6 Ignoring this protest, Dost Muham-
mad persisted in his attack, took the place in 1863, and died shortly
after at the age of eighty.
mad persisted in his attack, took the place in 1863, and died shortly
after at the age of eighty.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
The courts were con-
stratued to hold that a will might be oral and that a written will was
## p. 394 (#432) ############################################
394
LAW REFORM
valid without alteration; and there was further no probate procedure
or recognised limit to the powers of executors. The Succession Act
already referred to did not apply to the wills of Hindus, Muhamma-
dans or Buddhists. That omission was repaired by two of the very
few
statutes passed to alter or supplement the indigenous family laws of
the various religious communities. The Hindu Wills Act, 1870, and
the Probate Act, 1881, applied the essential provisions of the Succession
Act with appropriate amendments to the wills of Hindus and Buddhists
in Lower Bengal and the cities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The
latter provided for the application of those provisions to other tracts
in the discretion of the local government concerned; but this power
has been used only to an insignificant extent.
Other instances of legislative interference with family law in spite
of its quasi-religious foundation are afforded by the Freedom of
Religion Act, 1850, by which so much of any law or usage as affects
the right to property or to an inheritance by reason of change of
religion or loss of castc was made unenforceable; the Hindu Widow
Re-marriage Act, 1856, abrogating the law under which a widow
forfeited all rights over her deceased husband's estate on her re-
marriage; the Indian Majority Act, 1875, under which majority
occurs at the end of the eighteenth year instead of at the sixteenth
under Hindu or earlier under Muhammadan law; and the Age of
Consent Act, 1891, which in effect forbids consummation of marriage
before the wife has attained the age of twelve. It may be observed
that two recent enactments, the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, dealing
with the legality of a particular Sikh form of marriage and the
Muhammadan Wakf Validity Act, 1913, dealing with the law
applicable to Muhammadan religious institutions, are expressed, not
as modifying, but as declaring the existing unwritten law. There have
been no important modifications by the legislature of that law other
than those referred to; and only one unsuccessful attempt to alter it
by statute went far enough to call for mention. The Hindu Gains of
Learning Bill was intended to determine the existing obligation of a
member of a Hindu joint family, whose education has been assisted
in any degree by family funds, to account to the family for the addi-
tional earnings which that education enables him to make. The bill
was passed by the legislative council in Madras in 1900, but was
vetoed by the governor of the province, Sir Arthur Havelock, and has
not been brought forward again.
## p. 395 (#433) ############################################
CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
IN
N 1858 the government of India was transferred from the Company
to the crown, and after the suppression of the Mutiny the reorganisa-
tion of the military forces in India was the most urgent question before
the authorities. The viceroy, Lord Canning, at first favoured a system
advocated many years before by Sir Thomas Munro, of a large
European force enlisted for permanent service in India, but it was
finally decided that the European element should be provided by the
British Army, regiments and batteries being posted to India, as to
other places beyond the seas, for tours of foreign service.
The Company's European troops, now numbering over 15,000,
were transferred to the service of the crown, and the promulgation of
the decision raised protests and objections which were styled at the time
the White Mutiny. Both officers and men objected to the transfer of
their services without their wishes being consulted, and both were
insubordinate and disaffected. About 10,000 men claimed their dis-
charge, but a bounty offered to them, and a guarantee to the officers
of the pensions due to them under the Company's rules, allayed the
discontent, which need never have been aroused. One of the principal
grievances of the men was that many had made, and more, perhaps,
intended to make, India their home, and had married, or hoped to
marry, Indian or Eurasian wives whom they could not take to Europe.
The discontent of the officers is now less easy to understand, but it
was generally believed that though the “pagoda tree” could no
longer be shaken, the Company's service offered a better provision
than the royal service for a poor man, and the prospect of reduced
pay in a more expensive environment, and of less chance of extra
regimental employment, even when accompanied by the privilege
of serving for an Indian pension in their native climate, was not
welcomed by them. They had, however, the chance of remaining in
India with sepoy regiments, and of the officers of the two Bengal
Fusilier regiments considerably less than half volunteered to remain
with thosc regiments, now liable to tours of home service. 1
The corps of Bengal, Madras and Bombay artillery and engincers
were amalgamated with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers,
and the European infantry regiments, now, including those raised
during the Mutiny, nine in number, became regiments of the line,
numbered from 101 to 109.
Of the regular native army of Bengal the cavalry and artillery had
1 Innes, Bengal European Regiment, pp. 530-3.
## p. 396 (#434) ############################################
396
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
disappeared, and only eleven entire infantry regiments had remained
staunch. When the army was reconstituted nineteen irregular cavalry
regiments, some of which had been raised in the Mutiny, became the
Bengal cavalry, the eleven infantry regiments became the first eleven
of the line, next came two irregular regiments, then two Sikh regi-
ments, then two regiments formed from the faithful remnants of
regiments which had mutinied, then a military police battalion, then
fourteen irregular regiments of the Panjab, but not of the frontier
force, and the number of the line regiments of the Bengal army was
brought up to forty-nine by seventeen irregular regiments raised
during or after the Mutiny. Numbered separately from the line were
four regiments of Gurkhas, forming part of the Bengal army, and a
fifth, a unit of the Panjab frontier force. The three presidency armies
were reorganised on what was inaccurately termed the irregular
system, which had been advocated by Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John
Malcolm. It differed from the regular system only in the number of
British officers attached to a regiment of cavalry or battalion of
infantry. Under the regular system they commanded troops and
companies; under the irregular system they acted only as field and
regimental staff officers. In the Mutiny the irregular regiments had
proved, at least equal to the regulars, for they had been commanded
by younger men, and native troop and company officers, entrusted
with responsibility, had risen to the occasion. Henceforth troops of
cavalry and companies of infantry were commanded by native
officers. In the cavalry British officers commanded squadrons, and
in the infantry “wings”, or half-battalions. The regimental staff was
British, but the adjutant was assisted by a Jamadar-adjutant, in the
cavalry styled “Woordi-major", and British squadron and wing
officers assisted the squadron and wing commanders, and took their
places when they were absent on leave.
In order to render service with native troops more attractive the
appointments held by British officers in native regiments were treated
as staff appointments, and carried allowances, as well as pay of rank.
The officers on each of the three presidency establishments were
graded in a Staff Corps, recruited from the Company's and the queen's
services. There remained, in each presidency, two small bodies of
officers besides the Staff Corps, the first consisting of officers of the
pre-Mutiny armies and the second of officers who had received com-
missions since the outbreak of the Mutiny, who did not wish to join
the Staff Corps. These two bodies were known as the Local List and
the General List, the former, in Bengal, being stylcd the “lucky
Locals”, because, being promoted in the cadres of regiments which had
mutinied and murdered many of their officers, they were able to
retire on a full pension at a comparatively carly age. Promotion in
the General List and in the Staff Corps was fixed on a time-scale.
After twelve years' service, reduced afterwards to eleven, and later to
و
a
## p. 397 (#435) ############################################
PRESIDENCY ARMIES
397
a
nine, an officer became a captain; after twenty, reduced afterwards
to eighreen, a major; after twenty-six a lieutenant-colonel; and after
thirty-one a colonel; but officers in civil and political employ were
afterwards very properly debarred from rising above the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. The Company's military college at Addiscombe
was closed, and new appointments to the Staff Corps were made only
from British regiments. At a later date those examined for entrance
to Sandhurst competed for commissions in the Indian Army, and on
leaving the college were placed on an Unattached List, and, as had
been recommended by Munro, were attached for a year to British
regiments serving in India, before being posted to native regiments.
The establishment of each Staff Corps was calculated to provide
the number of officers required for service with native regiments, on
the staff and in army departments, and in civil and political employ,
and the establishments of presidency armies and local forces were
fixed as follows: Bengal army, nineteen cavalry and furty-nine infantry
regiments; Madras army, four cavalry and forty infantry regiments;
Bombay army, seven cavalry and thirty infantry regiments, and two
batteries of artillery; Panjab frontier force, six cavalry and twelve
infantry regiments, and five mountain batteries; local irregular corps,
two cavalry and five infantry regiments; Hyderabad contingent, four
cavalry and six infantry regiments, and four field batteries. When the
reductions were complete the forces in India amounted to 65,000
British and 140,000 native troops.
The uniform of the regular native armies, simple at first, had
gradually been assimilated in style and cut to that of British troops,
and had become most unsuitable to the Indian climate, but after the
Mutiny it was much modified. The shako and the Kilmarnock cap
were discarded in favour of the turban, and long, closely fitting
trousers in favour of wide breeches, or knickerbockers, and puttees,
approaching the Indian rather than the European style of dress.
After the second Afghan War, which broke out in 1878," and
severely taxed India's military resources and organisation, many
reforms were carried out, and in 1885, when the Panjdeh incident
presaged the possibility of war with Russia, it became necessary to
prepare the army in India to meet a European enemy. The British
force in the country was increased by 10,600 men, bringing its
strength to 73,500, and substantial additions to the Bengal and
Bombay armies brought the numbers of the native troops up to
154,000.
Until the Mutiny military officers in civil or political employ had
been retained on the establishments of their regiments, unjustly
blocking the promotion of those who remained with the colours, and
an officer had been permitted to rejoin the regiment when it was
ordered on active service, or when the officer in question succeeded,
· Cf. pp. 417 sqq. , infra.
• Cf. pp. 424-5, infra.
## p. 398 (#436) ############################################
398
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
by seniority, to the command. After the Mutiny, when British officers
were graded, according to length of service, in the three presidency
Staff Corps, an officer transferred to civil or political employ was no
longer borne on the strength of a regiment, but he retained the right
of reverting, when he wished, to military employ, and of promotion,
by seniority, to the rank of general officer, and at the age of fifty-five,
when he was considered too old for civil or political duties, his services
were replaced at the disposal of the commander-in-chief of the
presidency to which he belonged, and he was eligible for appointment
to an important command. This practice of allowing officers to return
to military duty after long periods of absence in civil or political
employ was most injurious to the efficiency of the service, owing to
their inevitable incompetence. This was less noticeable before the
introduction of arms of precision and rapid fire, but even in the days .
of Dundas's Manæuvres and the flint-lock musket it was already
apparent. Sir John Malcolm behaved gallantly at the battle of
Mahidpur, but his behaviour was that of a cornet of horse, not of a
general officer. ' At a later period an officer commanding a regiment
of native infantry was thus satirically described:
For twenty-seven years has old Capsicum been on civil employ at that out-of-
the-way district Jehanumabad, and the blossoms of his early military career, now
ripened into fruit, are exemplified by a happy obliviousness of everything con-
nected with the military profession. The movements of a company might possibly
be compassed by his attainments, acquired through the instrumentality of
“dummies” on his dining-room table; but of battalion and brigade manoeuvres,
I suspect he knows about as much of them as the Grand Lama !
The disaster of Maiwand at length convinced the authorities of the
danger of entrusting the command of troops, especially in the field,
to those who had in fact long ceased to be soldiers; and later, officers,
after ten years' absence from military duty, were transferred to a
supernumerary list, and deprived of the right of returning, in any
capacity, to the army, though in order to entitle them to their pensions
they continue to receive promotion up to the rank of lieutenant-
colonel. At the age of fifty-five their services are still replaced at the
disposal of the commander-in-chief in India, but this is a mere
formality, and their retirement on a military pension is immediately
gazetted.
The pacification of Upper Burma after its annexation in 1886
occupied some years, and, in order to set free the large number of
regular troops detained in the country, battalions of military police
were raised to suppress the prevalent disorders.
The inferior quality of the material to which the Madras army was
restricted for recruiting purposes had been discovered even before the
end of the eighteenth century, and it had certainly not improved since
that time. In each war in which Madras troops had taken the field
1 Prinsep, Transactions, p. 24. ? Atkinson, Curry and Rice, “Our Colonel".
## p. 399 (#437) ############################################
MILITARY REFORMS
399
beside those of Bengal and Bombay, their inferiority had been
apparent, and the third Burmese War convinced the authorities that
the Madras infantry regiments, with very few exceptions, were almost
worthless as soldiers. After that war eight Madras regiments were
converted into Burma regiments, which, though they remained
nominally on the strength of the Madras establishment, were recruited
from the warlike races of Northern India, and were permanently
quartered in Burma. In 1895 the recruitment of Telingas was dis-
continued; between 1902 and 1904 two of the Madras regiments were
converted into battalions of Moplahs, one into a Gurkha corps, and
nine into battalions of Panjabis; and the cavalry regiments, which in
1891 had been converted from four three-squadron into three four-
squadron regiments, were stiffened by a large infusion of personnel
from the Panjab.
In 1900 the native infantry throughout India was assimilated to the
British, and to that of continental armies, by the conversion of its
eight-company battalions into four-company battalions, which was
effected by combining the companies. For the purposes of internal
administration the eight companies remained, as before, under the
command of their native officers, but on parade and in the field the
double company was commanded by a British officer, and to each
battalion four double-company commanders, instead of two wing
commanders, were allowed, and each double-company commander
was assisted by a British double-company officer.
The independent development of the presidency armies has already
been mentioned. Its results were strange, and the presidency senti-
ment, a peculiar form of local patriotism, was very strong, not only
in the Indian ranks, but among British officers also, and did not die
until the present century, if, indecd, it is quite dead yet. Three armies,
each with its own commander-in-chief, subject to its own local govern-
ment, and governed by its own code of regulations, but all commanded
by British officers, grew up in the same British possession as strangers
and objects of curiosity, each to the others. The "Qui-hi”, the “Mull",
and the “Duck”, I as the British officers of the three presidencies were
termed, might almost have been regarded as men of different nations.
It is told of a gallant veteran of the old Bengal Artillery, who was full of
“Presidential” prejudices, that, on hearing the Bombay Army commended by
a brother officer, he broke out in just wrath: “The Bombay Army! Don't talk
to me of the Bombay Army! They call a chilamchi a gindi—the bcasts! "?
Many other stories of this nature illustrate a sentiment which long
prevailed, but is now, probably, almost obsolete.
In 1891 the Staff Corps of the three presidencies were amalgamated,
and became the Indian Staff Corps, and in 1893 the offices of com-
mander-in-chief in Madras and Bombay were abolished, and the
1 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (2nd ed. ), s. vv.
• Idem, p. 196.
## p. 400 (#438) ############################################
400
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
control of the two armies was withdrawn from the local governments.
The pretence that service with a native regiment was service on the
staff, no longer necessary as a bait for candidates, could not now be
maintained, and in 1903 the Indian Staff Corps was renamed the
Indian Army.
Under the presidency system the Madras army, for reasons already
given, had been gradually reduced; the Bombay army had remained
stationary; but the Bengal army had so grown, with the expansion
of the territory which it garrisoned, as to become a force too unwieldy
for one command. In 1895, therefore, the three old presidency armies
were converted into four Army Commands; the Bengal army being
divided into the Panjab and Bengal Commands, and the other two
armies forming the Madras and Bombay Commands. Each Command
was placed under a lieutenant-general, to whom was delegated much
of the authority exercised until then by army headquarters. In 1904
almost the last vestiges of the old presidency system were swept away
by the renumbering of the regiments, which were incorporated in one
list, and numbered consecutively, the Bengal regiments coming first,
the Madras next, and the Bombay last. Some attempt was made to
retain an indication of the old numbering. Thus, the ist Madras
Lancers became the 21st Lancers, the ist Madras Infantry (Pioneers)
the 61st Pioneers, and the ist Bombay Infantry (Grenadiers) the
101st Grenadiers, the gaps in the consecutive numbering being filled,
as far as possible, by the incorporation in the regular army of irregular
and local corps. In 1903, for example, a new arrangement made with
the Nizam regarding the province of Berar, which had been assigned
to the Government of India in 1853 for the maintenance of the
Hyderabad contingent, made it possible to incorporate that force in
the regular army, and its regiments helped to fill gaps in the numbering
of the regiments of the presidency armies.
In 1907 the four Army Commands were changed into Army Corps
Commands, each corps containing two or more divisions. The Northern
Command comprised the ist (Peshawar), and (Rawulpindi) and
3rd (Lahore) Divisions; the Western Command the 4th (Quetta),
5th (Mhow) and 6th (Poona) Divisions; and the Eastern Command
the 7th (Meerut) and 8th (Lucknow) Divisions. Two divisions, the
gth (Secunderabad) Division and the Burma Division, remained
directly under the commander-in-chief.
In the second Afghan War the Panjab native states placed at the
disposal of the government contingents of troops which did good
service on the frontier, and in 1885, when war with Russia seemed
almost inevitable, the ruling princes, with that loyalty to the crown
which they have seldom failed to display on critical occasions, offered
their resources to the government. The offer was accepted, and in 1889
1 Proclamation by Lord Curzon, at the Coronation Durbar of King Edward VII, in
1903,
## p. 401 (#439) ############################################
SERVICES, 1914-1918
401
the contribution of military force to be made by each state was deter-
mined, and constituted the force known as the Imperial Service
Troops. These, in times of peace, are under the control of the princes
who furnish them, and are commanded by Indian officers appointed
by them, but they are trained and disciplined under the supervision
of British inspecting officers appointed by, and responsible to, the
Government of India.
The last war subjected the resources of India, no less than those of
all parts of the empire, to a severe strain. The narrow limits of a single
chapter preclude anything of the nature of a complete account of
India's contribution of men, material, and money to the war, or a
record of the services rendered by Indian troops of all classes, but in
1914 an Indian army corps was dispatched to France, and there,
during a winter so inclement as to try severely men born and bred in
Northern Europe, endured not only the onslaughts of the German
army, but the hardships and the horrors of trench life. Indian troops
fought not only in Flanders, but in East Africa and Turkey, on the
Egyptian frontier, in Palestine, and in Mesopotamia, and kept the
peace in Southern Persia; and during the war the Government of India
recruited, on a voluntary basis, over 680,000 combatants and 400,000
non-combatants, and more than 1,215,000 officers and men were sent
overseas on service, the Indian casualties amounting to 101,000. 1
The Imperial Service Troops, among whom that fine old soldier,
the late Maharaja Pratap Singh, was the most prominent figure, were
a valuable addition to the forces of the crown, and distinguished
themselves in many actions, but among the most interesting and satis-
factory conclusions reached by critics who studied the conduct of
various classes in the war was one which related to classes regarded
as respectable soldiers, but not in the first rank of fighting men. Of
Pathans, Gurkhas, Panjabi, Musalmans and Sikhs much was ex-
pected, nor did they disappoint their advocates, but the Jats and
Marathas displayed a fine fighting spirit.
Until the outbreak of this war Indian sepoy officers had held
the viceroy's commission, the highest ranks which they could reach
being those of risaldar major in cavalry and subadar major in
infantry regiments, but in 1917 they were made eligible for the king's
commission in the rank of lieutenant, and in all ranks to which a
lieutenant may rise. An endeavour is now being made to entrust
the charge of whole battalions, by degrees, to Indian officers, who
are being appointed to them as lieutenants, and will in the ordinary
course of promotion hold all the commissioned ranks in them, but it
cannot yet be judged how the experiment will succeed.
In 1922 the Indian Army was radically reorganised. ? The number
of cavalry regiments was reduced, by the amalgamation of existing
I O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 417–23;
* Gazette of India, Army Orders and official Army Lists.
26
CHI V1
## p. 402 (#440) ############################################
402
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
regiments, from thirty-nine to twenty-one; the number of mountain
batteries was fixed at nineteen, with an additional section for Chitral;
the engineers remained three distinct corps, the Bengal, Madras and
Bombay Sappers and Miners; and the infantry was organised in four
regiments of pioneers, nineteen regiments of the line, and ten regi-
ments of Gurkha Rifles. Three of the pioneer regiments and the
regiments of the infantry of the line consist of service battalions varying
in number from two to five, and a depôt battalion stationed per-
manently at the regimental centre, in the area from which the regi-
ment is recruited. The duty of the depôt battalion, which is always
numbered as the tenth, to admit of the consecutive numbering of
additional service battalions to be raised and formed when necessary,
is to keep the service battalions supplied with trained soldiers. One
of the pioneer regiments, the Hazara Pioneers, and the ten regiments
of Gurkha Rifles are recruited beyond the limits of British India, and
cannot, therefore, be organised on a territorial basis. The establish-
ment of each of these regiments is two battalions.
The old commissariat and transport corps, or departments, have
been reorganised as the Indian Army Service Corps; a proportion of
the infantry is trained as mounted infantry and a proportion as
machine gunners. The medical and all other departments of the army
have been reorganised in accordance with the lessons learned in the
late war.
An Auxiliary Force, raised from Europeans and British subjects of
mixed descent, and enrolled for local service only, consists of units of
all arms, with a total strength of about 36,000, and the Territorial
Force, composed wholly of Indians, consists of eighteen provincial
battalions affiliated to regular regiments, four battalions of urban
infantry in process of formation, eleven University training corps, and
a medical branch, with a total strength of about 19,000. The pro-
vincial battalions are liable to general service in India, or, in case of
emergency, beyond the Indian frontier, and the urban battalions to
service within the province in which each is situated, but the University
training corps are subject to no liability.
Of the combatant ranks of the regular army the Panjab alone
supplies nearly half, and the Panjab, the North-West Frontier
Province, Kashmir and the United Provinces together over 64 per
cent. , the independent state of Nepal 12 per cent. , the Bombay
Presidency and Rajputana each under 43 per cent. , and the Madras
Presidency rather more than 2} per cent. The great province of
Bengal, with a population of forty-eight millions, supplies not a single
soldier, nor does the neighbouring province of Assam, with a
population of eight millions. The contributions of other provinces,
with the exception of Burma, which contributes nearly 2 per cent. ,
are negligible. 1
1 Simon Report, 1, map facing p. 96; O'Dwyer, op. cit. pp. 417-23.
## p. 403 (#441) ############################################
CHAPTER XXIII
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
THROUGHOUT the second half of the nineteenth and the early
years of the twentieth century Central Asia continued to provide the
chief problem of Indian external policy. In some respects the problem
had been simplified by the course of events since the first Afghan War.
The conquest of Sind and the Panjab had placed the Government of
India in direct contact with the region concerned. But this tendency
was more than offset by other changes. Developing communications
were intensifying the reactions of regional interests. European necds
took an ever-increasing share in determining Indian policy. In 1857
Canning could write of “a fear at the India House that government
are going to do as Hobhouse boasted he had done, and dictate from
London what the Government of India shall do in Afghanistan”. 1
The fear became a reality. Half a century later Morley wrote from
the India Office: “The plain truth is. . . that this country [Great
Britain) cannot have two foreign policies”;? and from the Foreign
Office Sir Charles Hardinge observed of the negotiations for the
entente with Russia: "Recently we have left tł• Government of India
entirely out of our account”; In the old days, the Government of
India, as a member of it declared, “could, if we saw good, have
marched our army to Candahar or Herat, and trusted to the Court
[of Directors] approving”. 4 Foreign policy had been a matter in
which the governor-general had enjoyed a greater liberty of conduct
than in any other branch of his administration. The exigencies of
political action, the needs of a swiftly developing situation, had per-
mitted him, in the days before the Red Sea cable was laid in 1870,
to confront the home authorities with accomplished facts, with a
formal declaration of war or annexation of territory, in which they
could not but acquiesce, however reluctantly. But in the new period
telegraph and cable invested distant incidents with a growing in-
fluence upon European politics and at the same time permitted
European cabinets to control action which in the past had depended
on the wide discretion of local governors. Even, Curzon's vigour and
determination had been barely able to restore to the Government of
India the phantom of its old authority; and what he could not achieve
lesser men could not even attempt.
Nor was the growing predominance of European control the sole
1 Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 153.
• Recollections, 11, 179.
• Gooch and Temperley, Origins of the War, iv, 294.
• Martineau, Life of Frere, 1, 245.
4
26-2
## p. 404 (#442) ############################################
404
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
difficulty with which the Government of India had to contend.
Unluckily external policy was the one aspect of Indian political affairs
which was capable of exciting interest in Great Britain. Nourished
on the myth of Anglo-Indian aggressiveness, accepting without question
the extravagance of Burke and the far less justifiable falsehoods of
Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, Radical opinion perceived
aggression behind every measure of Indian defence; in their eyes the
frontier tribes were a race of wronged and noble savages, and the
Afghans a nation rightly struggling to free itself from the meshes of
intrigue cast around it by a malevolent Indian Government.
At the outset, in 1858, the governor-general still retained much of
his former influence and discretion. The situation, however, was
obscure. In 1844 the visit of the emperor Nicholas I to England had
resulted in an understanding formulated in a memorandum prepared
a
by Count Nesselrode. This document declared that Russia and Great
Britain would work together to preserve the internal peace of Persia,
and that the khanates of Central Asia-Bokhara, Khiva, and
Samarkand-should be left “as a neutral zone between the two em-
pires in order to preserve them from a dangerous contact". 1 For ten
years this understanding had been observed. But the Crimean War
had ended it without establishing any substitute in Central Asia.
Indeed from that time onwards British policy was constantly but
unsuccessfully directed towards restoring the situation as it had stood
from 1844 to 1854.
Meanwhile, for ten years after the restoration of Dost Muhammad
as the ruler of Kabul, British relations with Afghanistan had been
undefined but sullen. They were modified under the pressure of
Persian eagerness to expand eastwards and reconquer Herat and
Kandahar. The former city had been seized by the Persians in 1852
and only relinquished under threats of vigorous British action. In
1854 the place was again attacked. Herbert Edwardes, the com-
missioner at Peshawar, perceived in this a heaven-sent occasion to
re-establish a definite friendship with Dost Muhammad. The chief
commissioner of the Panjab, John Lawrence, thought little of the
proposal; but Dalhousie was convinced of its propriety, and with his
approval Edwardes spent some months coaxing the amir into making
overtures to the British Government. The result was a treaty signed
early in 1855, by which the Government of India bound itself not to
interfere with the amir's territories, while he in return agreed to be
“the friend of the friends and the enemy of the enemies of the
Honourable East India Company”. 4 In one respect the treaty fell
short of what Dost Muhammad had desired. He had sought to extract
1 Étude diplomatique sur la guerre de Crimée, 1, 11 599.
2 Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 236.
3 Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, I, 450, 452; Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes,
II, 239, 447
Aitchison, Treaties, xi, 340.
## p. 405 (#443) ############################################
DOST MUHAMMAD
405
a promise never to send an envoy to Kabul. This was deliberately
refused. The Afghan negotiator was to be assured (the instructions
said)
that the Government of India has no intention of sending and no wish to send a
representative to the court of Cabul; but it should be pointed out to him that this
government could not in prudence bind itself never to depute a representative to
the Ameer, for if Russia or other powers should be represented by envoys at Cabul,
the interests of the British government would plainly suffer injury if no envoy
were present on its behalf. 1
In 1856 Herat was again seized by the Persians, who boasted to
their Russian friends that they would occupy Kandahar and establish
themselves on the borders of the Panjab. This led to war not only
with the amir of Kabul but also with Great Britain. A force was
dispatched from Bombay, and the amir was assisted with money and
arms, the employment of the subsidy being placed under the in-
spection of British officers, who were to be withdrawn as soon as the
war was over. The Persians speedily came to terms by a treaty signed
at Paris on 4 March, 1857. The most interesting point of this agree-
ment was the care taken by the Russian Government to secure the
exclusion of English consuls from the Caspian ports, on the ground
that their appointment could have none but a political object. 5
For some years after this the Afghan question fell into a calm. Dost
Muhammad was busily consolidating his power. In 1862 he attacked
Herat. Though the governor-general, Elgin, admitted that in this he
was not the aggressor, the Government of India signified its disap-
proval by recalling the vakil—the Muslim agent—who had been
maintained at Kabul since 1857.
6 Ignoring this protest, Dost Muham-
mad persisted in his attack, took the place in 1863, and died shortly
after at the age of eighty. He had designated his son, Sher 'Ali, as his
successor. But in Afghanistan as in Moghul India, theoretical rights
of succession counted for little in comparison with force. A prolonged
period of fratricidal war ensued, now one, now another of Dost
Muhammad's sixteen sons gaining the upper hand. In 1864 Afzal
Khan and Azim Khan rebelled; in 1865 Azim Khan and his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman rose; in 1866 Sher 'Ali was driven from Kabul and
in 1867 from Kandahar; in 1868 he suddenly recovered them. ' An
incident of one of the actions of this period well illustrates the proud
ferocity with which the struggle was conducted. Amin Khan, Sher
'Ali's full brother, was killed fighting against him. His dead body was
brought in triumph to Sher ’Ali. "Throw the body of this dog away”,
he said, “and bid my son come and congratulate me on the victory. "
Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 242.
? Dispatch from Anitschkoff, 27 October (O. S. ), 1856 (Legation Archives, vii, e).
: Goldsmid, Life of Outram, 11, 130 s99.
• Aitchison, op. cit. XI, 342.
• Gortchakoff to Lagofsky, 26 February (O. S. ), 1857 (Legation Archives, loc. cil. ).
• Walrond, Elgin's Letters and Journals, pp. 417, 419.
? A detailed narrative will be found in Wylly, External Policy of India, pp. i sqq.
1
## p. 406 (#444) ############################################
406
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
His officers, not daring to tell him that his son also had fallen, brought
his body. “Who is this other dog? ” the amir demanded. But when
the corpse had been laid at his feet and he knew it for his son's, he
rent his garments and cast dust upon his head. 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).
stratued to hold that a will might be oral and that a written will was
## p. 394 (#432) ############################################
394
LAW REFORM
valid without alteration; and there was further no probate procedure
or recognised limit to the powers of executors. The Succession Act
already referred to did not apply to the wills of Hindus, Muhamma-
dans or Buddhists. That omission was repaired by two of the very
few
statutes passed to alter or supplement the indigenous family laws of
the various religious communities. The Hindu Wills Act, 1870, and
the Probate Act, 1881, applied the essential provisions of the Succession
Act with appropriate amendments to the wills of Hindus and Buddhists
in Lower Bengal and the cities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The
latter provided for the application of those provisions to other tracts
in the discretion of the local government concerned; but this power
has been used only to an insignificant extent.
Other instances of legislative interference with family law in spite
of its quasi-religious foundation are afforded by the Freedom of
Religion Act, 1850, by which so much of any law or usage as affects
the right to property or to an inheritance by reason of change of
religion or loss of castc was made unenforceable; the Hindu Widow
Re-marriage Act, 1856, abrogating the law under which a widow
forfeited all rights over her deceased husband's estate on her re-
marriage; the Indian Majority Act, 1875, under which majority
occurs at the end of the eighteenth year instead of at the sixteenth
under Hindu or earlier under Muhammadan law; and the Age of
Consent Act, 1891, which in effect forbids consummation of marriage
before the wife has attained the age of twelve. It may be observed
that two recent enactments, the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, dealing
with the legality of a particular Sikh form of marriage and the
Muhammadan Wakf Validity Act, 1913, dealing with the law
applicable to Muhammadan religious institutions, are expressed, not
as modifying, but as declaring the existing unwritten law. There have
been no important modifications by the legislature of that law other
than those referred to; and only one unsuccessful attempt to alter it
by statute went far enough to call for mention. The Hindu Gains of
Learning Bill was intended to determine the existing obligation of a
member of a Hindu joint family, whose education has been assisted
in any degree by family funds, to account to the family for the addi-
tional earnings which that education enables him to make. The bill
was passed by the legislative council in Madras in 1900, but was
vetoed by the governor of the province, Sir Arthur Havelock, and has
not been brought forward again.
## p. 395 (#433) ############################################
CHAPTER XXII
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
IN
N 1858 the government of India was transferred from the Company
to the crown, and after the suppression of the Mutiny the reorganisa-
tion of the military forces in India was the most urgent question before
the authorities. The viceroy, Lord Canning, at first favoured a system
advocated many years before by Sir Thomas Munro, of a large
European force enlisted for permanent service in India, but it was
finally decided that the European element should be provided by the
British Army, regiments and batteries being posted to India, as to
other places beyond the seas, for tours of foreign service.
The Company's European troops, now numbering over 15,000,
were transferred to the service of the crown, and the promulgation of
the decision raised protests and objections which were styled at the time
the White Mutiny. Both officers and men objected to the transfer of
their services without their wishes being consulted, and both were
insubordinate and disaffected. About 10,000 men claimed their dis-
charge, but a bounty offered to them, and a guarantee to the officers
of the pensions due to them under the Company's rules, allayed the
discontent, which need never have been aroused. One of the principal
grievances of the men was that many had made, and more, perhaps,
intended to make, India their home, and had married, or hoped to
marry, Indian or Eurasian wives whom they could not take to Europe.
The discontent of the officers is now less easy to understand, but it
was generally believed that though the “pagoda tree” could no
longer be shaken, the Company's service offered a better provision
than the royal service for a poor man, and the prospect of reduced
pay in a more expensive environment, and of less chance of extra
regimental employment, even when accompanied by the privilege
of serving for an Indian pension in their native climate, was not
welcomed by them. They had, however, the chance of remaining in
India with sepoy regiments, and of the officers of the two Bengal
Fusilier regiments considerably less than half volunteered to remain
with thosc regiments, now liable to tours of home service. 1
The corps of Bengal, Madras and Bombay artillery and engincers
were amalgamated with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers,
and the European infantry regiments, now, including those raised
during the Mutiny, nine in number, became regiments of the line,
numbered from 101 to 109.
Of the regular native army of Bengal the cavalry and artillery had
1 Innes, Bengal European Regiment, pp. 530-3.
## p. 396 (#434) ############################################
396
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
disappeared, and only eleven entire infantry regiments had remained
staunch. When the army was reconstituted nineteen irregular cavalry
regiments, some of which had been raised in the Mutiny, became the
Bengal cavalry, the eleven infantry regiments became the first eleven
of the line, next came two irregular regiments, then two Sikh regi-
ments, then two regiments formed from the faithful remnants of
regiments which had mutinied, then a military police battalion, then
fourteen irregular regiments of the Panjab, but not of the frontier
force, and the number of the line regiments of the Bengal army was
brought up to forty-nine by seventeen irregular regiments raised
during or after the Mutiny. Numbered separately from the line were
four regiments of Gurkhas, forming part of the Bengal army, and a
fifth, a unit of the Panjab frontier force. The three presidency armies
were reorganised on what was inaccurately termed the irregular
system, which had been advocated by Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John
Malcolm. It differed from the regular system only in the number of
British officers attached to a regiment of cavalry or battalion of
infantry. Under the regular system they commanded troops and
companies; under the irregular system they acted only as field and
regimental staff officers. In the Mutiny the irregular regiments had
proved, at least equal to the regulars, for they had been commanded
by younger men, and native troop and company officers, entrusted
with responsibility, had risen to the occasion. Henceforth troops of
cavalry and companies of infantry were commanded by native
officers. In the cavalry British officers commanded squadrons, and
in the infantry “wings”, or half-battalions. The regimental staff was
British, but the adjutant was assisted by a Jamadar-adjutant, in the
cavalry styled “Woordi-major", and British squadron and wing
officers assisted the squadron and wing commanders, and took their
places when they were absent on leave.
In order to render service with native troops more attractive the
appointments held by British officers in native regiments were treated
as staff appointments, and carried allowances, as well as pay of rank.
The officers on each of the three presidency establishments were
graded in a Staff Corps, recruited from the Company's and the queen's
services. There remained, in each presidency, two small bodies of
officers besides the Staff Corps, the first consisting of officers of the
pre-Mutiny armies and the second of officers who had received com-
missions since the outbreak of the Mutiny, who did not wish to join
the Staff Corps. These two bodies were known as the Local List and
the General List, the former, in Bengal, being stylcd the “lucky
Locals”, because, being promoted in the cadres of regiments which had
mutinied and murdered many of their officers, they were able to
retire on a full pension at a comparatively carly age. Promotion in
the General List and in the Staff Corps was fixed on a time-scale.
After twelve years' service, reduced afterwards to eleven, and later to
و
a
## p. 397 (#435) ############################################
PRESIDENCY ARMIES
397
a
nine, an officer became a captain; after twenty, reduced afterwards
to eighreen, a major; after twenty-six a lieutenant-colonel; and after
thirty-one a colonel; but officers in civil and political employ were
afterwards very properly debarred from rising above the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. The Company's military college at Addiscombe
was closed, and new appointments to the Staff Corps were made only
from British regiments. At a later date those examined for entrance
to Sandhurst competed for commissions in the Indian Army, and on
leaving the college were placed on an Unattached List, and, as had
been recommended by Munro, were attached for a year to British
regiments serving in India, before being posted to native regiments.
The establishment of each Staff Corps was calculated to provide
the number of officers required for service with native regiments, on
the staff and in army departments, and in civil and political employ,
and the establishments of presidency armies and local forces were
fixed as follows: Bengal army, nineteen cavalry and furty-nine infantry
regiments; Madras army, four cavalry and forty infantry regiments;
Bombay army, seven cavalry and thirty infantry regiments, and two
batteries of artillery; Panjab frontier force, six cavalry and twelve
infantry regiments, and five mountain batteries; local irregular corps,
two cavalry and five infantry regiments; Hyderabad contingent, four
cavalry and six infantry regiments, and four field batteries. When the
reductions were complete the forces in India amounted to 65,000
British and 140,000 native troops.
The uniform of the regular native armies, simple at first, had
gradually been assimilated in style and cut to that of British troops,
and had become most unsuitable to the Indian climate, but after the
Mutiny it was much modified. The shako and the Kilmarnock cap
were discarded in favour of the turban, and long, closely fitting
trousers in favour of wide breeches, or knickerbockers, and puttees,
approaching the Indian rather than the European style of dress.
After the second Afghan War, which broke out in 1878," and
severely taxed India's military resources and organisation, many
reforms were carried out, and in 1885, when the Panjdeh incident
presaged the possibility of war with Russia, it became necessary to
prepare the army in India to meet a European enemy. The British
force in the country was increased by 10,600 men, bringing its
strength to 73,500, and substantial additions to the Bengal and
Bombay armies brought the numbers of the native troops up to
154,000.
Until the Mutiny military officers in civil or political employ had
been retained on the establishments of their regiments, unjustly
blocking the promotion of those who remained with the colours, and
an officer had been permitted to rejoin the regiment when it was
ordered on active service, or when the officer in question succeeded,
· Cf. pp. 417 sqq. , infra.
• Cf. pp. 424-5, infra.
## p. 398 (#436) ############################################
398
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858-1918
by seniority, to the command. After the Mutiny, when British officers
were graded, according to length of service, in the three presidency
Staff Corps, an officer transferred to civil or political employ was no
longer borne on the strength of a regiment, but he retained the right
of reverting, when he wished, to military employ, and of promotion,
by seniority, to the rank of general officer, and at the age of fifty-five,
when he was considered too old for civil or political duties, his services
were replaced at the disposal of the commander-in-chief of the
presidency to which he belonged, and he was eligible for appointment
to an important command. This practice of allowing officers to return
to military duty after long periods of absence in civil or political
employ was most injurious to the efficiency of the service, owing to
their inevitable incompetence. This was less noticeable before the
introduction of arms of precision and rapid fire, but even in the days .
of Dundas's Manæuvres and the flint-lock musket it was already
apparent. Sir John Malcolm behaved gallantly at the battle of
Mahidpur, but his behaviour was that of a cornet of horse, not of a
general officer. ' At a later period an officer commanding a regiment
of native infantry was thus satirically described:
For twenty-seven years has old Capsicum been on civil employ at that out-of-
the-way district Jehanumabad, and the blossoms of his early military career, now
ripened into fruit, are exemplified by a happy obliviousness of everything con-
nected with the military profession. The movements of a company might possibly
be compassed by his attainments, acquired through the instrumentality of
“dummies” on his dining-room table; but of battalion and brigade manoeuvres,
I suspect he knows about as much of them as the Grand Lama !
The disaster of Maiwand at length convinced the authorities of the
danger of entrusting the command of troops, especially in the field,
to those who had in fact long ceased to be soldiers; and later, officers,
after ten years' absence from military duty, were transferred to a
supernumerary list, and deprived of the right of returning, in any
capacity, to the army, though in order to entitle them to their pensions
they continue to receive promotion up to the rank of lieutenant-
colonel. At the age of fifty-five their services are still replaced at the
disposal of the commander-in-chief in India, but this is a mere
formality, and their retirement on a military pension is immediately
gazetted.
The pacification of Upper Burma after its annexation in 1886
occupied some years, and, in order to set free the large number of
regular troops detained in the country, battalions of military police
were raised to suppress the prevalent disorders.
The inferior quality of the material to which the Madras army was
restricted for recruiting purposes had been discovered even before the
end of the eighteenth century, and it had certainly not improved since
that time. In each war in which Madras troops had taken the field
1 Prinsep, Transactions, p. 24. ? Atkinson, Curry and Rice, “Our Colonel".
## p. 399 (#437) ############################################
MILITARY REFORMS
399
beside those of Bengal and Bombay, their inferiority had been
apparent, and the third Burmese War convinced the authorities that
the Madras infantry regiments, with very few exceptions, were almost
worthless as soldiers. After that war eight Madras regiments were
converted into Burma regiments, which, though they remained
nominally on the strength of the Madras establishment, were recruited
from the warlike races of Northern India, and were permanently
quartered in Burma. In 1895 the recruitment of Telingas was dis-
continued; between 1902 and 1904 two of the Madras regiments were
converted into battalions of Moplahs, one into a Gurkha corps, and
nine into battalions of Panjabis; and the cavalry regiments, which in
1891 had been converted from four three-squadron into three four-
squadron regiments, were stiffened by a large infusion of personnel
from the Panjab.
In 1900 the native infantry throughout India was assimilated to the
British, and to that of continental armies, by the conversion of its
eight-company battalions into four-company battalions, which was
effected by combining the companies. For the purposes of internal
administration the eight companies remained, as before, under the
command of their native officers, but on parade and in the field the
double company was commanded by a British officer, and to each
battalion four double-company commanders, instead of two wing
commanders, were allowed, and each double-company commander
was assisted by a British double-company officer.
The independent development of the presidency armies has already
been mentioned. Its results were strange, and the presidency senti-
ment, a peculiar form of local patriotism, was very strong, not only
in the Indian ranks, but among British officers also, and did not die
until the present century, if, indecd, it is quite dead yet. Three armies,
each with its own commander-in-chief, subject to its own local govern-
ment, and governed by its own code of regulations, but all commanded
by British officers, grew up in the same British possession as strangers
and objects of curiosity, each to the others. The "Qui-hi”, the “Mull",
and the “Duck”, I as the British officers of the three presidencies were
termed, might almost have been regarded as men of different nations.
It is told of a gallant veteran of the old Bengal Artillery, who was full of
“Presidential” prejudices, that, on hearing the Bombay Army commended by
a brother officer, he broke out in just wrath: “The Bombay Army! Don't talk
to me of the Bombay Army! They call a chilamchi a gindi—the bcasts! "?
Many other stories of this nature illustrate a sentiment which long
prevailed, but is now, probably, almost obsolete.
In 1891 the Staff Corps of the three presidencies were amalgamated,
and became the Indian Staff Corps, and in 1893 the offices of com-
mander-in-chief in Madras and Bombay were abolished, and the
1 Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (2nd ed. ), s. vv.
• Idem, p. 196.
## p. 400 (#438) ############################################
400
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
control of the two armies was withdrawn from the local governments.
The pretence that service with a native regiment was service on the
staff, no longer necessary as a bait for candidates, could not now be
maintained, and in 1903 the Indian Staff Corps was renamed the
Indian Army.
Under the presidency system the Madras army, for reasons already
given, had been gradually reduced; the Bombay army had remained
stationary; but the Bengal army had so grown, with the expansion
of the territory which it garrisoned, as to become a force too unwieldy
for one command. In 1895, therefore, the three old presidency armies
were converted into four Army Commands; the Bengal army being
divided into the Panjab and Bengal Commands, and the other two
armies forming the Madras and Bombay Commands. Each Command
was placed under a lieutenant-general, to whom was delegated much
of the authority exercised until then by army headquarters. In 1904
almost the last vestiges of the old presidency system were swept away
by the renumbering of the regiments, which were incorporated in one
list, and numbered consecutively, the Bengal regiments coming first,
the Madras next, and the Bombay last. Some attempt was made to
retain an indication of the old numbering. Thus, the ist Madras
Lancers became the 21st Lancers, the ist Madras Infantry (Pioneers)
the 61st Pioneers, and the ist Bombay Infantry (Grenadiers) the
101st Grenadiers, the gaps in the consecutive numbering being filled,
as far as possible, by the incorporation in the regular army of irregular
and local corps. In 1903, for example, a new arrangement made with
the Nizam regarding the province of Berar, which had been assigned
to the Government of India in 1853 for the maintenance of the
Hyderabad contingent, made it possible to incorporate that force in
the regular army, and its regiments helped to fill gaps in the numbering
of the regiments of the presidency armies.
In 1907 the four Army Commands were changed into Army Corps
Commands, each corps containing two or more divisions. The Northern
Command comprised the ist (Peshawar), and (Rawulpindi) and
3rd (Lahore) Divisions; the Western Command the 4th (Quetta),
5th (Mhow) and 6th (Poona) Divisions; and the Eastern Command
the 7th (Meerut) and 8th (Lucknow) Divisions. Two divisions, the
gth (Secunderabad) Division and the Burma Division, remained
directly under the commander-in-chief.
In the second Afghan War the Panjab native states placed at the
disposal of the government contingents of troops which did good
service on the frontier, and in 1885, when war with Russia seemed
almost inevitable, the ruling princes, with that loyalty to the crown
which they have seldom failed to display on critical occasions, offered
their resources to the government. The offer was accepted, and in 1889
1 Proclamation by Lord Curzon, at the Coronation Durbar of King Edward VII, in
1903,
## p. 401 (#439) ############################################
SERVICES, 1914-1918
401
the contribution of military force to be made by each state was deter-
mined, and constituted the force known as the Imperial Service
Troops. These, in times of peace, are under the control of the princes
who furnish them, and are commanded by Indian officers appointed
by them, but they are trained and disciplined under the supervision
of British inspecting officers appointed by, and responsible to, the
Government of India.
The last war subjected the resources of India, no less than those of
all parts of the empire, to a severe strain. The narrow limits of a single
chapter preclude anything of the nature of a complete account of
India's contribution of men, material, and money to the war, or a
record of the services rendered by Indian troops of all classes, but in
1914 an Indian army corps was dispatched to France, and there,
during a winter so inclement as to try severely men born and bred in
Northern Europe, endured not only the onslaughts of the German
army, but the hardships and the horrors of trench life. Indian troops
fought not only in Flanders, but in East Africa and Turkey, on the
Egyptian frontier, in Palestine, and in Mesopotamia, and kept the
peace in Southern Persia; and during the war the Government of India
recruited, on a voluntary basis, over 680,000 combatants and 400,000
non-combatants, and more than 1,215,000 officers and men were sent
overseas on service, the Indian casualties amounting to 101,000. 1
The Imperial Service Troops, among whom that fine old soldier,
the late Maharaja Pratap Singh, was the most prominent figure, were
a valuable addition to the forces of the crown, and distinguished
themselves in many actions, but among the most interesting and satis-
factory conclusions reached by critics who studied the conduct of
various classes in the war was one which related to classes regarded
as respectable soldiers, but not in the first rank of fighting men. Of
Pathans, Gurkhas, Panjabi, Musalmans and Sikhs much was ex-
pected, nor did they disappoint their advocates, but the Jats and
Marathas displayed a fine fighting spirit.
Until the outbreak of this war Indian sepoy officers had held
the viceroy's commission, the highest ranks which they could reach
being those of risaldar major in cavalry and subadar major in
infantry regiments, but in 1917 they were made eligible for the king's
commission in the rank of lieutenant, and in all ranks to which a
lieutenant may rise. An endeavour is now being made to entrust
the charge of whole battalions, by degrees, to Indian officers, who
are being appointed to them as lieutenants, and will in the ordinary
course of promotion hold all the commissioned ranks in them, but it
cannot yet be judged how the experiment will succeed.
In 1922 the Indian Army was radically reorganised. ? The number
of cavalry regiments was reduced, by the amalgamation of existing
I O'Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 417–23;
* Gazette of India, Army Orders and official Army Lists.
26
CHI V1
## p. 402 (#440) ############################################
402
THE INDIAN ARMY, 1858–1918
regiments, from thirty-nine to twenty-one; the number of mountain
batteries was fixed at nineteen, with an additional section for Chitral;
the engineers remained three distinct corps, the Bengal, Madras and
Bombay Sappers and Miners; and the infantry was organised in four
regiments of pioneers, nineteen regiments of the line, and ten regi-
ments of Gurkha Rifles. Three of the pioneer regiments and the
regiments of the infantry of the line consist of service battalions varying
in number from two to five, and a depôt battalion stationed per-
manently at the regimental centre, in the area from which the regi-
ment is recruited. The duty of the depôt battalion, which is always
numbered as the tenth, to admit of the consecutive numbering of
additional service battalions to be raised and formed when necessary,
is to keep the service battalions supplied with trained soldiers. One
of the pioneer regiments, the Hazara Pioneers, and the ten regiments
of Gurkha Rifles are recruited beyond the limits of British India, and
cannot, therefore, be organised on a territorial basis. The establish-
ment of each of these regiments is two battalions.
The old commissariat and transport corps, or departments, have
been reorganised as the Indian Army Service Corps; a proportion of
the infantry is trained as mounted infantry and a proportion as
machine gunners. The medical and all other departments of the army
have been reorganised in accordance with the lessons learned in the
late war.
An Auxiliary Force, raised from Europeans and British subjects of
mixed descent, and enrolled for local service only, consists of units of
all arms, with a total strength of about 36,000, and the Territorial
Force, composed wholly of Indians, consists of eighteen provincial
battalions affiliated to regular regiments, four battalions of urban
infantry in process of formation, eleven University training corps, and
a medical branch, with a total strength of about 19,000. The pro-
vincial battalions are liable to general service in India, or, in case of
emergency, beyond the Indian frontier, and the urban battalions to
service within the province in which each is situated, but the University
training corps are subject to no liability.
Of the combatant ranks of the regular army the Panjab alone
supplies nearly half, and the Panjab, the North-West Frontier
Province, Kashmir and the United Provinces together over 64 per
cent. , the independent state of Nepal 12 per cent. , the Bombay
Presidency and Rajputana each under 43 per cent. , and the Madras
Presidency rather more than 2} per cent. The great province of
Bengal, with a population of forty-eight millions, supplies not a single
soldier, nor does the neighbouring province of Assam, with a
population of eight millions. The contributions of other provinces,
with the exception of Burma, which contributes nearly 2 per cent. ,
are negligible. 1
1 Simon Report, 1, map facing p. 96; O'Dwyer, op. cit. pp. 417-23.
## p. 403 (#441) ############################################
CHAPTER XXIII
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
THROUGHOUT the second half of the nineteenth and the early
years of the twentieth century Central Asia continued to provide the
chief problem of Indian external policy. In some respects the problem
had been simplified by the course of events since the first Afghan War.
The conquest of Sind and the Panjab had placed the Government of
India in direct contact with the region concerned. But this tendency
was more than offset by other changes. Developing communications
were intensifying the reactions of regional interests. European necds
took an ever-increasing share in determining Indian policy. In 1857
Canning could write of “a fear at the India House that government
are going to do as Hobhouse boasted he had done, and dictate from
London what the Government of India shall do in Afghanistan”. 1
The fear became a reality. Half a century later Morley wrote from
the India Office: “The plain truth is. . . that this country [Great
Britain) cannot have two foreign policies”;? and from the Foreign
Office Sir Charles Hardinge observed of the negotiations for the
entente with Russia: "Recently we have left tł• Government of India
entirely out of our account”; In the old days, the Government of
India, as a member of it declared, “could, if we saw good, have
marched our army to Candahar or Herat, and trusted to the Court
[of Directors] approving”. 4 Foreign policy had been a matter in
which the governor-general had enjoyed a greater liberty of conduct
than in any other branch of his administration. The exigencies of
political action, the needs of a swiftly developing situation, had per-
mitted him, in the days before the Red Sea cable was laid in 1870,
to confront the home authorities with accomplished facts, with a
formal declaration of war or annexation of territory, in which they
could not but acquiesce, however reluctantly. But in the new period
telegraph and cable invested distant incidents with a growing in-
fluence upon European politics and at the same time permitted
European cabinets to control action which in the past had depended
on the wide discretion of local governors. Even, Curzon's vigour and
determination had been barely able to restore to the Government of
India the phantom of its old authority; and what he could not achieve
lesser men could not even attempt.
Nor was the growing predominance of European control the sole
1 Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 153.
• Recollections, 11, 179.
• Gooch and Temperley, Origins of the War, iv, 294.
• Martineau, Life of Frere, 1, 245.
4
26-2
## p. 404 (#442) ############################################
404
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
difficulty with which the Government of India had to contend.
Unluckily external policy was the one aspect of Indian political affairs
which was capable of exciting interest in Great Britain. Nourished
on the myth of Anglo-Indian aggressiveness, accepting without question
the extravagance of Burke and the far less justifiable falsehoods of
Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, Radical opinion perceived
aggression behind every measure of Indian defence; in their eyes the
frontier tribes were a race of wronged and noble savages, and the
Afghans a nation rightly struggling to free itself from the meshes of
intrigue cast around it by a malevolent Indian Government.
At the outset, in 1858, the governor-general still retained much of
his former influence and discretion. The situation, however, was
obscure. In 1844 the visit of the emperor Nicholas I to England had
resulted in an understanding formulated in a memorandum prepared
a
by Count Nesselrode. This document declared that Russia and Great
Britain would work together to preserve the internal peace of Persia,
and that the khanates of Central Asia-Bokhara, Khiva, and
Samarkand-should be left “as a neutral zone between the two em-
pires in order to preserve them from a dangerous contact". 1 For ten
years this understanding had been observed. But the Crimean War
had ended it without establishing any substitute in Central Asia.
Indeed from that time onwards British policy was constantly but
unsuccessfully directed towards restoring the situation as it had stood
from 1844 to 1854.
Meanwhile, for ten years after the restoration of Dost Muhammad
as the ruler of Kabul, British relations with Afghanistan had been
undefined but sullen. They were modified under the pressure of
Persian eagerness to expand eastwards and reconquer Herat and
Kandahar. The former city had been seized by the Persians in 1852
and only relinquished under threats of vigorous British action. In
1854 the place was again attacked. Herbert Edwardes, the com-
missioner at Peshawar, perceived in this a heaven-sent occasion to
re-establish a definite friendship with Dost Muhammad. The chief
commissioner of the Panjab, John Lawrence, thought little of the
proposal; but Dalhousie was convinced of its propriety, and with his
approval Edwardes spent some months coaxing the amir into making
overtures to the British Government. The result was a treaty signed
early in 1855, by which the Government of India bound itself not to
interfere with the amir's territories, while he in return agreed to be
“the friend of the friends and the enemy of the enemies of the
Honourable East India Company”. 4 In one respect the treaty fell
short of what Dost Muhammad had desired. He had sought to extract
1 Étude diplomatique sur la guerre de Crimée, 1, 11 599.
2 Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 236.
3 Bosworth Smith, Life of Lord Lawrence, I, 450, 452; Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes,
II, 239, 447
Aitchison, Treaties, xi, 340.
## p. 405 (#443) ############################################
DOST MUHAMMAD
405
a promise never to send an envoy to Kabul. This was deliberately
refused. The Afghan negotiator was to be assured (the instructions
said)
that the Government of India has no intention of sending and no wish to send a
representative to the court of Cabul; but it should be pointed out to him that this
government could not in prudence bind itself never to depute a representative to
the Ameer, for if Russia or other powers should be represented by envoys at Cabul,
the interests of the British government would plainly suffer injury if no envoy
were present on its behalf. 1
In 1856 Herat was again seized by the Persians, who boasted to
their Russian friends that they would occupy Kandahar and establish
themselves on the borders of the Panjab. This led to war not only
with the amir of Kabul but also with Great Britain. A force was
dispatched from Bombay, and the amir was assisted with money and
arms, the employment of the subsidy being placed under the in-
spection of British officers, who were to be withdrawn as soon as the
war was over. The Persians speedily came to terms by a treaty signed
at Paris on 4 March, 1857. The most interesting point of this agree-
ment was the care taken by the Russian Government to secure the
exclusion of English consuls from the Caspian ports, on the ground
that their appointment could have none but a political object. 5
For some years after this the Afghan question fell into a calm. Dost
Muhammad was busily consolidating his power. In 1862 he attacked
Herat. Though the governor-general, Elgin, admitted that in this he
was not the aggressor, the Government of India signified its disap-
proval by recalling the vakil—the Muslim agent—who had been
maintained at Kabul since 1857.
6 Ignoring this protest, Dost Muham-
mad persisted in his attack, took the place in 1863, and died shortly
after at the age of eighty. He had designated his son, Sher 'Ali, as his
successor. But in Afghanistan as in Moghul India, theoretical rights
of succession counted for little in comparison with force. A prolonged
period of fratricidal war ensued, now one, now another of Dost
Muhammad's sixteen sons gaining the upper hand. In 1864 Afzal
Khan and Azim Khan rebelled; in 1865 Azim Khan and his nephew
Abd-ur-rahman rose; in 1866 Sher 'Ali was driven from Kabul and
in 1867 from Kandahar; in 1868 he suddenly recovered them. ' An
incident of one of the actions of this period well illustrates the proud
ferocity with which the struggle was conducted. Amin Khan, Sher
'Ali's full brother, was killed fighting against him. His dead body was
brought in triumph to Sher ’Ali. "Throw the body of this dog away”,
he said, “and bid my son come and congratulate me on the victory. "
Memorials of Sir Herbert Edwardes, 1, 242.
? Dispatch from Anitschkoff, 27 October (O. S. ), 1856 (Legation Archives, vii, e).
: Goldsmid, Life of Outram, 11, 130 s99.
• Aitchison, op. cit. XI, 342.
• Gortchakoff to Lagofsky, 26 February (O. S. ), 1857 (Legation Archives, loc. cil. ).
• Walrond, Elgin's Letters and Journals, pp. 417, 419.
? A detailed narrative will be found in Wylly, External Policy of India, pp. i sqq.
1
## p. 406 (#444) ############################################
406
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
His officers, not daring to tell him that his son also had fallen, brought
his body. “Who is this other dog? ” the amir demanded. But when
the corpse had been laid at his feet and he knew it for his son's, he
rent his garments and cast dust upon his head. 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).
