conclusion
From 1830 onwards, however, there was a major shift in British policy
towards what was known at the time as the Cis-Indus states, which led
to a far more interventionist approach. Yet this new policy was not due
to any direct or imminent military threat to India from the Amir, Dost
Muhammad Khan, from Persia, Bukhara or any European power. As for
the presumed Russian threat to India, this was grossly exaggerated. Rather,
the policy was based on highly speculative presumptions about Russian
and Persian intentions and theoretical scenarios thought up by imperi-
ally minded politicians and armchair theorists in London. Yet despite
this, Lord Ellenborough adopted an aggressive and intrusive policy in the
Cis-Indus states, despite strong objections from the Governor General and
his Council about their potentially negative impact. Despite Ellenborough’s
Central Asian policy being based on a misunderstanding of Afghan politics
and the region’s military geography, the Ellenborough Doctrine became
the foundation stone of what later became known as the Forward Policy
and the Great Game.
Britain therefore became increasingly entangled in the internal affairs
of Afghanistan and eventually had to choose between its treaty with the
Sikhs and better relations with Afghanistan. In the end the attempt to bind
the Amir to Britain’s imperial bandwagon backfired, in part because of the
choice of inexperienced and highly ambitious young imperialists such as
Burnes, as well as incompetent diplomacy and poor military leadership.
The outcome was the most disastrous British attempt at regime change
in the nineteenth century. A century and a half later, during the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan of the 1980s, Lord Ellenborough’s Indus policy
was revisited, revived and revamped as the Warm Water Port scenario in
order to justify American military support of the mujahidin.
It is therefore profoundly ironic that the British military intervention
in the First Anglo-Afghan War actually saved the Muhammadzai dynasty
from political oblivion and the kingdom of Afghanistan from collapse.
From being a remote and unruly kingdom, from the mid-1840s onwards
Afghanistan increasingly became the keystone of Britain’s Defence of India
policy. In the wake of the disaster of 1841–2 and the subsequent collapse
of the Sikh kingdom, Britain made the best of a bad job and attempted to
control Afghanistan’s external and internal relations by proxy. Successive
Amirs were tied to British interests by treaties, cash subsidies and regu-
lar shipments of modern military equipment, an arrangement that was
far less costly in terms of men and money than outright annexation. It
is no wonder that courtiers referred to the British subsidy as ‘the Money
from God’, for the Anglo-Afghan relationship provided the hard cash
nandana
(Nandana)
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