CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 97 of 120

Correct — B, Weakening Russian influence in Afghanistan but not promoting a strong Afghanistan either. Company policy in these decades was pulled in two directions at once, and the answer names both. The British wanted Russia kept out of Kabul, because a Russian-aligned Afghanistan would sit astride the passes into Punjab and Sind. But they did not want the alternative either — a consolidated Afghan state strong enough to act on its own claims, above all its claim to Peshawar. So the aim was an Afghanistan dependent on Calcutta: friendly, pliable, and not powerful. That is exactly what the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839–42 was for. Lord Auckland's Simla Manifesto discarded the sitting Amir, Dost Mohammad Khan, who was competent and had his own foreign policy, and marched an army in to restore Shah Shuja Durrani, a deposed exile who could hold Kabul only on British bayonets. A ruler with no independent base is a weak ruler by design.

• (a)Strengthening Afghanistan as a buffer against Russia. — This is the policy of a later generation, and the tempting anachronism here. Only after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, when Abdur Rahman Khan was recognised as Amir in 1880 and paid a British subsidy with arms to match, did the British deliberately build up a strong central Afghan state as a buffer. In the 1830s and 1840s the calculation was the opposite one.
• (c)Promoting Russian influence in Afghanistan to control insurgent tribal leaders. — Reverses the whole logic of the Great Game. Excluding Russia was the entire point; the trigger for the 1839 invasion was the arrival of the Russian envoy Vitkevich at Dost Mohammad's court and the Persian siege of Herat, both read in Calcutta as Russian advances.
• (d)Annexing Afghanistan as a directly-controlled British Territory. — The British never sought to absorb Afghanistan. Even at the height of the occupation they ruled through a client Amir, and the disaster of the 1842 retreat from Kabul confirmed permanently that holding the country directly was not worth its cost. Sind was annexed in 1843 and Punjab in 1849 — Afghanistan never was.

British Indian frontier policy in the nineteenth century turned on one anxiety: an invasion of India through the north-western passes, backed by Russia's steady advance across Central Asia. Afghanistan lay between the two empires, and the rivalry over it is what the period calls the Great Game. The Company's answer in the first half of the century was a client state — an Afghan ruler who owed his throne to British support, who would exclude Russian and Persian agents, and who would be in no position to build up power of his own.

The question rewards reading the date. Students who have learned the phrase 'buffer state' attach it to the whole century and pick option (a); but the buffer-building policy, with subsidies and arms for a strong Amir, belongs to the years after 1880. Anchor the first half of the century instead to Auckland, Dost Mohammad and Shah Shuja. The test is simple — if the British had wanted a strong Afghanistan, they would have kept the strong ruler they found. Instead they removed him for a pensioner they could control, an experiment that ended with the destruction of the Kabul garrison in the winter of 1842 and the return of Dost Mohammad to his own throne.

• The First Anglo-Afghan War ran from 1839 to 1842, launched by Lord Auckland's Simla Manifesto of October 1838.
• Dost Mohammad Khan was deposed and Shah Shuja Durrani installed in his place; after the war ended in British disaster, Dost Mohammad returned to the throne.
• The Second Anglo-Afghan War opened on 21 November 1878 under Lord Lytton's Forward Policy; the Treaty of Gandamak of 26 May 1879 handed British India the Kurram and Pishin valleys, the Sibi district and control of the Khyber and Michni passes, and surrendered Afghan foreign relations.
• Abdur Rahman Khan was recognised as Amir in 1880 — the point at which building a strong buffer state, rather than a weak client, became the working British policy.
• The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 between Afghanistan and British India, remains the boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Reading the buffer-state policy of the 1880s back into the 1830s — the date in the stem is doing real work.
• Assuming Afghanistan was annexed like Sind (1843) or Punjab (1849); it never was, in any period.
• Mixing up Dost Mohammad Khan, whom the British removed in 1839, with Abdur Rahman Khan, whom they backed from 1880.

Usually as a policy-aim question tied to a period, or as a Governor-General-to-policy match — Auckland with the first war, Lytton with the second, Lawrence with masterly inactivity.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Governor-General issued the Simla Manifesto that launched the First Anglo-Afghan War?

  • (a)Lord William Bentinck
  • (b)Lord Auckland
  • (c)Lord Ellenborough
  • (d)Lord Dalhousie

  Answer(b) Lord Auckland — his Simla Manifesto of October 1838 justified deposing Dost Mohammad Khan and restoring Shah Shuja, opening the war of 1839–42.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Treaty of Gandamak of 1879, the Amir of Afghanistan surrendered control of which one of the following to the British?

  • (a)The Afghan army
  • (b)The revenues of Kabul
  • (c)Afghan foreign relations
  • (d)The appointment of provincial governors

  Answer(c) Afghan foreign relations — Yaqub Khan also ceded the Kurram and Pishin valleys, the Sibi district and control of the Khyber and Michni passes.