nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47Burnes also maintained that Persia still had a role to play in the defence of
India, albeit a minor one, and while Khiva and Herat were also strategic
ally important, the most important urban centre was Kabul. ‘The natural
strength of Cabool,’ he wrote, ‘is the best barrier against a successful inva
sion by an Asiatic power’ and ‘the political state of Cabool, as a kingdom,
becomes at all times an object of the deepest importance to India’. 20 Burnes
therefore believed Britain should accord Dost Muhammad Khan de facto
diplomatic recognition and negotiate a commercial treaty with him.
To reinforce this view, Burnes painted a rosetinted picture of Dost
Muhammad Khan and his government, emphasizing his popularity, the
reestablishment of the rule of law and the Amir’s own desire for good
relations with Britain. On the other hand, Burnes downplayed the threat
to Dost Muhammad from his siblings in Peshawar and Kandahar, as
well as from Shah Mahmud and Shah Shuja‘. Burnes even claimed Dost
Muhammad Khan posed no threat to Sikh power in the Punjab, stating
that he is ‘not likely to pursue conquests abroad’, 21 and advocated that
Britain mediate to end the war between Sikhs and Afghans. Burnes was
even farsighted enough to grasp that when the ageing and sick Ranjit
Singh died, his kingdom would be plunged into civil war that would lead
to the collapse of the Sikh buffer.
Burnes provided detailed descriptions of the region and updated the
political history of the Durranis, but several of his geographic and strategic
assumptions were questionable and he relied heavily on the accounts of
earlier travellers, some of which were still unpublished, for his description
of the tribes and Afghan culture. Long before Wolff published an account of
his travels to Bukhara, Burnes had picked his brains, and while in Balkh he
had recovered and presumably read Moorcroft’s journals, which were not
made public until some years later. Burnes also took a copy of Elphinstone’s
Kingdom of Caboul with him on his travels, cutting out the illustrations
and presenting them to Nawab Jabbar Khan before he left Kabul. Major
D’Arcy Todd, a Royal Engineer and a member of the diplomatic mission
in Tehran, was particularly critical of Burnes’s data on potential invasion
routes and their military capabilities, in particular his claim that a Russian
army would have little logistical difficulty marching through Afghanistan. 22
In June 1832, about a month after Burnes left Kabul, another Englishman
arrived in the city. Using the name Charles Masson, he claimed to be
an American citizen, though Wade’s enquiries later revealed that he was
actually James Lewis, a British deserter from the Bengal Army. 23 Masson
briefly passed through Afghanistan in 1828 and had already travelled exten
sively in the region, but this time he decided to stay in Kabul and took