A fascinating account of one of the most ludicrously mismanaged expeditions in the history of warfare. Ideal for readers of Shashi Tharoor, Adam Hochschild and William Dalrymple. Afghanistan, 1839. The British East India Company dominated the Indian subcontinent, yet they were not secure in their position. Holding unjustified fears that Russia threatened India's north-western border, the Company decided to make a pre-emptive strike and ensure that this menace would be stopped by a strong pro-British Afghanistan. Thousands of British and Indian troops invaded this mountainous land to intervene in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mahommed Khan and former emir Shah Shuja-ool-Mulk. After capturing Kabul they placed the cruel, but pro-British Shah Shuja upon the throne once again, and supported him with an overwhelming military presence. However, the proud and ruthless warriors of Afghanistan were unwilling to submit themselves to British control and within three years they had risen up against their oppressors in one of the bloodiest revolts in history. George Bruce delves into a vast array of published and unpublished nineteenth century sources to uncover this campaign in which very few British survivors made it back through the snow-laden passes to India. "the worst British military disaster until the fall of Singapore exactly a century later." The Economist The Times described Bruce's books as "well researched, with a keen eye for historical detail." Retreat from Kabul is a brilliant account of the First Anglo-Afghan War. It is part of the series Conflicts of Empire, which also includes Six Battles for India: The Anglo-Sikh Wars, 1845-6 and 1848-9 and The Burma Wars: 1824-1886.

Retreat from Kabul

Designed for classroom use, The First Anglo-Afghan Wars gathers in one volume primary source materials related to the first two wars that Great Britain launched against native leaders of the Afghan region. From 1839 to 1842, and again from 1878 to 1880, Britain fought to expand its empire and prevent Russian expansion into the region's northwest frontier, which was considered the gateway to India, the jewel in Victorian Britain's imperial crown. Spanning from 1817 to 1919, the selections reflect the complex national, international, and anticolonial interests entangled in Central Asia at the time. The documents, each of which is preceded by a brief introduction, bring the nineteenth-century wars alive through the opinions of those who participated in or lived through the conflicts. They portray the struggle for control of the region from the perspectives of women and non-Westerners, as well as well-known figures including Kipling and Churchill. Filled with military and civilian voices, the collection clearly demonstrates the challenges that Central Asia posed to powers attempting to secure and claim the region. It is a cautionary tale, unheeded by Western powers in the post–9/11 era.

The First Anglo-Afghan Wars

While imperial blockbusters fly off the shelves, there is no comprehensive history dedicated to resistance in the 19th and 20th century British Empire. The Trouble with Empire is the first volume to fill this gap, offering a brief but thorough introduction to the nature and consequences of resistance to British imperialism. Historian Antoinette Burton's study spans the 19th and 20th centuries, when discontented subjects of empire made their unhappiness felt from Ireland to Canada to India to Africa to Australasia, in direct response to incursions of military might and imperial capitalism. The Trouble with Empire offers the first thoroughgoing account of what British imperialism looked like from below and of how tenuous its hold on alien populations was throughout its long, unstable life. By taking the long view, moving across a variety of geopolitical sites and spanning the whole of the period 1840-1955, Burton examines the commonalities between different forms of resistance and unveils the structural weaknesses of the British Empire.0.

The Trouble with Empire

The Afghan Wars

The Russian-sponsored attack by the Shah of Persia on Herat was the latest move in the longrunning tournament for predominant influence in Central Asia called the Great Game. Its proximity to India could not be tolerated as it threatened British designs for the expansion of trade along the Indus valley. Urged on by hawkish secretaries, hoodwinked by the wily Maharaja of Punjab and prompted by his political masters in London, the ostensibly peaceful Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, ordered the assembly of a vast army to counter the Persian move. The opportunity was also to be used to replace Shah Shuja back on his ancestral throne of Afghanistan. At the eleventh hour, Persia withdrew from its failed attack and to many a sage observer, Lord Auckland should have ordered his army back to barracks. Instead, an army of 10,000 soldiers, 50,000 transport animals and 30,000 camp followers advanced in December 1839 for the single purpose of regime change. From the very first blare of bugles and the cracking of whips, this glorious army was to prove that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. In Dust of Glory the author explores the causes of the First Anglo-Afghan War and describes its course gleaned from a multitude of sources supported by seventeen sketch maps of key actions. No lessons were learnt as five more conflicts were to follow in this country that only produces fruit, nuts and opium.

Dust of Glory

"During the 19th century Britain entered into three brutal wars with Afghanistan, each one saw the British trying and failing to gain control of a warlike and impenetrable territory. The first two wars (1839-42 and 1878-81) were wars of the Great Game; the British Empire's attempts to combat growing Russian influence near India's borders. The third, fought in 1919, was an Afghan-declared holy war against British India - in which over 100,000 Afghans answered the call, and raised a force that would prove too great for the British Imperial army. Each of the three wars were plagued by military disasters, lengthy sieges and costly engagements for the British, and history has proved the Afghans a formidable foe and their country unconquerable. This book reveals the history of these three Anglo-Afghan wars, the imperial power struggles that led to conflict and the torturous experiences of the men on the ground. The book concludes with a brief overview of the background to today's conflict in Afghanistan, and sketches the historical parallels."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Anglo-Afghan Wars, 1839-1919

Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan is a contentious subject, yet it is often forgotten that the current conflict is in fact the fourth in a string of such wars dating back as far as the early nineteenth century. Aiming to protect the British territories in India from the expanding Russian empire, the British fought a series of conflicts on Afghan territory between 1838 and 1919. The Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries were ill-conceived and led to some of the worst military disasters ever sustained by British forces in this part of the world, with poor strategy in the First Afghan War resulting in the annihilation of 16,000 soldiers and civilians in a single week. In his new book, Jules Stewart explores the potential danger of replaying Britain's military catastrophes and considers what can be learnt from revisiting the story of these earlier Afghan wars.

On Afghanistan's Plains

From the romantic conflicts of the Victorian Great Game to the war-torn history of the region in recent decades, Tournament of Shadows traces the struggle for control of Central Asia and Tibet from the 1830s to the present. The original Great Game, the clandestine struggle between Russia and Britain for mastery of Central Asia, has long been regarded as one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts in history. Many believed that control of the vast Eurasian heartland was the key to world dominion. The original Great Game ended with the Russian Revolution, but the geopolitical struggles in Central Asia continue to the present day. In this updated edition, the authors reflect on Central Asia's history since the end of the Russo-Afghan war, and particularly in the wake of 9/11.

Tournament of Shadows

In 1839 forces of the British East India Company crossed the Indus to invade Afghanistan on the pretext of reinstating a former king Shah Soojah to his rightful throne. The reality was that this was another step in Britain's Great Game – Afghanistan would create a buffer to any potential Russian expansion towards India. This history traces the initial, campaign which would see the British easily occupy Kabul and the rebellion that two years later would see the British army humbled. Forced to negotiate a surrender the British fled Kabul en masse in the harsh Afghan winter. Decimated by Afghan guerilla attacks and by the harsh cold and a lack of food and supplies just one European – Dr Brydon would make it to the safety of Jalalabad five days later. This book goes on to trace the retribution attack on Kabul the following year, which destroyed the symbolic Mogul Bazaar before rapidly withdrawing and leaving Afghanistan in peace for nearly a generation.

The First Afghan War 1839–42

This illustrated book tells the chronological story of the First Anglo-Afghan War using the original letters, personal diaries, official reports and dispatches written by the soldiers and politicians who took part, witnessed and died in these battles. Initially they report glorious tales of success and conquest. They tell of everyday problems of a lack of equipment and a scarcity of funds, difficulties with the local warlords, the native troops and their superior officers, and the difficult terrain and extremes of weather. As time goes on, accounts of betrayal, murder and massacre begin to dominate. From the British highpoint of the storming of Ghazni in July 1839 to the gradual and insidious rebellion of the local tribes, and finally to the appalling destruction of Elphinstone's Army in January 1842, these eye-witness accounts bring this war back to vivid life. It was "a war begun for no wise purpose, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it."

The First Afghan War 1839-1842

"The consequences of crossing the Indus once to settle a government in Afghanistan will be a perennial march into that country."--The Duke of Wellington, 1838 "There is nothing more to be dreaded or guarded against in our endeavor to re-establish the Afghan monarchy than the overweening confidence with which Europeans are too often accustomed to regard the excellence of their own institutions and the anxiety that they display to introduce them in new and untried soils."--Claude Wade, January 1839. Convinced in 1839 that Britain's invaluable empire in India was threatened by Russia, Persia, and Afghan tribes, the British government ordered its Army of the Indus into Afghanistan to oust from power the independent-minded king Dost Mohammed and install in Kabul the unpopular puppet ruler Shah Shuja. Expecting a quick campaign, the British found themselves trapped by unforeseen circumstances; eventually the tribes united and the seemingly omnipotent army was slaughtered in 1842 as it desperately retreated through the mountain passes from Kabul to Jalalabad. Only one man survived. Diana Preston vividly recounts the drama of this First Afghan War, the opening salvo in the strategic rivalry between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Central Asia. As insightful about geography as she is about political and military miscalculation, Preston draws on rarely documented letters and diaries to bring alive long lost characters--Lord Auckland, the weak British Governor-General in India; his impetuous aide William McNaghten; the prescient adventurer-envoy Alexander Burnes, whose sage advice was steadfastly ignored. A model of compelling narrative history, The First Afghan War is a cautionary tale that resonates loudly today.

The Dark Defile

A first-hand account, published in 1843, of the First Anglo-Afghan War and the author's capture and imprisonment in Afghanistan.

Military Operations at Cabul, which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842

In the mid-nineteenth century, the British and Russian Empires played the 'Great Game,' a rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia. To secure a 'buffer zone' in Afghanistan, between India and Russian territory, Britain launched the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1838. Initial success, including the imposition of a puppet regime supported by too few troops (a situation that has great resonance today), was followed by complete disaster in 1842, with 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 civilian camp followers killed by rebellious Afghans. Only one Briton is known to have escaped the massacre. This compelling story of imperial misadventure is told by Jules Stewart, a former Reuters journalist with considerable experience in the region and a specialist in North-West Frontier history, and has a foreword from General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff and a former NATO commander in Afghanistan. It provides important parallels with our current commitments in this graveyard of ambitions, and illustrates how little has been learnt from the past.

Crimson Snow

A Best Book of the Year: The Economist, Slate, Kirkus Reviews In 1839, nearly 20,000 British troops poured through the mountain passes into Afghanistan and installed the exiled Shah Shuja on the throne as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans exploded into rebellion. The British were forced to retreat—and were then ambushed in the mountains by simply-equipped Afghan tribesmen. Just one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the story of this colonial humiliation and illuminates the key connections between then and now. Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers. Dalrymple explains the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, their stranglehold on politics, and how they ensnared both the British of the nineteenth century and NATO forces today. Rich with newly discovered primary sources, this stunning narrative is the definitive account of the first battle for Afghanistan.

Return of a King

From the 1830s to Indian independence in 1947, British soldiers fought constant wars with the most implacable guerrilla-fighters in history. The Afghan mountain tribes were fiercely independent. For generations they had plundered the north Indian plain, until the British took charge and alternated between paying them subsidies (bribes to cease their raiding) and launching punitive military expeditions to teach them manners. It was a strange war fought to its own rules. Neither side took prisoners. Yet a grudging respect for the enemy and a concern to stick by unwritten codes of conduct governed this 100-year war. Immortalized by Kipling, the British Army in India fought along the frontier until the withdrawal from the sub-continent in 1947. Michael Barthorp tells the story in a vivid style.

Afghan Wars and the North-West Frontier, 1839-1947

During the First Anglo-Afghan War, Lady Florentia Sale, wife of a British army officer, Sir Robert Henry Sale, was kidnapped in 1842, along with other women and children, as well as soldiers, and detained for nine months. The group were taken hostage by Akbar Khan, following the massacre in the Khurd Karbul Pass. Amongst the hostages with Lady Sale was her youngest daughter Alexandrina, Alexandrina’s husband Lt. John Sturt, and their newborn daughter. Sturt was fatally injured by three dagger wounds to the abdomen, with Lady Sale nursed her son-in-law in his final hours. She bribed the Afghan officers into releasing them, and they were rescued by Sir Richmond Shakespear on 17 September 1842. Her courageous and defiant actions meant that she endangered herself frequently; she was shot in the wrist, with the bullet lodging there. Throughout her time as a captive, Lady Sale kept a diary, detailing the events of the ordeal. A year later, Lady Sale published her journal as A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan, 1841-2, which documented her experiences throughout the Afghan War, and the book received critical acclaim. An action-filled story of folly, indecision, treachery and tragedy, all the while testifying to great courage and fortitude.

A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan, 1841-2

The Road to Kabul

During the 19th century Britain entered into three brutal wars with Afghanistan, each one saw the British trying and failing to gain control of a warlike and impenetrable territory. The first two wars (1839–42 and 1878–81) were wars of the Great Game; the British Empire's attempts to combat growing Russian influence near India's borders. The third, fought in 1919, was an Afghan-declared holy war against British India – in which over 100,000 Afghans answered the call, and raised a force that would prove too great for the British Imperial army. Each of the three wars were plagued by military disasters, lengthy sieges and costly engagements for the British, and history has proved the Afghans a formidable foe and their country unconquerable. This book reveals the history of these three Anglo-Afghan wars, the imperial power struggles that led to conflict and the torturous experiences of the men on the ground. The book concludes with a brief overview of the background to today's conflict in Afghanistan, and sketches the historical parallels.

The Anglo-Afghan Wars 1839–1919

A examination of the unresolved problems of the first Afghan war.

The First Afghan War 1838-1842

Stark eye-witness history of the 1842 retreat from Kabul, one of the greatest disasters in British military history. The author adds an account of his own imprisonment in an Afghan jail, and an appendix giving dates and details of the 100 British officers who died.

The Military Operations at Cabul, which Ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842

This book is a brief account, written for a popular audience, of the First Anglo-Afghan War, published in 1878, the year that marked the start of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80). The First Anglo-Afghan War began in late 1838 when the British launched an invasion of Afghanistan from India with the aim of overthrowing the Afghan ruler, Amir Dōst Moḥammad Khān, and replacing him with the supposedly pro-British former ruler, Shāh Shujāʻ. The British were at first successful. They installed Shāh Shujāʻ as ruler in Jalalabad and forced Dōst Moḥammad to flee the country. But in 1841 Dōst Moḥammad returned to Afghanistan to lead an uprising against the invaders and Shāh Shujāʻ. In one of the most disastrous defeats in British military history, in January 1842 an Anglo-Indian force of 4,500 men and thousands of followers was annihilated by Afghan tribesmen. The British then sent a larger force from India to exact retribution and to recover hostages, before finally withdrawing in October 1842. The concluding sentence of this book sums up the essential futility of the conflict: "And so the English army left secure on the throne of Afghanistan the dynasty they had spent so many millions of treasure and so many lives to overthrow." The book is by Mowbray Walter Morris (1847-1911), editor of Macmillan's Magazine and the author of works of biography and literary criticism.

The First Afghan War

History of the War in Afghanistan

Sir Henry Marion Durand (1812-71) was a British army officer and colonial administrator who took part in the early stages of, and later wrote a history of, the First Afghan War (1838-42). He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers at age 15 and sailed for India in October 1829. In 1839, he was part of the column of British and Indian soldiers that invaded Afghanistan under Sir John Keane. On July 23, 1839, with a British sergeant and a small number of Indian sappers, Durand blew open the Kabul Gate to the city and fortress of Ghazni and thus played a major role in the capture of the city. Durand subsequently had a falling out with his superiors and left Afghanistan; he thus was not part of the disastrous march to Jalalabad, in which a British column of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers was annihilated by Ghilzai warriors in January 1842. Durand went on to serve at other posts in Burma and India and in 1847, while on home leave in England, began writing The First Afghan War and Its Causes. He never finished the work, which his son published in 1879. Durand was critical of many aspects of British policy in Afghanistan.

The First Afghan War and Its Causes

The focus of this dissertation is the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) and the lessons that can be learned for the modern conflict in Afghanistan. The thesis is a strategic analysis and addresses the key elements of ends, ways and means. The First Anglo-Afghan War was the result of the British determination to install a pliant regime in Afghanistan through the use of military force -- a strategy that resonates strongly with today. The appropriateness and effectiveness of the British approach is assessed to determine the strengths and weaknesses in strategic formulation and implementation.

A Strategic Analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War 1839-42

The First Anglo-Afghan War and the British Retreat of 1842

The First Anglo-Afghan War, fought between 1839 and 1842, was a pivotal conflict in Afghanistan's history. Triggered by British interests in securing Afghanistan as a buffer state and concerns over Russian influence, this war ultimately proved disastrous for the British Empire. The British East India Company's military intervention and occupation of Kabul led to a costly and humiliating retreat in harsh winter conditions, resulting in the annihilation of the British forces and the death of numerous Afghan civilians and prisoners. This conflict serves as a cautionary tale of the challenges inherent in foreign interventions in Afghanistan and the complexities of the region's geopolitical landscape, echoing through subsequent Afghan conflicts and influencing global politics to this day.