India. Negotiations for a settlement were started and on 26th of May 1879 a treaty was signed, known as the Treaty of Gandamak also termed by some Afghans as the “Condemned Treaty”
The Treaty of Gandamak marked the apogee of Lord Lytton's Afghan policy. He claimed that it fully secured all the objects of the war. Lord Lytton was delighted at the success of his policy and his satisfaction was shared by the Government at home. Lytton claimed Great Britain was not interested to take an inch of Afghanistan’s territory, but at the same time would not allow any other power to interfere or influence Afghanistan or whose interests clash with that of Great Britain.
A few weeks later Disraeli, the Prime Minister, sent a fulsome letter, saying that “we have secured a scientific and adequate frontier for our Indian Empire.” According to Akhtar Kazmi the treaty of Gandamak made the Amir of Afghanistan fundamentally a feudatory of Great Britain.
The Liberal opposition denounced the war as immoral; for them the lives, property and freedom of the Afghan people were sacrificed merely to prepare for a war which might never occur. Gladstone termed the invasion of Afghanistan as a malicious and cruel act, which destroyed and ruined the country and “added to the anarchies of the Eastern World.” For the British all seemed and worked according to the plan. In the meantime a British mission with Sir Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnarias its head reached Kabul in July 1879, but six weeks later, they were attacked on 3rd September and almost the entire mission was killed and as a result the second phase of the war started.
Lytton’s policy was in shreds and it was very important for him that Britain’s status and standing was restored quickly and resolutely. General Roberts was sent to Kabul to restore British prestige and honour with the instructions from the Viceroy ‘Your objects should be to strike terror and strike it swiftly and deeply; but to avoid a “Reign of Terror?” Those implicated in what Lytton called a national crime were to be ‘promptly executed in manner most likely to impress the population.’ Retribution rather than justice was to be the order of the day.
On the home front the Afghan war had formed one of the main issues of the 1880 elections in England. In April 1880, the Liberals came to power with an overwhelming majority and Gladstone became the Prime Minister. As a symbol of change in policy Lytton was replaced by Lord Ripon as the new Viceroy of India. Thus ended Lord Lytton’s ‘fancy prospect…‘painted on the blank wall of the future of bequeathing to India the supremacy of Central Asia and the revenues of a first class power’. The new Secretary of State for India Lord Hartington, in his first dispatch to the new Viceroy criticized the invasion of Afghanistan and its outcome.
Kabul at that time was practically without a government, Herat in intimidating hands, and Britain’s hold on Qandahar was doubtful. The new Viceroy was greeted in India with the news of Maiwand debacle to the north of Qandahar in July 1880 leaving hundreds dead on the battlefield. The battle was fought on July 27, at Mahmudabad, near Maiwand. This defeat, was one of the few suffered by a nineteenth century British army in Asia during open battle. This defeat provided the British public with a somewhat horror at the thought of soldiers wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plain . Arnold Fletcher summarised British military intervention in Afghanistan in these words:
The two Afghan Wars motivated by fear of the Russian threat to India, and was set off by the appearance of a Russian mission in Kabul. It now seems clear that these fears by the British were unfounded… Without question, all that the British sought could have been gained by negotiation; but the temper of the nineteenth century had little of the requisite patience for negotiating with Asian rulers.
Meanwhile, in July, 1880, Abdur Rahman Khan, the most powerful candidate in the field, was informed that the British were prepared to recognise him as Amir of Kabul provided he acknowledged British right to control its foreign affairs. Amir Abdur Rehman, like his predecessors had no other option but to comply. As a result, the British got paramount influence over Afghanistan without stationing a single solider. The Liberal Government which came to power in 1880 initiated a new policy and strategy towards Afghanistan: that was to have a well-defended frontier and Afghanistan under the political control of Great Britain. In David Dilks words ‘The British had committed themselves to the protection of his territory, not for its intrinsic value nor because they could defend the whole of it, but because they were determined to avoid having a land frontier with a first-class power.
Interestingly the liberals who had condemned the Afghan war as ‘an example of reckless aggression unworthy of a civilized government’ brought Afghanistan under the British influence, although there were some Liberals like Northbrook who criticised this sort of action . Lawrance James elaborated the British strategy in the following words:
Ever since Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, British regional policy was guided by the need to create as cheaply as possible a vast buffer zone stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan, which would serve as India's defensive glacis. Its perimeter encompassed the Turkish Provinces…Persia and Afghanistan. A web of discreet power had been spread across this area. Its strands were treaties in which pet potentates exchanged subsidies for privileges; a string of consulates in major ports and cities; and a flotilla of warships which cruised in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and on the Tigris and Euphrates. There was a naval base and Anglo-Indian garrison at Aden and the Mediterranean fleet which, among other things, was an earnest of Britain's intention to support the Turkish sultan and preserve the integrity of his empire. By these devices, India was protected by a cordon of weak states which Britain pledged to uphold. If she failed to do so, the area was sure to be parceled out by the European powers, most notably Russia…India’s safety would be jeopardised if Russia was allowed to proceed…
In the coming years the military initiative tilted in favour of Russia in Central Asia and by 1884 the Russian’s subjugation of Central Asia was completed. The British felt it necessary to demarcate the northern frontiers of Afghanistan for fear that Russia could claim on the Afghan territories. The process of the demarcation was completed by1895. The whole process of delimitation continued without the Amir of Afghanistan. The position of Amir and Afghanistan was rightly observed by D.P. Singhal, as “demarcation without representation"
The settlement thus reflected mutual acknowledgement of the current state of power in Central Asia., and mutual reluctance to risk war in the course of modifying it. The boundary pillars set up by the two European powers on the Hindu Kush and by the Oxus confirmed the first premeditated and practical endeavor made by them to stave off the contact of their unremittingly growing Asiatic empires.

Conclusion

To defend and safeguard the frontiers of India and its routes became an accepted maxim of British foreign policy. The British focused on the containment of any threat to their interest in the region. To Vartan Gregorian, ‘this policy called for an accelerated consolidation of British power in India and an extension of British political influence in nearby countries,’ through an elaborate and well-planned system of buffer zones.  Both powers, Russia and Great Britain wanted to expend their sphere of influence in the region, but at the same time wanted to avoid armed conflict. In this diplomatic wrangling Afghanistan was a major bone of contention between the British and Russia. Afghanistan due to its strategic location was considered by the British as a buffer zone, a bulwark and a first line of defence, against the foreign encroachments towards the North-West borders of British India. The British policy towards Afghanistan was based on inducement, pressure and armed interference and at the same time not to allow any other power to control it.  In order to fulfil its objectives Afghanistan was twice invaded; first in 1838 and later on in 1878.
The Second Anglo-Afghan war commenced when Britain invaded Afghanistan for reasons that had less to do with the Afghans than with the Russia. Russia’s advances in Central Asia were seen in Calcutta and London with great alarm and anxiety and any Russian move or attempt to develop good relations with Afghanistan was closely watched by the British. Both powers considered each other as potential threats to their interest in the region. Russia, which championed the cause of Pan-Slavism and was loggerhead with the Ottoman Empire, forced the British policy makers to support the Turkish Empire against the Russian aggressive foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean, in order to maintain its domination in European politics and therefore, the issue of Central Asia, India, and Turkish Questions were closely linked together in this respect.
As a result of the Second Anglo-Afghan War the British installed Amir Abdur Rahman as the ruler of Afghanistan, granted him local autonomy and the British gained control of the country’s foreign affairs, without stationing a single solider on its soil, a clever and wise move that served the British strategy in the region. The war unleashed a potent force in Afghan nationalism, which inculcated an ardent love of fatherland and national pride among the Afghans. The Second Anglo-Afghan War further deteriorated the relationship between the two countries and in the subsequent years, mistrust, enmity, animosity and hatred continue between Afghanistan & Great Britain.

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