A history of the British conquest of Afghanistan and Western India, 1838-1849

An exploration of British empire building in South Asia in the final decades of East India Company hegemony in India. It traces the history of military expeditions west of the Indus and north of the Sutlej rivers into Afghanistan, Sind, Gwalior, and Punjab. These are critical episodes in the history of empire as it manifested itself in the sub-continent in the middle of the nineteenth century, as an interdisciplinary case study to test theories of imperialism. This study explains causes and consequences of British imperial policy as it was made, largely by men on the spot, the governors general of India, who operated from a sense of white entitlement to rule dark skinned peoples. Imperial presence implies expansion. The British Government simply called this “defense of the frontier”, but when defense meant conquest of the frontier, presence extended to a new political boundary, and the periphery of empire kept moving. This happened in British India most forcefully from 1838 to 1849, beginning with Lord Auckland’s “expedition to the westward” (into Afghanistan), and ending with Lord Dalhousie’s annexation of Punjab. Special note is made of behavioral interaction between metropole and periphery, core and frontier, i.e., London and India. Based on primary documents, mostly from the India Office, and Historical Manuscripts, all located in the British Library, London. Of most value were the private papers of Lords Auckland, Broughton (Hobhouse), Dalhousie, Ellenborough, Ripon, and Sir Robert Peel and Gen. Sir Henry Hardinge. Other correspondence from Queen Victoria, Lord John Russell, Lord Melbourne, and Viscount Palmerston proved highly relevant and instructive.

The "expedition to the westward" began as a policy response to the perception of Russian ambition in Central Asia, and to a weakening Persia which was assumed to be falling under the Tsar’s influence. The invasion of Afghanistan in 1838-39 was an attempted British resolution of this twin problem, known as the Great Game. The pretext was reinstallation of Shah Shuja, the deposed Afghan king, to his throne in Kabul. Preparations involved gaining the support of Maharaja Runjit Sing, ruler of Punjab, and securing the acquiescence of the Amirs of Sind through military intimidation. The western Afghan city of Herat came to be an object of obsession for British policy men, as they tried unsuccessfully to detach its ruler Kamran Shah from Russian and Persian influence. Beyond the Khyber and Bolan passes the British engaged in classic overextension, as lines of communication were stretched beyond their capacity, as the lack of thorough intelligence increased the isolation of the envoy, William Macnaghten, and the British army command. But despatches from Kabul remained cheerfully optimistic, even as signs of opposition and insurrection mounted.

By April 1840 the home authorities expressed alarm over the extent of British interference in the administration of Afghanistan, more than they had been led to expect from previous despatches from the GOI. John Cam Hobhouse, President of the Committee for Indian Affairs, and the Cabinet link between GOI and HMG, saw no chance of ever withdrawing British troops from Kabul due to Shuja’s utter lack of support from Durani, Ghilzye, and Khyberi tribal chiefs. On the ground, Macnaghten could not see the obvious duplicity and hypocrisy of the British position – ruling the country while pretending that it did not – and one must ask how effective British imperialism could be in this far away place? In the winter of 1841-42 the rebels deceived and then exterminated the British occupation army cantoned in Kabul. The military option intended by Auckland to achieve a preventive object had been a disaster without parallel in British history, but the loss proved something more important: that the alleged Russian threat was a fraud at best. For a generation after 1842 the GOI forgot about the Russian “threat” on the distant periphery of empire and concentrated instead on building up the British empire on the sub-continent of Asia, which meant annexing Sind, Gwalior, Punjab, and Kashmir.