nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47to be offloaded again and carted overland to Lahore and on to Shikapur,
from where the qafilas left for Afghanistan and Bukhara. Not only was this
a case of having to go backwards to go forwards, it was a logistical night-
mare and involved substantial costs – so great in fact that, by the time the
merchandise reached the Indus, the costs of transportation and customs
duties would make British goods so expensive they would not be able to
compete with cheap Russian merchandise. Ellenborough’s solution to this
problem was to turn the Indus into an Asian Thames. His dream was of
ocean-going vessels of more than 200 tons sailing up the river as far as
Attock, thus drastically cutting overheads and delivery times. With this in
mind, he urged the Governor General to send a survey party to report on
the navigability of the Indus and draw up hydrological charts.
Ellenborough’s memorandum of 1830 burst ‘like the biological warhead
of a missile’ when it landed on the Governor General’s desk. 7 Bentinck
and all but a handful of his most experienced military and political ad -
visers showed a decided lack of enthusiasm for this romantic vision. Nor
were they convinced by Ellenborough’s fears of a Russian threat to India.
Ellenborough, though, dismissed the opinions of individuals who knew
the situation a great deal better than himself by demeaningly referring to
them as ‘the Indians’. 8 The new policy did not go well with British officials
in St Petersburg, either, since it risked negative diplomatic and even mili-
tary fallout, but they too were ignored. Though he did not know it at the
time, Ellenborough’s 1830 memorandum was the foundational document
of what Kipling would later term ‘The Great Game’, a policy that influ-
enced all future British imperial strategy on India’s Northwest Frontier
and which even today undergirds British, Pakistani, u.s. and nato policy
in the region.
The Ellenborough Doctrine and the exploration of the Indus and
Central AsiaDespite their reservations about the Ellenborough Doctrine, Bentinck and
his council were legally required to implement his policy since it had been
approved by the Cabinet in London, although Bentinck was unaware that
by the time he received his instructions, Wellington’s government had
fallen and been replaced by the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne.
Melbourne and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, however, were
equally Russophobe and perpetuated Ellenborough’s Indus policy.
So half-hearted was Bentinck about the Indus survey that he did not
bother to send senior officers on the expedition. Instead he appointed a