nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47control of Kabul in the spring of 1868 that Lawrence accorded him recog-
nition as Amir of all Afghanistan and, in a gesture of goodwill, sent a gift of
twelve lakh rupees and 12,000 muskets. Shortly after the Russian conquest
of Bukhara, and as one of his last acts as Viceroy, Lawrence invited Sher
‘Ali Khan to India to discuss Anglo-Afghan relations, but by the time Sher
‘Ali Khan arrived it was Lawrence’s successor, Lord Mayo, who greeted him
at Umballa (modern Ambala).
The Forward Policy and the Umballa ConferenceFrom both the British and Afghan point of view, Lawrence’s retirement came
at an unfortunate time as far as Anglo-Afghan relations were concerned.
During his years in the Punjab, he and his brother had developed a relation-
ship of trust with Dost Muhammad Khan and the Anglo-Afghan treaties
had mostly been due to the diplomacy of Henry Lawrence. Lord Mayo,
on the other hand, was new to India and had no experience with dealings
with Afghanistan or the tribes of India’s Northwest Frontier. Lawrence’s
retirement also opened the door for advocates of a more interventionist
approach to Afghanistan, known as the Forward Policy. In many ways the
Forward Policy rehashed the Ellenborough Doctrine of the 1830s, which
ultimately led to the First Anglo-Afghan War. Its advocates too were para-
noid about Russian territorial acquisitions in Central Asia, which, they
believed, threatened British power in India. To counteract such a scenario,
they urged Britain to be more proactive in Afghanistan’s internal affairs
and bind the Amir to British interests through military aid and financial
subsidies, as well as ensuring that the ruler in Kabul was pro-British. If
the incumbent Amir became too friendly with Russia, interfered in tribal
affairs or tried to stir up revolts on the Indian frontier, Britain should act
unilaterally to protect its strategic interests. Such ‘action’ boiled down to
the invasion, annexation and even dismemberment of Afghanistan.
This sea change in Britain’s Afghanistan policy was enshrined in Sir
Henry Rawlinson’s ‘Memorandum on the Frontiers of Affghanistan’, 12
which was one of the key briefing papers in Lord Mayo’s Umballa Papers.
Rawlinson, a leading advocate of the Forward Policy, had been a junior
political officer in Kandahar during the First Anglo-Afghan War and had
advocated the Sikh annexation of Kabul and Jalalabad and the partition
of Kandahar and Herat into two separate kingdoms. Thirty years later,
Rawlinson was one of Britain’s most senior Orientalists, known as the
Father of Assyriology, as well as being a Member of Parliament with a seat
on the London-based Council of India.