nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47
did not, and could not, thereby commit the British Government
to an unconditional protection of the Amir, or to any liabilities
on behalf of His Highness which were not dependent on his
future conduct towards the British Government and his own
subjects. In short, the plain meaning of the Viceroy’s statement
was neither more or less than an assurance that, so long as the
Amir continu ed to govern his people justly and mercifully, and
to maintain cordial, and confidential, relations with the British
Government, that Government would, on its part, also continue
to protect His Highness.As for Northbrook’s commitment to go to war on behalf of the Amir
in the event of an unprovoked attack, this was merely ‘a personal assur-
ance’ that ‘committed the British Government to no pledges which were
not carefully guarded on every side by positive conditions with which the
Amir has of late evinced no disposition to comply’.
Lytton instructed Pelly to pass on this memorandum to Sayyid Nur
Muhammad Shah and inform the envoy that the offer of a treaty and the
terms contained in his letter of October 1876 were now withdrawn:
if His Highness sincerely desired to deserve the friendship and
thereby secure the protection of the British Government, [the
terms] would be cordially and unreservedly accorded to him.
But His Highness has evinced no such desire; and it is a puerile
absurdity to assume that, because the British Government would
have viewed with severe displeasure in 1869 any attempt to disturb
the throne of a loyal and trusted ally, it is, therefore, bound in
1877 to protect, from dangers incurred regardless of its advice, the
damaged power of a mistrustful and untrustworthy neighbour. 44Pelly was also to inform Nur Muhammad Shah that Britain repudi-
ated ‘all liabilities on behalf of the Amir and his dynasty’, and so in one
stroke Lytton undid the work of three previous Viceroys and turned Anglo-
Afghan relations back into the Dark Ages of 1838. Yet despite all this, Lytton
continued to insist Britain still upheld the terms of these treaties and obli-
gations. Furthermore, Pelly was to ‘explain distinctly to the Envoy, and
to place on record, in language not susceptible to misconstruction’ that
‘the British Government harbours no hostile designs against Afghanistan’.
Furthermore, the British government