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[1863-1877 A.D.]

but mismanagement and a sickly season delayed its progress; some of the British troops on one occasion were disgracefully defeated, and not till some months later was the enemy driven to sue for peace and give some pledges for its maintenance.h

Great importance also attaches to Lawrence's Afghan policy, the interest of the British power in Afghan affairs having become closer as her frontiers advanced towards Afghanistan in consequence of the annexations following on the Sind and Sikh wars. a Of Lawrence's attitude, Brightc has said that his "consistent policy, sometimes siigntingly spoken of as masterly inactivity, consisted in holding entirely aloof from the dynastic quarrels of the Afghans, in the recognition of any prince who either by force or by popular favour succeeded in establishing himself on the throne, and in attempting to cultivate the friendship of the amir by gifts of money and arms, while carefully avoiding topics of offence."

THE GOVERNORSHIPS OF LORDS MAYO AND NORTHBROOK (1869-1876 A.D.)

Lord Mayo, who succeeded Lawrence in 1869, carried on the permanent British policy of moral and material progress with a special degree of personal energy. The Ambala (Umballa) darbar, at which Sher Ali was recognised as amir of Afghanistan, though in one sense merely the completion of what Lord Lawrence had begun, owed much of its success to the personal influence of Lord Mayo himself. The same quality, combined with sympathy and firmness, stood him in good stead in all his dealings both with native chiefs and European officials. His example of hard work stimulated all to their best. While engaged in exploring with his own eyes the farthest corners of the empire, he fell by the hand of an assassin in the convict settlement of the Andaman Islands in 1872.

His successor was Lord Northbrook, whose ability showed itself chiefly in the department of finance. During the time of his administration a famine in Lower Bengal in 1874 was successfully obviated by government relief and public works, though at an enormous cost; the gaekwar of Baroda was dethroned in 1875 for misgovernment and disloyalty, while his dominions were continued to a nominated child of the family; Lord Lytton followed Northbrook in 1876.

QUEEN VICTORIA BECOMES EMPRESS OF INDIA (1877 A.D.)

On January 1st, 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India at a darbar of unequalled magnificence, held on the historic "ridge" overlooking the Mughal capital of Delhi. But, while the princes and high officials of the country were flocking to this gorgeous scene, the shadow of famine was already darkening over the south of India. Both the monsoons of 1876 had failed to bring their due supply of rain, and the season of 1877 was little better. The consequences of this prolonged drought, which extended from the Deccan to Cape Comorin, and subsequently invaded northern India, were more disastrous than any similar calamity since the introduction of British rule. Despite unparalleled importations of grain by sea and rail, despite the most strenuous exertions of the government, which incurred a total expenditure on this account of eleven millions sterling, the loss of life from actual starvation and its attendant train of diseases was lamentable. The total number of deaths from disease and want in the distressed tracts in excess of the normal mortality for the two years 1876-1878 is estimated to have raised the

[1878 A.D.)

death-rate forty per cent., or five millions. In the autumn of 1878 the affairs of Afghanistan again forced themselves into notice.b

RELATIONS WITH THE AFGHANS

In following the history of the course of affairs in Afghanistan during the nineteenth century, it should be remembered that the Saddozais and Barakzais are two branches of the Durani tribe, which was raised to dominant power by its chief, Ahmed Khan, the founder of an Afghan kingdom under the Saddozai dynasty towards the end of the eighteenth century. His descendants had ruled, amid many vicissitudes, at Kabul, until in 1818 the assassination by the reigning amir of his powerful minister, Fatteh Khan Barakzal, led to a revolt headed by the Barakzai family, which ended in the expulsion of the Saddozai Shah Shuja, and the establishment at Kabul of Dost Muhammed, Fatteh Khan's son; while Shah Shuja took refuge in the Punjab. By this time the political situation of Afghanistan had become materially affected by the consolidation of the formidable military dominion on its eastern frontier in the Punjab, under Ranjit Singh and his Sikh army. Ranjit Singh took advantage of the distracted condition of Afghanistan to seize Kashmir, and in 1823 he defeated the Afghans in a battle which gave him the suzerainty of the Peshawar province on the right bank of the Indus, though an Afghan chief was left to administer it. Ten years later Shah Shuja, the exiled Saddozai amir, made a futile attempt to recover his kingdom. He was defeated by Dost Muhammed, when Ranjit Singh turned the confusion to his own account by seizing Peshawar and driving the Afghans back into their

mountains.

At this point begins the continual interference of England and Russia in the affairs of Afghanistan, which has ever since exercised a dominant influence upon all subsequent events and transactions. It has not only transformed the situation of the ruling amirs, but has also profoundly affected the Asiatic policy of the two European governments. Shah Shuja's enterprise in 1833 had been supported by the co-operation of Ranjit Singh, and encouraged by the British viceroy, Lord W. Bentinck. Although the expedition failed, the result was to excite jealousy of the British designs; and the Russian envoy at Tehran instigated the Shah of Persia to attack Herat, the important frontier fortress of northwestern Afghanistan, which was then in the possession of an independent chief. In 1837, in spite of remonstrances from the British representative at Tehran, a Persian army besieged the city, but the appearance of British troops on the southern coast of Persia compelled the Persians to withdraw from Herat in 1838.

The rivalry between England and Russia was now openly declared, so that each movement from one side was followed by a counter move on the Afghan chess-board from the other side. The British ministry had been seriously alarmed at the machinations of Russia and the attitude of Dost Muhammed at Kabul; and it was determined that the most effective means of securing their own interests within the country would be by assisting Shah Shuja to recover his sovereignty. A tripartite treaty was made between Ranjit Singh, the British governor-general of India, and Shah Shuja; and a British army marched up the Bolan pass to Kandahar, occupied that city, pushed on northward to Ghazni, which was taken by assault, and entered Kabul in 1839. As Dost Muhammed had fled across the northern mountains, Shah Shuja was proclaimed king in his stead.

But this ill-planned and hazardous enterprise was fraught with the elements

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[1878 A.D.J

of inevitable failure. A ruler imposed upon a free people by loreign arms is always unpopular; he is unable to stand alone; and his foreign auxiliaries soon find themselves obliged to choose between remaining to uphold his power, or retiring with the probability that it will fall after their departure. The leading chiefs of Afghanistan perceived that the maintenance of Shah Shuja's rule by British troops would soon be fatal to their own power and position in the country, and probably to their national independence. The attempt to raise taxes showed that it might raise the people; so that for both men and money the shah's government was still obliged to rely principally upon British aid. The result was that after two years' occupation of the country, in the vain hope of establishing a national government under Shah Shuja, the British found their own situation untenable; for the fierce and warlike tribes broke out into incessant revolt, until a serious insurrection at Kabul in the winter of 1841-42 compelled the British army to make an ignominious and disastrous retreat. The whole force was lost on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad: but Jalalabad was successfully defended by its British garrison, and General Nott held out at Kandahar until Generel Pollock's temporary reoccupation of Kabul in 1842 restored in some degree the military reputation of Great Britain. The British troops then completely evacuated the country. Dost Muhammed, who had been a state prisoner in India, was replaced on the Kabul throne; and the policy of intervention in Afghan affairs was suspended for nearly forty years.

It has been said that the declared object of this policy had been to maintain the independence and integrity of Afghanistan, to secure the friendly alliance of its ruler, and thus to interpose a great barrier of mountainous country between the expanding power of Russia in Central Asia and the British dominion in India. After 1849, when the annexation of the Punjab had carried the Indian northwestern frontier up to the skirts of the Afghan highlands, the corresponding advance of the Russians southeastward along the Oxus river became of closer interest to the British, particularly when, in 1856, the Persians again attempted to take possession of Herat. Dost Muhammed now became the British ally, but on his death in 1863 the kingdom fell back into civil war, until his son Sher Ali had won his way to undisputed rulership in 1868. In the same year Bokhara became a dependency of Russia. To the British government an attitude of non-intervention in Afghan affairs appeared in this situation to be no longer possible. The meeting between the amir Sher Ali and the viceroy of India at Ambala in 1869 had drawn nearer the relations between the two governments; the amir consolidated and began to centralize his power; and the establishment of a strong, friendly, and united Afghanistan became again the Leynote of British policy beyond the northwestern frontier of India.

When, therefore, the conquest of Khiva in 1873 by the Russians, and their gradual approach towards the amir's northern border, had seriously alarmed Sher Ali, he applied for support to the British; and his disappointment at his failure so far estranged him from the British connection that he began to entertain amicable overtures from the Russian authorities at Tashkend. In 1869 the Russian government had assured Lord Clarendon that they regarded Afghanistan as completely outside the sphere of their influence; and in 1872 the boundary line of Afghanistan on the northwest had been settled between England and Russia so far eastward as Lake Victoria. Nevertheless the correspondence between Kabul and Tashkend continued, and as the Russians were now extending their dominion over all the region beyond Afghanistan on the northwest, the British government determined, in 1876,

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