The
original
reports are in F.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
1
Throughout this period, under the influence of John Lawrence, the
Government of India pursued that policy of inactivity which some
have called “masterly”, 2 although in truth it consisted merely in
waiting upon events. Upon the generation that had witnessed the
Indian Mutiny, Lawrence's vigour of character and singleness of
purpose produced a remarkable effect. His opinions were accepted
as oracles, and men forgot or ignored the fallibility of his judgment.
Even Lord Salisbury, during his first tenure of the India Office as
Lord Cranborne in 1866–7, “whole-heartedly” approved Lawrence's
ideas of Afghan policy. 3 Lawrence had always disliked the idea of
alliance with the ruler of Afghanistan. Both before and after Dost
Muhammad's death he had done his utmost to prevent the govern-
ment from taking any part in Afghan politics, on the score that the
British could not make a true friend of the amir. But his views (as
Dalhousie observed with customary incisiveness) were based on the
fallacy that the Afghans were too foolish to recognise their own in-
terests. Accordingly as Sher 'Ali, and then Afzal Khan, and then
Azim Khan, and then Sher ’Ali once more, succeeded in establishing
themselves as successive rulers of Kabul, the Indian Government was
content with recognising each in turn. Thrice in 1866 Sher 'Ali asked
for English help. Afzal Khan did the same. Lawrence, then governor-
general, ignored the former's letters and bluntly told the latter that if
he could solidly establish his power he might hope to be received into
the English alliance. 6
This policy was the belated result of the old dogma of non-inter-
vention which in India had produced little but undesired and un-
expected war. Nor had it here even the excuse which it had had in
regard to the Indian states. From the time of Wellesley onwards the
Indian states had been dominated by the power of the Company, and
in them rival claimants could not turn from the great power which
refused assistance to any other great and neighbouring power. But
the Afghan rivals could and did. They applied to Russia and to Persia
for help,” as might have been foreseen. The policy of inactivity was
brought at once to a hasty end, and Lawrence advised that foreign
assistance should at once be countered by a supply of money and arms
to the side not leaning on Persian or Russian support. 8 When the
home government gave him a free hand in the matter, he did not
9
1 Abd-ur-rahman, Autobiography, 1, 63. 2 Cf. Wylly, op. cit. p. 115.
: Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Lord Salisbury, 1, 206.
· Bosworth Smith, op. cit. I, 450.
6 Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 239.
& Wylly; op. cit. pp. 76, 45.
? Idem, pp. 103 399;
8 Dispatch, 3 September, 1867 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 392).
• Dispatch, 26 December, 1867 (idem, 398).
## p. 407 (#445) ############################################
RUSSIAN EXPANSION
407
even wait for the contingency to arise, but at once subsidised Sher 'Ali,
who with this help speedily made an end of the remaining resistance
to his authority.
But great harm had been done. Abd-ur-rahman, for instance, on
being driven out of Afghanistan by his uncle, Sher 'Ali, hesitated for
a moment whether to seek shelter with the Russians or the English;
but as he “had never seen the benefit of English friendship”, he
chose the Russians. Sher 'Ali himself declared that “the English look
to nothing but their own interests and bide their time”. 2 The force
of these views was strengthened by the contemporary contrast between
English and Russian policy. To the south-east of the Russian provinces
lay four khanates—Khokand, Bokhara, Khiva and Samarkand
with vague, undefined frontiers, separated from their northern neigh-
bour by considerable stretches of desert. At the time of the first
Afghan War, some Russian activity had developed in this area, but
the understanding of 1844 had brought it completely to an end. No
relations had been maintained with the khanates; and it is at least
highly probable that the sudden change which occurred in 1858 was
produced more by political motives than by the supposed necessity
of imposing order on barbarous neighbours. In that year a mission
of enquiry, accompanied by a large body of topographers, was
dispatched under Ignatieff, to collect information about military
conditions, roads, and means of transport. The khanates had fallen
away greatly from their old greatness. They still abounded in schools;
but the studies pursued in them were the mere repetition of past and
obsolete knowledge. They were poorer, less populous, more fanatical.
The people of Samarkand believed that no infidel enemy could survive
polluting with his feet ground so hallowed by the dust of the blessed. "
But the withering of their rivers had dried up their wealth, weakened
their governments, and exhausted their man-power.
In these circumstances their absorption by the Russian Empire was
as nearly a natural process as anything political can be. In govern-
ment, in socialorganisation, in religion Russia was essentially Oriental.
In power and functions the emperor at St Petersburg was a cousin of
the Oriental monarchs. Apart from him and the functionaries who
répresented him there was only the active local life of the villages, and
the Orthodox Church was the one branch of Christianity which had
not been occidentalised. Russian predominance would involve no
violent change, and its establishment would be nothing more than a
new illustration of that everlasting ebb and flow of power which has
characterised the Eastern world. This expansion began shortly after
the Crimean War. In 1864 Russian authority touched the borders of
1 Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. 1, 111.
2 Rawlinson, England and Russia, p. 303.
· Vambéry, Central Asia, p. 235.
Vambéry, Western Culture in Eastern Lands, p. 48.
o Cf. Vambéry, Central Asia, pp. 36–7, 231.
## p. 408 (#446) ############################################
408
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
Khokand, Bokhara, and Khiva. In the next year Tashkent was
occupied. In 1867 the new province of Russian Turkestan was con-
stituted, with Kaufmann as its first governor-general. In the same
year Bokhara was reduced, after sending a desperate appeal for help
to the governor-general of India, John Lawrence, and became a
subsidiary ally of the emperor. In 1873 Khiva submitted, placing in
the hands of Russia the management of all its external relations. The
administration established to manage these new possessions and
control these new dependencies was purely military, and all reports
went to the War Office at St Petersburg. 3
The motives of this expa:asion were complex. There were in the first
place the difficulties perpetually arising with semi-civilised, mis-
governed neighbours, who would think nothing of pillaging a caravan
and reducing the merchants to slavery. All the evidence agrees that
the Turkoman tribes were false, greedy, envious, ferocious. Russian
diplomatists were always ready with this explanation, hinting that
Russian expansion in Central Asia was in all respects similar to British
expansion in India—a parallel which liberal opinion in England was
ever ready to accept. Military organisation, too, made for expansion.
Military governors could not look for rewards and promotion by
a peaceful administration. In 1869 Kaufmann's appointment as
governor-general was defended by Prince Gortchakoff expressly on
the ground that he had already gained every honour that a Russian
general could hope for. 5 But this was not all. There was another yet
more powerful reason for expansion. It was designed in the political
interests of Russia. “Great historical lessons", ran the instructions of
the new ambassador, Baron de Staal, appointed to London in 1884,
have taught us that we cannot count on the friendship of England, and that she
can strike at us by means of continental alliances while we cannot reach her any-
where. No great nation can accept such a position. In order to escape from it the
emperor Alexander II, of everlasting memory, ordered our expansion in Central
Asia, leading us to occupy to-day in Turkestan and the Turkestan steppes a
military position strong enough to keep England in check by the threat of inter-
vention in India.
This position had been prepared, though not completed, while
Lawrence was still pursuing his policy of inaction, and demanding
that the Russian question should be solved by coming to an agreement
in Europe instead of by securing advanced positions in Asia. He
seems wholly to have ignored the point that unless England could
entrench herself so strongly in Central Asia as to convince Russia of
the futility of movements in that direction an agreement in Europe
could only be reached by subordinating English to Russian interests
on the continent.
1 Wylly, op. cit. p. 92; cf. Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 397.
2 Treaty, 12 August, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1874, LXXVI, 171).
3 Boulger, Central Asian Questions, p. 14. • Cf. Curzon, Russia in Asia, p. 118.
6 Clarendon to Buchanan, 3 S:ptember, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 727).
• Meyendorff, Correspondance diplomatique du Baron de Staal, 1, 26.
## p. 409 (#447) ############################################
DIPLOMATIC DISCUSSIONS
409
The Russian advance had led to diplomatic discussions, directed
on the British side towards re-establishing some such neutral zone
between the empires as had existed from the Afghan to the Crimean
wars. At this later period the most acute English students of the
Central Asian question urged that the Oxus should be taken as the
ultimate dividing line of the respective spheres of interest. " But this
was a position which Russia could not now be induced to accept. She
claimed exclusive and complete control down to the northern bank
of that river and was only ready to discuss the establishment of a
neutral zone provided it began appreciably beyond that point. When
therefore Clarendon initiated discussions with Gortchakoff in 1869,
the emperor declared the idea of a neutral zone to be highly pleasing,
but the dispatch announcing this pointed to Afghanistan as an appro-
priate neutral zone. After consulting the India Office, Clarendon
replied “that Afghanistan would not fulfil those conditions of a
neutral territory that it was the object of the two governments to
establish, as the frontiers were ill-defined". 3 This feeble answer,
which gave away a considerable part of the British case, led to a
discussion of the alignment of the northern Afghan frontier and an
agreement early in 1873 by which Russia virtually gained her point
at the trifling cost of admitting Badakshan and Wakhan to form part
of the Afghan kingdom. 4 The Russian policy now was to advance up
to the effective borders of Afghanistan, and to get rid altogether of
uncontrolled or unoccupied territory in that area. This plan was
supported both by political motives and by sound administrative
principle. As Brunnow pointed out to Clarendon, neutrality as under-
stood in Europe could not be applied to Asia. The chiefs and peoples
of Central Asia cared nothing for the international law of Europe,
and neutralisation would merely become un brevet d'impunité. Bokhara
and Khiva were mere robber-states, and could not hope for such
protection as in Europe covered states like Belgium and Switzerland. 5
All that was really obtained was an admission that Russia regarded
Afghanistan as beyond her sphere of interest.
Meanwhile various endeavours had been made to remove the
unfavourable impressions produced upon Sher 'Ali by Lawrence's
policy, which, even before Lawrence's retirement from the governor-
generalship in 1869, was already recognised by its author as inade-
quate. As has been seen, Lawrence at last decided to give Sher 'Ali
material help, and in 1868 offered to meet the amir and discuss with
him the political situation. This meeting never took place; but in
i Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 311.
? Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 7 March, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 720).
3 Clarendon to Rumbold, 17 April, 1869 (idem, 722).
• Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 31 January, 1873 (idem, 709); cf. Granville to Gladstone,
30 September, 1873 (Fitzmaurice, op. cit. 11, 413).
"Brunnow to Gortchakoff, 17 April, 1869 (Legation Archives, xxın).
• Lawrence to Northcote, 10 October 1868 (Bosworth Smith, op. cit. II, 401).
## p. 410 (#448) ############################################
410
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
March, 1869, Lawrence's successor, Lord Mayo, met the amir at
Ambala. Many English writers have chosen to represent this con-
ference as a great success, 1 at which the savage chief was deeply
impressed by the disinterested generosity of the British Government.
But Sher 'Ali was seeking two advantages, for which he would have
conceded a good deal. He desired an alliance with the British to bind
them to support him against external attack, and he desired a promise
that the British would never acknowledge “any friend in the whole of
Afghanistan save the amir and his descendants". 2 Instead of any
such specific agreement, he could only extract a letter in which Mayo
said that the Governmentof India would“view with severe displeasure
any attempts on the part of your rivals to disturb your position", and
that it would “further endeavour. . . to strengthen the government of
Your Highness”. 3 These encouraging but non-committal statements
were too reminiscent of the government's attitude during the late wars
of succession to permit the amir to rely overmuch upon them.
A considerable impression was made upon him by Mayo's personal
charm, fine presence, and winning manners; the tone of the governor-
;
general was more friendly; but the policy of the government had not
yet changed in any material respect.
Though disappointed in 1869, Sher 'Ali was constrained by circum-
stances to make one more trial of the English Government. The
absorption of the khanates on the Oxus was full of warning. Early
in 1873 he told the English vakil at Kabul, that the advance of the
Russian boundary gave him great anxiety that weighed upon him day
and night and that therefore he proposed to send one of his agents
to wait upon the governor-general and ascertain his views. 4 This
proposal led to the conference held at Simla in the following July.
The envoy asked that a written assurance might be given to him to the effect
that if Russia, or any state of Turkestan or elsewhere under Russian influence,
should commit an aggression on the amir's territories, or should otherwise annoy
the amir, the British government would consider such aggressor an enemy, and
that they could promise to afford to the amir promptly such assistance in money
and arms as might be required until the danger should be past or invasion repelled.
Also that if the amir should be unable to cope single-handed with the invader,
that the British government should promptly despatch a force to his assistance by
whatever route the amir might require the same. 5
In view of this request and the general situation, the governor-general,
Lord Northbrook, proposed “assuring him that if he unreservedly
accepts and acts on our advice in all external relations, we will help
him with money, arms and troops if necessary to expel unprovoked
invasion. We to be the judgcof the necessity”. This policy, if adopted,
1 E. g. Hunter, Life of Lord Mayo, 1, 262.
2 Mayo to Argyll, 1 July, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 466).
8 Mayo to Sher 'Ali, 31 March, 1869 (idem, 464).
* Agent, Kabul, to Commissioner, Peshawar, 14 April, 1873 (idem, 647).
6 Memorandum of conversation, 19 and 20 July, 1873 (idem, 675).
6 Telegram to the secretary of state, 24 July, 1873 (idem, 482).
6
## p. 411 (#449) ############################################
ARGYLL'S MISMANAGEMENT
411
a
might have proved decisive in the development of the Central Asian
question. Its rejection was as decisive as its adoption might have been.
The Duke of Argyll at the India Office, and a majority of the Council
of India, were convinced adherents of the Lawrence policy. Mr Glad-
stone's first cabinet, then in office, combined a detestation of Russian
government with a curious tolerance of its expansion. It was, therefore,
resolved to reject Northbrook's proposal, on the ground that the amir
had no real cause for alarm, and to limit the governor-general's
assurances to a declaration that “we shall maintain our settled policy
a
in Afghanistan". 1 This decision was well-meant. But its authors
lacked imagination to perceive that it could not appear reassuring to
Sher 'Ali. To him it could mean nothing but a continuation of the
Lawrence policy of helping those who no longer needed assistance.
This criticism which Cranbrook passed in 1878 on his predecessor's
management of the situation seems amply justified. 2
The ill-effects produced by the abortive Simla conference were
emphasised by two other occurrences. The Government of India had
undertaken the thankless task of arbitrating on the boundary claims
of the Persians and Afghans in Seistan. This was a most ill-advised
measure. It may have been desirable that a long-standing subject of
dispute between the two states should be removed. But the more
equitable the decision, the more certain would it be to irritate both
the shah and the amir, for each would feel that his interests had been
neglected. At a moment when the influence of Russia was visibly
waxing, the Government of India would have done well to avoid
needless causes of friction between itself and its Western neighbour.
But the arbitration was held; the decision went in some details against
Afghanistan; and both sides resented British impartiality as a sub-
stantial measure of injustice.
Worse still, Sher 'Ali installed one of his sons, Abdullah Jan, as heir
apparent, in supersession of an elder son, Yakub, who, according to
the Afghan custom, was rebelling against his father. When this
selection was communicated to the Government of India, the answer
was "designedly couched, as nearly as circumstances admit, in the
same language as that in which in 1858 the Punjab Government were
instructed to reply to the letter from Dost Mahomed Khan intimating
the selection of Shere Ali as heir apparent”. 5 Perhaps the government
was wise to desire not to commit itself to the support of a future
claimant who might prove to be incapable. But it blundered in
suggesting to Sher Ali that his favourite son could look for no greater
assistance than he himself had received before imprisonment, death
or exile had freed him from his own rivals.
1 Telegram to Nore: brook, 26 July, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 482). • Idem, 636.
• Cf. Sir F. J. Golasmid, Eastern Persia, 2 vols. 1876; Parl. Papers, 1868–9, XLVI, 483-6.
The original reports are in F. O. 60--392, 393.
• Cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s. v. Abdur-rahman.
5 Dispatch to Argyll, 23 January, 1874 (Parl. Papers, 1868–9, XLVI, 491).
## p. 412 (#450) ############################################
412
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
Disappointed alike by the complaisance with which the British
Government seemed to regard the Russian advance, by the lack of
special favour shown by the Seistan decision, and by the refusal to
recognise Abdullah Jan as the future amir, Sher 'Ali naturally, if
imprudently, concluded that he must make his own terms with
Russia; and circumstances conspired not only to assist him in doing
so but also to deprive him of Russian help as soon as he had committed
himself to Russia. The Russians met him more than half
way.
Afghanistan might lie outside the sphere of Russian interests; but it
had become a neighbour of the Russian Empire; and intercourse
could easily be explained away as a mere matter of frontier courtesy.
So at first it was. In 1870 Kaufmann, the governor-general of
Russian Turkestan, informed Sher 'Ali that, although his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman had taken refuge in Tashkent, he would receive no
assistance to wage war against his uncle. 3 This letter on its receipt
was forwarded by Sher 'Ali to the Government of India, which in
answer cited “the repeated assurances we have received from the
Russian Government” and suggested that Kaufmann's letters "will
doubtless be, when rightly viewed, a source of satisfaction and an
additional ground of confidence". 4 When Sher 'Ali announced the
nomination of Abdullah Jan, the Russian answered much more tact-
fully than the English governor-general, that "such nominations tend
to the comfort and tranquillity of the kingdom”. 5 From 1875 the
interchange of letters became more frequent. Such as transpired were
letters of compliment. But it was disquieting to watch the coming and
going of the bearers without any real knowledge of what was passing
behind the scenes. 6
Moreover from 1874 these political events were being watched with
greater jealousy and suspicion. In that year Gladstone's cabinet was
succeeded by Disraeli's, Salisbury displaced Argyll at the India Office,
and before long Lytton succeeded Northbrook as governor-general.
The change involved a sharp swing of foreign policy both in Europe
and in Asia. Disraeli was convinced that the late cabinet had lowered
the influence of Great Britain in the world, especially by acquiescing
easily and without due question in the explanations of its Central Asia
policy offered by the Russian Foreign Office. He feared that unless
precautions were taken Great Britain would suddenly find herself in
a position of great political and strategic disadvantage. These views
were fully shared by Salisbury and Lytton. Nor was this surprising.
Of recent years Russian conduct had been most ambiguous. In
January, 1873, for instance, Schuvaloff, who had been sent on a
1 Cf. Lady Betty Balfour, Lytton's Indian Administration, p. 10.
2 Cf. Yakub's statements to Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, il, 247.
3 Kaufmann to Sher 'Ali, 28 March, 1870 (Parl. Papers, 1881, XCVIII, 335).
• Dispatch to Argyll, 24 June, 1870 (Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 633).
5 Parl, Papers, 1881, XCVII, 343.
• Cf. telegram to Salisbury, 16 September, 1876 (Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 533).
## p. 413 (#451) ############################################
RUSSIAN ADVANCES
413
special mission to England, was assuring Granville that he might
safely assure parliament that the emperor had issued positive orders
against the occupation of Khiva. 1 Within a year Granville was com-
plaining that Khiva had become a Russian province under a most
thinly disguised protectorate. His remonstrances 3 produced a de-
claration in March, 1874, that no expeditions were contemplated
against the Tekke Turkomans, and that the emperor had peremptorily
forbidden such a measure. On 10 May following General Lomakin
was appointed military governor of a new southern province and
promptly issued a circular to all the Turkoman tribes in that area
claiming supreme authority over them. The imperial government
asserted that the circular had been misunderstood. 5 Just before
Lytton set out for India the Russian ambassador conveyed to him the
curious suggestion that Great Britain and Russia should unite to
disarm the Muslim states of Central Asia. A little earlier Kaufmann
had been lamenting the hostility of Muslim opinion against Russian
administration.
Meanwhile Kaufmann's correspondence with Sher 'Ali had in-
creased rapidly. Lytton called attention to the fact that whereas the
amir had at first sought the advice of the British Government con-
cerning the replies which should be sent to Kaufmann's letters, he
now had ceased to do so and was reported to be holding secret con-
ferences with the bearers. ? The British Foreign Office therefore sought
from St Petersburg “a written disclaimer of any intention on their
part to negotiate treaties with Sher 'Ali without the consent of Her
Majesty's Government”. 8 St Petersburg declared with great em-
phasis that Kaufmann's letters were merely complimentary. ' But
Salisbury found it difficult to accept these assurances, and asked that
the correspondence might be wholly discontinued. 10 The Russian
Government tacitly refused this request. 11 The Government of India
thus summed up the position:
9
The messages from General Kaufmann have not been despatched. . . only once
or twice a year. During the past year they have been incessant. The bearers of
them are regarded and treated by the amir as agents of the Russian government,
and on one pretext or another some person recognised by the Afghan government
as a Russian agent is now almost constantly at Kabul. We desire to submit to
your Lordship's consideration whether our own conduct would be viewed with
indifference by the cabinet of St Petersburg were the Government of India to
open similarly friendly relations with the Khans of Khiva and Bokhara. 12
i Granville to Loftus, 8 January, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 706).
· Fitzmaurice, op. cil. II, 409, 411.
3 Parl. Papers, 1874, Lxxvi, 176.
• Idem, 1878, Lxxx, 466.
5 Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 338; Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 474, 475.
& Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 33.
: Dispatch to Salisbury, 18 September, 1876 (Parl. Papers, 1878, 'xxx, 537).
8 Derby to Loftus, 2 October, 1876 (idem, 534).
• Loftus to Derby, 15 November, 1876 (idem, 543; cf. 549).
19 Salisbury to Derby, 27 January, 1877 (idem, 553).
11 De Giers to Loftus, 5 March, 1877 (idem, 559).
1: Dispatch to Salisbury, 3 May, 1877 (idem, 565).
7
## p. 414 (#452) ############################################
414
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
1
>
1
>
Considerations of this kind, then, occasioned a reversal of the policy
hitherto followed by the British Government towards the amir. Till
1874 that policy had been one of general inaction, of subsidies, smooth
words, and an amiable acceptance of Russian assurances. The amir
had wanted a definite agreement. Not getting it, he had inclined
towards Russia, and listened, or at all events seemed to listen, to
Russian overtures, either with a serious purpose of seeking external
support from Tashkent or in the hope of alarming the Government of
India into conceding what he wanted, or perhaps in the hope of being
able to balance himself between the two greai states-a policy de-
manding greater dexterity and more accurate information than the
amir could command. But the new cabinet at London with dis-
concerting abruptness resolved upon action. It took the view which
Lord Dufferin expressed so pointedly a few years later. “It would be
manifestly futile”, he wrote, “to base the safety of the North-Western
Frontier of India upon any understanding, stipulation, convention
or treaty with the imperial government. For this view Dufferin
assigned a specific reason.
"I do not mean to imply”, he continued, “that the emperor and his ministers
would wilfully violate their engagements; but the authority of the Russian execu-
tive is so slight, the control it exercises over its distant agents and military chiefs
is so unsteady, and its policy is so designedly tentative, while the forces which
stimulate the aggressive instincts of the nation are so constant, that little reliance
could be ultimately placed upon mere verbal guarantees. ”
Salisbury resolved to seek additional security in two directions-
by occupying a more commanding position on the Afghan frontier
itself, and by inducing the amir to accept British agents within his
territories. The first measure had been eagerly advocated and bitterly
opposed for a long time. Jacob, Rawlinson, Green and Frere had all
urged the need of occupying Quetta, in order to establish a post on
the further side of the hills, control the road to Kandahar, and threaten
the flank of any invader seeking to move through the Khyber or
Kurram Passes. Against these opinions was all the weight of
Lawrence's influence, still strong on the council of the governor-
general and the Council of India. But times had changed and
Lawrence's arguments had come to seem far less unanswerable than
before the advance of Russia. Despite the prolonged visits of elderly
gentlemen who “positively stamped about the room”,? Salisbury
approved the occupation of Quetta under the treaty signed with the
Khan of Kalat at the close of 1876. 3 These negotiations with Kalat
had two objects, the first was military, as indicated above. The second
was political. If the amir altogether refused to accept English agents,
the Kalat mission might be “the father of the Central Asian Mission
1 Dufferin to Salisbury, 16 March, 1880 (F. 0. 65-1099).
Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Salisbury, 11, 159.
3 Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 96 599.
## p. 415 (#453) ############################################
THE PROPOSED MISSION
415
>
a
of the future. The agent would reside. . . chiefly at Quetta. . . . He
would have leisure for collecting information from Candahar-Herat
-Cabul—and Balkh. . . . English rupees would try conclusions with
Russian roubles in the zenana and the divan". 1
In Salisbury's mind this political object was certainly the more
immediate matter. In Afghanistan the Government of India was
represented only by a Muslim agent who wrote (Salisbury thought)
exactly what the amir tells him”, and whose reports did not tally
with other reports received. ? The consequent uncertainty was much
more than a formal disadvantage. Early in 1875 the secretary of state
wrote to the governor-general, Northbrook, “It has the effect of
placing upon our frontier a thick covert, behind which any amount of
hostile intrigue and conspiracy may be masked. I agree with you in
thinking that a Russian advance upon India is a chimaera. But I am
by no means sure that an attempt to throw the Afghans upon us is so
improbable”. : He therefore directed measures to obtain the estab-
lishment of a British agent at Herat, where the amir had already
expressed his readiness to receive one.
This decision was at once criticised on the ground that Sher 'Ali
had never given any formal promise to this effect. But Salisbury did
not assert that he had, and Northbrook himself had to admit that the
amir had “appeared to consent" on condition of the agreement which
had been refused him at Simla. However, he pleaded that the
measure was needless, the time inopportune, and the probable con-
sequence war. ? Salisbury replied in a long and closely reasoned
dispatch. The undoubted conflict between the declared policy of the
Russian Government and the actual conduct of its frontier officials
made absolute the need of speedy and accurate information. “The
case is quite conceivable in which Her Majesty's Government may
be able, by early diplomatic action, to arrest proceedings on the
frontier which a few weeks, or even days later, will have passed beyond
the power even of the government of St Petersburg to control. ” His
orders were therefore to be carried into effect. 8 Northbrook resigned
rather than obey, and Lytton was then appointed governor-general.
He carried with him instructions to send a mission to the amir by way
of Quetta and Kandahar to obtain Sher 'Ali's assent to the establish-
ment of a permanent mission. In return the amir might be conceded
the terms which he had asked for in 1873. 8
After overcoming opposition within his council,10 Lytton broached
· Salisbury to Lytton, 22 August, 1876 (Lady G. Cecil, op. cit. 11, 74).
• Salisbury to Disraeli, 2 January, 1875 (idem, 11, 71).
• Salisbury to Northbrook, 19 February, 1875 (idem).
• Same to same, 22 January, 1875 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 502).
• Northbrook to Salisbury, 20 May, 1875 (Mallet, Northbrook, pp. 101 599. ).
• Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 503.
? Mallet, op. cit. p. 105.
& Dispatch to Government of India, 19 November, 1875 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 521).
• Dispatch to the governor-general, 28 February, 1876, and encl. (idem, 530).
10 Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 64 599.
.
## p. 416 (#454) ############################################
416
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
the reception of the special temporary mission to the amir. This was
declined, but an Afghan envoy was sent to discuss matters with the
British authorities at Peshawar. The negotiations, protracted by re-
ferences to Kabul, lasted from October, 1876, till March, 1877, and
ended in complete failure. " It has been usual to lay the blame for this
upon the policy of Salisbury, and no doubt Salisbury's policy was
foredoomed to failure. What Sher 'Ali would have conceded in 1873
he would not grant in 1876. But unless it is argued that British
influence in Afghanistan was worthless, greater blame attaches to
Argyll for throwing away the golden opportunity of 1873 than to
Salisbury for seeking to retrieve his predecessor's error. European
affairs were moving to a crisis. A continuation of the policy of
quiescence would permit Russia to strengthen her growing influence
over the amir and thereby greatly to increase her power of hampering
British foreign policy. European conditions required that Sher 'Ali
should make an open choice between British and Russian friendship,
for, if he was not a friend to Great Britain, he was a dangerous
potential enemy. “A tool in the hands of Russia”, Lytton said, “I will
never allow him to become. Such a tool it would be my duty to break
before it could be used. "'2
In Europe the Balkan troubles had given rise to a situation of
exceptional anxicty and strain. In 1875 a rebellion had broken out
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading in 1877 to the Russo-Turkish
War. These events intensified the antagonism of Anglo-Russian rela-
tions. For a year and more after the outbreak of the war a conflict
between the two great powers was by many thought inevitable. Both
sought every means within their reach to limit and control the action
of the other. On the one side the British occupied Quetta in 1877,
and on the other, as British hostility developed to the treaty of San
Stefano, and when Indian troops were dispatched to Malta, the
governor-general of Turkestan sought a specific alliance with the amir
of Afghanistan and initiated a military movement in the direction of
India. In the circumstances of the time nothing less could have been
expected. But the episode also indicated clearly what had been the
underlying motive of Russian policy in Central Asia for the previous
quarter of a century.
The Peshawar discussions had led nowhere. The main reason which
Sher 'Ali had alleged for refusing to receive an English mission had
been that acceptance would prevent his refusing to accept a Russian
mission. His argument proves how much ground had been lost by
1876, for it shows that he had come to regard the Russians and the
British as on an equal footing.
Throughout this period, under the influence of John Lawrence, the
Government of India pursued that policy of inactivity which some
have called “masterly”, 2 although in truth it consisted merely in
waiting upon events. Upon the generation that had witnessed the
Indian Mutiny, Lawrence's vigour of character and singleness of
purpose produced a remarkable effect. His opinions were accepted
as oracles, and men forgot or ignored the fallibility of his judgment.
Even Lord Salisbury, during his first tenure of the India Office as
Lord Cranborne in 1866–7, “whole-heartedly” approved Lawrence's
ideas of Afghan policy. 3 Lawrence had always disliked the idea of
alliance with the ruler of Afghanistan. Both before and after Dost
Muhammad's death he had done his utmost to prevent the govern-
ment from taking any part in Afghan politics, on the score that the
British could not make a true friend of the amir. But his views (as
Dalhousie observed with customary incisiveness) were based on the
fallacy that the Afghans were too foolish to recognise their own in-
terests. Accordingly as Sher 'Ali, and then Afzal Khan, and then
Azim Khan, and then Sher ’Ali once more, succeeded in establishing
themselves as successive rulers of Kabul, the Indian Government was
content with recognising each in turn. Thrice in 1866 Sher 'Ali asked
for English help. Afzal Khan did the same. Lawrence, then governor-
general, ignored the former's letters and bluntly told the latter that if
he could solidly establish his power he might hope to be received into
the English alliance. 6
This policy was the belated result of the old dogma of non-inter-
vention which in India had produced little but undesired and un-
expected war. Nor had it here even the excuse which it had had in
regard to the Indian states. From the time of Wellesley onwards the
Indian states had been dominated by the power of the Company, and
in them rival claimants could not turn from the great power which
refused assistance to any other great and neighbouring power. But
the Afghan rivals could and did. They applied to Russia and to Persia
for help,” as might have been foreseen. The policy of inactivity was
brought at once to a hasty end, and Lawrence advised that foreign
assistance should at once be countered by a supply of money and arms
to the side not leaning on Persian or Russian support. 8 When the
home government gave him a free hand in the matter, he did not
9
1 Abd-ur-rahman, Autobiography, 1, 63. 2 Cf. Wylly, op. cit. p. 115.
: Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Lord Salisbury, 1, 206.
· Bosworth Smith, op. cit. I, 450.
6 Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 239.
& Wylly; op. cit. pp. 76, 45.
? Idem, pp. 103 399;
8 Dispatch, 3 September, 1867 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 392).
• Dispatch, 26 December, 1867 (idem, 398).
## p. 407 (#445) ############################################
RUSSIAN EXPANSION
407
even wait for the contingency to arise, but at once subsidised Sher 'Ali,
who with this help speedily made an end of the remaining resistance
to his authority.
But great harm had been done. Abd-ur-rahman, for instance, on
being driven out of Afghanistan by his uncle, Sher 'Ali, hesitated for
a moment whether to seek shelter with the Russians or the English;
but as he “had never seen the benefit of English friendship”, he
chose the Russians. Sher 'Ali himself declared that “the English look
to nothing but their own interests and bide their time”. 2 The force
of these views was strengthened by the contemporary contrast between
English and Russian policy. To the south-east of the Russian provinces
lay four khanates—Khokand, Bokhara, Khiva and Samarkand
with vague, undefined frontiers, separated from their northern neigh-
bour by considerable stretches of desert. At the time of the first
Afghan War, some Russian activity had developed in this area, but
the understanding of 1844 had brought it completely to an end. No
relations had been maintained with the khanates; and it is at least
highly probable that the sudden change which occurred in 1858 was
produced more by political motives than by the supposed necessity
of imposing order on barbarous neighbours. In that year a mission
of enquiry, accompanied by a large body of topographers, was
dispatched under Ignatieff, to collect information about military
conditions, roads, and means of transport. The khanates had fallen
away greatly from their old greatness. They still abounded in schools;
but the studies pursued in them were the mere repetition of past and
obsolete knowledge. They were poorer, less populous, more fanatical.
The people of Samarkand believed that no infidel enemy could survive
polluting with his feet ground so hallowed by the dust of the blessed. "
But the withering of their rivers had dried up their wealth, weakened
their governments, and exhausted their man-power.
In these circumstances their absorption by the Russian Empire was
as nearly a natural process as anything political can be. In govern-
ment, in socialorganisation, in religion Russia was essentially Oriental.
In power and functions the emperor at St Petersburg was a cousin of
the Oriental monarchs. Apart from him and the functionaries who
répresented him there was only the active local life of the villages, and
the Orthodox Church was the one branch of Christianity which had
not been occidentalised. Russian predominance would involve no
violent change, and its establishment would be nothing more than a
new illustration of that everlasting ebb and flow of power which has
characterised the Eastern world. This expansion began shortly after
the Crimean War. In 1864 Russian authority touched the borders of
1 Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. 1, 111.
2 Rawlinson, England and Russia, p. 303.
· Vambéry, Central Asia, p. 235.
Vambéry, Western Culture in Eastern Lands, p. 48.
o Cf. Vambéry, Central Asia, pp. 36–7, 231.
## p. 408 (#446) ############################################
408
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
Khokand, Bokhara, and Khiva. In the next year Tashkent was
occupied. In 1867 the new province of Russian Turkestan was con-
stituted, with Kaufmann as its first governor-general. In the same
year Bokhara was reduced, after sending a desperate appeal for help
to the governor-general of India, John Lawrence, and became a
subsidiary ally of the emperor. In 1873 Khiva submitted, placing in
the hands of Russia the management of all its external relations. The
administration established to manage these new possessions and
control these new dependencies was purely military, and all reports
went to the War Office at St Petersburg. 3
The motives of this expa:asion were complex. There were in the first
place the difficulties perpetually arising with semi-civilised, mis-
governed neighbours, who would think nothing of pillaging a caravan
and reducing the merchants to slavery. All the evidence agrees that
the Turkoman tribes were false, greedy, envious, ferocious. Russian
diplomatists were always ready with this explanation, hinting that
Russian expansion in Central Asia was in all respects similar to British
expansion in India—a parallel which liberal opinion in England was
ever ready to accept. Military organisation, too, made for expansion.
Military governors could not look for rewards and promotion by
a peaceful administration. In 1869 Kaufmann's appointment as
governor-general was defended by Prince Gortchakoff expressly on
the ground that he had already gained every honour that a Russian
general could hope for. 5 But this was not all. There was another yet
more powerful reason for expansion. It was designed in the political
interests of Russia. “Great historical lessons", ran the instructions of
the new ambassador, Baron de Staal, appointed to London in 1884,
have taught us that we cannot count on the friendship of England, and that she
can strike at us by means of continental alliances while we cannot reach her any-
where. No great nation can accept such a position. In order to escape from it the
emperor Alexander II, of everlasting memory, ordered our expansion in Central
Asia, leading us to occupy to-day in Turkestan and the Turkestan steppes a
military position strong enough to keep England in check by the threat of inter-
vention in India.
This position had been prepared, though not completed, while
Lawrence was still pursuing his policy of inaction, and demanding
that the Russian question should be solved by coming to an agreement
in Europe instead of by securing advanced positions in Asia. He
seems wholly to have ignored the point that unless England could
entrench herself so strongly in Central Asia as to convince Russia of
the futility of movements in that direction an agreement in Europe
could only be reached by subordinating English to Russian interests
on the continent.
1 Wylly, op. cit. p. 92; cf. Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 397.
2 Treaty, 12 August, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1874, LXXVI, 171).
3 Boulger, Central Asian Questions, p. 14. • Cf. Curzon, Russia in Asia, p. 118.
6 Clarendon to Buchanan, 3 S:ptember, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 727).
• Meyendorff, Correspondance diplomatique du Baron de Staal, 1, 26.
## p. 409 (#447) ############################################
DIPLOMATIC DISCUSSIONS
409
The Russian advance had led to diplomatic discussions, directed
on the British side towards re-establishing some such neutral zone
between the empires as had existed from the Afghan to the Crimean
wars. At this later period the most acute English students of the
Central Asian question urged that the Oxus should be taken as the
ultimate dividing line of the respective spheres of interest. " But this
was a position which Russia could not now be induced to accept. She
claimed exclusive and complete control down to the northern bank
of that river and was only ready to discuss the establishment of a
neutral zone provided it began appreciably beyond that point. When
therefore Clarendon initiated discussions with Gortchakoff in 1869,
the emperor declared the idea of a neutral zone to be highly pleasing,
but the dispatch announcing this pointed to Afghanistan as an appro-
priate neutral zone. After consulting the India Office, Clarendon
replied “that Afghanistan would not fulfil those conditions of a
neutral territory that it was the object of the two governments to
establish, as the frontiers were ill-defined". 3 This feeble answer,
which gave away a considerable part of the British case, led to a
discussion of the alignment of the northern Afghan frontier and an
agreement early in 1873 by which Russia virtually gained her point
at the trifling cost of admitting Badakshan and Wakhan to form part
of the Afghan kingdom. 4 The Russian policy now was to advance up
to the effective borders of Afghanistan, and to get rid altogether of
uncontrolled or unoccupied territory in that area. This plan was
supported both by political motives and by sound administrative
principle. As Brunnow pointed out to Clarendon, neutrality as under-
stood in Europe could not be applied to Asia. The chiefs and peoples
of Central Asia cared nothing for the international law of Europe,
and neutralisation would merely become un brevet d'impunité. Bokhara
and Khiva were mere robber-states, and could not hope for such
protection as in Europe covered states like Belgium and Switzerland. 5
All that was really obtained was an admission that Russia regarded
Afghanistan as beyond her sphere of interest.
Meanwhile various endeavours had been made to remove the
unfavourable impressions produced upon Sher 'Ali by Lawrence's
policy, which, even before Lawrence's retirement from the governor-
generalship in 1869, was already recognised by its author as inade-
quate. As has been seen, Lawrence at last decided to give Sher 'Ali
material help, and in 1868 offered to meet the amir and discuss with
him the political situation. This meeting never took place; but in
i Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 311.
? Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 7 March, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 720).
3 Clarendon to Rumbold, 17 April, 1869 (idem, 722).
• Gortchakoff to Brunnow, 31 January, 1873 (idem, 709); cf. Granville to Gladstone,
30 September, 1873 (Fitzmaurice, op. cit. 11, 413).
"Brunnow to Gortchakoff, 17 April, 1869 (Legation Archives, xxın).
• Lawrence to Northcote, 10 October 1868 (Bosworth Smith, op. cit. II, 401).
## p. 410 (#448) ############################################
410
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
March, 1869, Lawrence's successor, Lord Mayo, met the amir at
Ambala. Many English writers have chosen to represent this con-
ference as a great success, 1 at which the savage chief was deeply
impressed by the disinterested generosity of the British Government.
But Sher 'Ali was seeking two advantages, for which he would have
conceded a good deal. He desired an alliance with the British to bind
them to support him against external attack, and he desired a promise
that the British would never acknowledge “any friend in the whole of
Afghanistan save the amir and his descendants". 2 Instead of any
such specific agreement, he could only extract a letter in which Mayo
said that the Governmentof India would“view with severe displeasure
any attempts on the part of your rivals to disturb your position", and
that it would “further endeavour. . . to strengthen the government of
Your Highness”. 3 These encouraging but non-committal statements
were too reminiscent of the government's attitude during the late wars
of succession to permit the amir to rely overmuch upon them.
A considerable impression was made upon him by Mayo's personal
charm, fine presence, and winning manners; the tone of the governor-
;
general was more friendly; but the policy of the government had not
yet changed in any material respect.
Though disappointed in 1869, Sher 'Ali was constrained by circum-
stances to make one more trial of the English Government. The
absorption of the khanates on the Oxus was full of warning. Early
in 1873 he told the English vakil at Kabul, that the advance of the
Russian boundary gave him great anxiety that weighed upon him day
and night and that therefore he proposed to send one of his agents
to wait upon the governor-general and ascertain his views. 4 This
proposal led to the conference held at Simla in the following July.
The envoy asked that a written assurance might be given to him to the effect
that if Russia, or any state of Turkestan or elsewhere under Russian influence,
should commit an aggression on the amir's territories, or should otherwise annoy
the amir, the British government would consider such aggressor an enemy, and
that they could promise to afford to the amir promptly such assistance in money
and arms as might be required until the danger should be past or invasion repelled.
Also that if the amir should be unable to cope single-handed with the invader,
that the British government should promptly despatch a force to his assistance by
whatever route the amir might require the same. 5
In view of this request and the general situation, the governor-general,
Lord Northbrook, proposed “assuring him that if he unreservedly
accepts and acts on our advice in all external relations, we will help
him with money, arms and troops if necessary to expel unprovoked
invasion. We to be the judgcof the necessity”. This policy, if adopted,
1 E. g. Hunter, Life of Lord Mayo, 1, 262.
2 Mayo to Argyll, 1 July, 1869 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 466).
8 Mayo to Sher 'Ali, 31 March, 1869 (idem, 464).
* Agent, Kabul, to Commissioner, Peshawar, 14 April, 1873 (idem, 647).
6 Memorandum of conversation, 19 and 20 July, 1873 (idem, 675).
6 Telegram to the secretary of state, 24 July, 1873 (idem, 482).
6
## p. 411 (#449) ############################################
ARGYLL'S MISMANAGEMENT
411
a
might have proved decisive in the development of the Central Asian
question. Its rejection was as decisive as its adoption might have been.
The Duke of Argyll at the India Office, and a majority of the Council
of India, were convinced adherents of the Lawrence policy. Mr Glad-
stone's first cabinet, then in office, combined a detestation of Russian
government with a curious tolerance of its expansion. It was, therefore,
resolved to reject Northbrook's proposal, on the ground that the amir
had no real cause for alarm, and to limit the governor-general's
assurances to a declaration that “we shall maintain our settled policy
a
in Afghanistan". 1 This decision was well-meant. But its authors
lacked imagination to perceive that it could not appear reassuring to
Sher 'Ali. To him it could mean nothing but a continuation of the
Lawrence policy of helping those who no longer needed assistance.
This criticism which Cranbrook passed in 1878 on his predecessor's
management of the situation seems amply justified. 2
The ill-effects produced by the abortive Simla conference were
emphasised by two other occurrences. The Government of India had
undertaken the thankless task of arbitrating on the boundary claims
of the Persians and Afghans in Seistan. This was a most ill-advised
measure. It may have been desirable that a long-standing subject of
dispute between the two states should be removed. But the more
equitable the decision, the more certain would it be to irritate both
the shah and the amir, for each would feel that his interests had been
neglected. At a moment when the influence of Russia was visibly
waxing, the Government of India would have done well to avoid
needless causes of friction between itself and its Western neighbour.
But the arbitration was held; the decision went in some details against
Afghanistan; and both sides resented British impartiality as a sub-
stantial measure of injustice.
Worse still, Sher 'Ali installed one of his sons, Abdullah Jan, as heir
apparent, in supersession of an elder son, Yakub, who, according to
the Afghan custom, was rebelling against his father. When this
selection was communicated to the Government of India, the answer
was "designedly couched, as nearly as circumstances admit, in the
same language as that in which in 1858 the Punjab Government were
instructed to reply to the letter from Dost Mahomed Khan intimating
the selection of Shere Ali as heir apparent”. 5 Perhaps the government
was wise to desire not to commit itself to the support of a future
claimant who might prove to be incapable. But it blundered in
suggesting to Sher Ali that his favourite son could look for no greater
assistance than he himself had received before imprisonment, death
or exile had freed him from his own rivals.
1 Telegram to Nore: brook, 26 July, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 482). • Idem, 636.
• Cf. Sir F. J. Golasmid, Eastern Persia, 2 vols. 1876; Parl. Papers, 1868–9, XLVI, 483-6.
The original reports are in F. O. 60--392, 393.
• Cf. Encyclopaedia of Islam, s. v. Abdur-rahman.
5 Dispatch to Argyll, 23 January, 1874 (Parl. Papers, 1868–9, XLVI, 491).
## p. 412 (#450) ############################################
412
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
Disappointed alike by the complaisance with which the British
Government seemed to regard the Russian advance, by the lack of
special favour shown by the Seistan decision, and by the refusal to
recognise Abdullah Jan as the future amir, Sher 'Ali naturally, if
imprudently, concluded that he must make his own terms with
Russia; and circumstances conspired not only to assist him in doing
so but also to deprive him of Russian help as soon as he had committed
himself to Russia. The Russians met him more than half
way.
Afghanistan might lie outside the sphere of Russian interests; but it
had become a neighbour of the Russian Empire; and intercourse
could easily be explained away as a mere matter of frontier courtesy.
So at first it was. In 1870 Kaufmann, the governor-general of
Russian Turkestan, informed Sher 'Ali that, although his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman had taken refuge in Tashkent, he would receive no
assistance to wage war against his uncle. 3 This letter on its receipt
was forwarded by Sher 'Ali to the Government of India, which in
answer cited “the repeated assurances we have received from the
Russian Government” and suggested that Kaufmann's letters "will
doubtless be, when rightly viewed, a source of satisfaction and an
additional ground of confidence". 4 When Sher 'Ali announced the
nomination of Abdullah Jan, the Russian answered much more tact-
fully than the English governor-general, that "such nominations tend
to the comfort and tranquillity of the kingdom”. 5 From 1875 the
interchange of letters became more frequent. Such as transpired were
letters of compliment. But it was disquieting to watch the coming and
going of the bearers without any real knowledge of what was passing
behind the scenes. 6
Moreover from 1874 these political events were being watched with
greater jealousy and suspicion. In that year Gladstone's cabinet was
succeeded by Disraeli's, Salisbury displaced Argyll at the India Office,
and before long Lytton succeeded Northbrook as governor-general.
The change involved a sharp swing of foreign policy both in Europe
and in Asia. Disraeli was convinced that the late cabinet had lowered
the influence of Great Britain in the world, especially by acquiescing
easily and without due question in the explanations of its Central Asia
policy offered by the Russian Foreign Office. He feared that unless
precautions were taken Great Britain would suddenly find herself in
a position of great political and strategic disadvantage. These views
were fully shared by Salisbury and Lytton. Nor was this surprising.
Of recent years Russian conduct had been most ambiguous. In
January, 1873, for instance, Schuvaloff, who had been sent on a
1 Cf. Lady Betty Balfour, Lytton's Indian Administration, p. 10.
2 Cf. Yakub's statements to Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, il, 247.
3 Kaufmann to Sher 'Ali, 28 March, 1870 (Parl. Papers, 1881, XCVIII, 335).
• Dispatch to Argyll, 24 June, 1870 (Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 633).
5 Parl, Papers, 1881, XCVII, 343.
• Cf. telegram to Salisbury, 16 September, 1876 (Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 533).
## p. 413 (#451) ############################################
RUSSIAN ADVANCES
413
special mission to England, was assuring Granville that he might
safely assure parliament that the emperor had issued positive orders
against the occupation of Khiva. 1 Within a year Granville was com-
plaining that Khiva had become a Russian province under a most
thinly disguised protectorate. His remonstrances 3 produced a de-
claration in March, 1874, that no expeditions were contemplated
against the Tekke Turkomans, and that the emperor had peremptorily
forbidden such a measure. On 10 May following General Lomakin
was appointed military governor of a new southern province and
promptly issued a circular to all the Turkoman tribes in that area
claiming supreme authority over them. The imperial government
asserted that the circular had been misunderstood. 5 Just before
Lytton set out for India the Russian ambassador conveyed to him the
curious suggestion that Great Britain and Russia should unite to
disarm the Muslim states of Central Asia. A little earlier Kaufmann
had been lamenting the hostility of Muslim opinion against Russian
administration.
Meanwhile Kaufmann's correspondence with Sher 'Ali had in-
creased rapidly. Lytton called attention to the fact that whereas the
amir had at first sought the advice of the British Government con-
cerning the replies which should be sent to Kaufmann's letters, he
now had ceased to do so and was reported to be holding secret con-
ferences with the bearers. ? The British Foreign Office therefore sought
from St Petersburg “a written disclaimer of any intention on their
part to negotiate treaties with Sher 'Ali without the consent of Her
Majesty's Government”. 8 St Petersburg declared with great em-
phasis that Kaufmann's letters were merely complimentary. ' But
Salisbury found it difficult to accept these assurances, and asked that
the correspondence might be wholly discontinued. 10 The Russian
Government tacitly refused this request. 11 The Government of India
thus summed up the position:
9
The messages from General Kaufmann have not been despatched. . . only once
or twice a year. During the past year they have been incessant. The bearers of
them are regarded and treated by the amir as agents of the Russian government,
and on one pretext or another some person recognised by the Afghan government
as a Russian agent is now almost constantly at Kabul. We desire to submit to
your Lordship's consideration whether our own conduct would be viewed with
indifference by the cabinet of St Petersburg were the Government of India to
open similarly friendly relations with the Khans of Khiva and Bokhara. 12
i Granville to Loftus, 8 January, 1873 (Parl. Papers, 1873, LXXV, 706).
· Fitzmaurice, op. cil. II, 409, 411.
3 Parl. Papers, 1874, Lxxvi, 176.
• Idem, 1878, Lxxx, 466.
5 Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 338; Parl. Papers, 1878, LXXX, 474, 475.
& Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. p. 33.
: Dispatch to Salisbury, 18 September, 1876 (Parl. Papers, 1878, 'xxx, 537).
8 Derby to Loftus, 2 October, 1876 (idem, 534).
• Loftus to Derby, 15 November, 1876 (idem, 543; cf. 549).
19 Salisbury to Derby, 27 January, 1877 (idem, 553).
11 De Giers to Loftus, 5 March, 1877 (idem, 559).
1: Dispatch to Salisbury, 3 May, 1877 (idem, 565).
7
## p. 414 (#452) ############################################
414
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
1
>
1
>
Considerations of this kind, then, occasioned a reversal of the policy
hitherto followed by the British Government towards the amir. Till
1874 that policy had been one of general inaction, of subsidies, smooth
words, and an amiable acceptance of Russian assurances. The amir
had wanted a definite agreement. Not getting it, he had inclined
towards Russia, and listened, or at all events seemed to listen, to
Russian overtures, either with a serious purpose of seeking external
support from Tashkent or in the hope of alarming the Government of
India into conceding what he wanted, or perhaps in the hope of being
able to balance himself between the two greai states-a policy de-
manding greater dexterity and more accurate information than the
amir could command. But the new cabinet at London with dis-
concerting abruptness resolved upon action. It took the view which
Lord Dufferin expressed so pointedly a few years later. “It would be
manifestly futile”, he wrote, “to base the safety of the North-Western
Frontier of India upon any understanding, stipulation, convention
or treaty with the imperial government. For this view Dufferin
assigned a specific reason.
"I do not mean to imply”, he continued, “that the emperor and his ministers
would wilfully violate their engagements; but the authority of the Russian execu-
tive is so slight, the control it exercises over its distant agents and military chiefs
is so unsteady, and its policy is so designedly tentative, while the forces which
stimulate the aggressive instincts of the nation are so constant, that little reliance
could be ultimately placed upon mere verbal guarantees. ”
Salisbury resolved to seek additional security in two directions-
by occupying a more commanding position on the Afghan frontier
itself, and by inducing the amir to accept British agents within his
territories. The first measure had been eagerly advocated and bitterly
opposed for a long time. Jacob, Rawlinson, Green and Frere had all
urged the need of occupying Quetta, in order to establish a post on
the further side of the hills, control the road to Kandahar, and threaten
the flank of any invader seeking to move through the Khyber or
Kurram Passes. Against these opinions was all the weight of
Lawrence's influence, still strong on the council of the governor-
general and the Council of India. But times had changed and
Lawrence's arguments had come to seem far less unanswerable than
before the advance of Russia. Despite the prolonged visits of elderly
gentlemen who “positively stamped about the room”,? Salisbury
approved the occupation of Quetta under the treaty signed with the
Khan of Kalat at the close of 1876. 3 These negotiations with Kalat
had two objects, the first was military, as indicated above. The second
was political. If the amir altogether refused to accept English agents,
the Kalat mission might be “the father of the Central Asian Mission
1 Dufferin to Salisbury, 16 March, 1880 (F. 0. 65-1099).
Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Salisbury, 11, 159.
3 Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 96 599.
## p. 415 (#453) ############################################
THE PROPOSED MISSION
415
>
a
of the future. The agent would reside. . . chiefly at Quetta. . . . He
would have leisure for collecting information from Candahar-Herat
-Cabul—and Balkh. . . . English rupees would try conclusions with
Russian roubles in the zenana and the divan". 1
In Salisbury's mind this political object was certainly the more
immediate matter. In Afghanistan the Government of India was
represented only by a Muslim agent who wrote (Salisbury thought)
exactly what the amir tells him”, and whose reports did not tally
with other reports received. ? The consequent uncertainty was much
more than a formal disadvantage. Early in 1875 the secretary of state
wrote to the governor-general, Northbrook, “It has the effect of
placing upon our frontier a thick covert, behind which any amount of
hostile intrigue and conspiracy may be masked. I agree with you in
thinking that a Russian advance upon India is a chimaera. But I am
by no means sure that an attempt to throw the Afghans upon us is so
improbable”. : He therefore directed measures to obtain the estab-
lishment of a British agent at Herat, where the amir had already
expressed his readiness to receive one.
This decision was at once criticised on the ground that Sher 'Ali
had never given any formal promise to this effect. But Salisbury did
not assert that he had, and Northbrook himself had to admit that the
amir had “appeared to consent" on condition of the agreement which
had been refused him at Simla. However, he pleaded that the
measure was needless, the time inopportune, and the probable con-
sequence war. ? Salisbury replied in a long and closely reasoned
dispatch. The undoubted conflict between the declared policy of the
Russian Government and the actual conduct of its frontier officials
made absolute the need of speedy and accurate information. “The
case is quite conceivable in which Her Majesty's Government may
be able, by early diplomatic action, to arrest proceedings on the
frontier which a few weeks, or even days later, will have passed beyond
the power even of the government of St Petersburg to control. ” His
orders were therefore to be carried into effect. 8 Northbrook resigned
rather than obey, and Lytton was then appointed governor-general.
He carried with him instructions to send a mission to the amir by way
of Quetta and Kandahar to obtain Sher 'Ali's assent to the establish-
ment of a permanent mission. In return the amir might be conceded
the terms which he had asked for in 1873. 8
After overcoming opposition within his council,10 Lytton broached
· Salisbury to Lytton, 22 August, 1876 (Lady G. Cecil, op. cit. 11, 74).
• Salisbury to Disraeli, 2 January, 1875 (idem, 11, 71).
• Salisbury to Northbrook, 19 February, 1875 (idem).
• Same to same, 22 January, 1875 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 502).
• Northbrook to Salisbury, 20 May, 1875 (Mallet, Northbrook, pp. 101 599. ).
• Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 503.
? Mallet, op. cit. p. 105.
& Dispatch to Government of India, 19 November, 1875 (Parl. Papers, 1878-9, LVI, 521).
• Dispatch to the governor-general, 28 February, 1876, and encl. (idem, 530).
10 Lady B. Balfour, op. cit. pp. 64 599.
.
## p. 416 (#454) ############################################
416
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
the reception of the special temporary mission to the amir. This was
declined, but an Afghan envoy was sent to discuss matters with the
British authorities at Peshawar. The negotiations, protracted by re-
ferences to Kabul, lasted from October, 1876, till March, 1877, and
ended in complete failure. " It has been usual to lay the blame for this
upon the policy of Salisbury, and no doubt Salisbury's policy was
foredoomed to failure. What Sher 'Ali would have conceded in 1873
he would not grant in 1876. But unless it is argued that British
influence in Afghanistan was worthless, greater blame attaches to
Argyll for throwing away the golden opportunity of 1873 than to
Salisbury for seeking to retrieve his predecessor's error. European
affairs were moving to a crisis. A continuation of the policy of
quiescence would permit Russia to strengthen her growing influence
over the amir and thereby greatly to increase her power of hampering
British foreign policy. European conditions required that Sher 'Ali
should make an open choice between British and Russian friendship,
for, if he was not a friend to Great Britain, he was a dangerous
potential enemy. “A tool in the hands of Russia”, Lytton said, “I will
never allow him to become. Such a tool it would be my duty to break
before it could be used. "'2
In Europe the Balkan troubles had given rise to a situation of
exceptional anxicty and strain. In 1875 a rebellion had broken out
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading in 1877 to the Russo-Turkish
War. These events intensified the antagonism of Anglo-Russian rela-
tions. For a year and more after the outbreak of the war a conflict
between the two great powers was by many thought inevitable. Both
sought every means within their reach to limit and control the action
of the other. On the one side the British occupied Quetta in 1877,
and on the other, as British hostility developed to the treaty of San
Stefano, and when Indian troops were dispatched to Malta, the
governor-general of Turkestan sought a specific alliance with the amir
of Afghanistan and initiated a military movement in the direction of
India. In the circumstances of the time nothing less could have been
expected. But the episode also indicated clearly what had been the
underlying motive of Russian policy in Central Asia for the previous
quarter of a century.
The Peshawar discussions had led nowhere. The main reason which
Sher 'Ali had alleged for refusing to receive an English mission had
been that acceptance would prevent his refusing to accept a Russian
mission. His argument proves how much ground had been lost by
1876, for it shows that he had come to regard the Russians and the
British as on an equal footing.
