by Tom Anderson
Instead, Benyovsky ordered a landfall at the nearest natural harbour that could be found, and that the ships be beached for repairs. This was perhaps overly ambitious, particularly for the young and still fairly inexperienced Lithuanian navy, but the beaching operation was accomplished satisfactorily. However, Benyovsky’s carpenter, Antanas Vaitkus, claimed that the trees visible from the harbour were unsuitable for plankage. Benyovsky threw a fit and threatened to have Vaitkus hanged from the yardarm, but at that point was interrupted by Raudauskas informing him that the Aynyu natives had been sighted, watching the beached ships curiously from a distance.
Benyovsky was never one to miss an opportunity like this. Most captains would have assumed that any native activity was likely to be hostile, and prepared to defend their ships. Instead, he immediately ordered that both ships’ crews be scoured for any speakers of the Aynyu language. Two were found; a Nivkh and a Russian out of Yakutsk who had previously dealt with the Nivkhs.[239] Benyovsky sent them, along with his captain of marines, Ulrich von Münchhausen,[240] to treat with the Aynyu.
The natives turned out to be surprisingly hospitable. Although conversation was slow and halting at first, Benyovsky himself learned the language quickly[241] and a relationship was soon established. The Aynyu contacted their chieftains and, in exchange for part of Benyovsky’s trade goods, agreed to find the appropriate timber Vaitkus required and bring it to the Lithuanians. Of course, Benyovsky’s trade goods had been intended for the Japanese, not tribal peoples like the Aynyu. European naval explorers who expected to encounter the latter commonly brought things like jewellery, fine steel blades and so forth. Benyovsky had planned to trade with the Japanese, considered an advanced and civilised people about which one fact in Russia was particularly known, via the Dutch: the Japanese had banned firearms back in the days of firelock muskets. Benyovsky had thought that they might change their mind when they saw the latest rifled products out of European gunsmiths. In the end, though, he mostly ended up trading them to Aynyu hunters…or at least they claimed to be hunters.
Of course, Benyovsky was not stupid. He realised that trading weapons to a people surrounding his stricken ships was not necessarily the best idea in the world. To that end, he tasked Münchhausen – who was quite an accomplished spy and tracker – to tail those Aynyu buying the most rifles and find out if they were planning an attack on the Lithuanian ships. What Münchhausen found, though, was even more extraordinary: the Aynyu were indeed planning an attack, but on someone else entirely.
It was not until one of Lebedev’s ships, the Zhemchug, finally found the beached Lithuanians six months later (still with no sign of the promised timber from the Aynyu) that Benyovsky learned the name of the place where his ships had landed – Shiretoko Hanto…
*
The Aynyu rebellion of 1797 was an event difficult to predict.[242] Tension had certainly been rising for a long time, with the Matsumae Han slowly changing trade rules over time to favour Japanese interests over the Aynyu, and occasionally engaging in land displacement and resettlement. The Daimyo of Matsumae had begun to interpret his Shogunal grant for trade with the Aynyu as a license to rule over them. But the catalyst for this particular revolt could have been anything. In this case, it was an accusation that the Japanese had attempted to deliberately poison Aynyu chieftains at a trade meeting. Whether this claim had any accuracy to it was irrelevant: it was enough to unite many disparate Aynyu tribes under a charismatic leader, who called himself Aynoyna, after the first man in the Aynyu religious tradition.
It is likely that, without Benyovsky and Lebedev, the rebellion would have gone the same way as that of Shakushain a century earlier: the Aynyu might have scored some early victories, but as soon as they inflicted a serious defeat on the Matsumae, it would be enough to make the Shogunate concerned enough to send forces to restore order there. The Matsumae enjoyed many special privileges, such as being exempt from the sankin kotai,[243] precisely because they were seen as no real threat to the Tokugawa.
This time, however, things were different. Some of the Aynyu – not many, but enough – were armed with European firearms. It was sufficient to result in the complete rolling-back of all Matsumae settlements north of the Ishikari plain. By 1799, the mood in Matsumae-town was panicked. The Daimyo of Matsumae decided to send a call for help to Edo, only to be assassinated by one of his lieutenants, who feared a purge like the one after the Shakushain Revolt – when, for a generation afterwards, the Tokugawa had imposed their own men on the Matsumae, throwing out all existing Matsumae ministers and generals. The Han descended into chaos, with only vague reports of the situation reaching Niphon.[244]
By 1800, things had stabilised, apparently. The new Daimyo, Matsumae Hidoshi – barely more than a boy – sent a representative to the newly rebuilt Shogunal palace in Edo, who reported that the situation was under control and the Aynyu had been defeated once again. Hidoshi apologised that he could not come himself at the present, as tradition demanded, as matters were still too volatile at home. Emperor Tenmei[245] and the Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi,[246] were relieved to hear the news, as the country was still recovering from a succession of natural disasters that had hit in 1772, including a great fire in Edo, destructive typhoons, volcanoes and earthquakes. Authorising a military expedition against the Aynyu would have made already strained finances creak alarmingly. Later chroniclers of Yapontsi affairs would record this as a warning or prophecy to both Court and Bakufu. If so, it was not heeded. Matsumae had always looked after itself, and no-one thought to send an envoy to check that the representative was telling the truth.
In reality, the Aynyu had won the revolt – at least in the short term. It was likely that their dominance would not have lasted long, as their temporary, artificial unity began to break up as differing tribal interests re-asserted themselves. But Benyovsky had had another of what Lebedev described sourly as ‘his great ideas, of which he has fifty in a day, perhaps three of which will not result in us being killed by the end of that day’. From his talks with the Aynyu, and later some Japanese as he visited the lands conquered by the Aynyu, Benyovsky had built up a slowly improving picture of Japanese society – stratified and built strongly on tradition and history. He knew that, no matter how optimistic Lebedev might be, there was no way that the Shogun would permit Russian and Lithuanian trade through Edzo. It was simply against the rules.
That, of course, assumed that the Shogun knew about that trade…
The strategy Benyovsky adopted was similar to those sometimes used in Germany, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, and even his native Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before its dissolution. If the system was just that stratified, the way to deal with it was not to try and change it, but just to play it. The fact that most foreign trade was forbidden under the Tokugawa was irrelevant if the Shogunate didn’t realise it was foreign trade.
Therefore, the Russo-Lithuanian forces co-opted the dead Matsumae Daimyo’s third son, Hidoshi, who had been dismissed from the succession in most Japanese’s minds as his elder brothers fought in the burning house of the Aynyu revolt. Münchhausen was made the boy’s bodyguard and filled him with tall tales of Europe, Russia and the adventures of himself and his father. It was obvious to the Shogun in Edo that such a young Daimyo must have a regent of some kind, but he never dreamed that it might be a round-eyed barbarian.
The Russians and Lithuanians, the latter now with repaired ships, descended upon Matsumae town in August 1799, just as the Aynyu had drawn off most of the Matsumae’s remaining army. Once upon a time, two hundred years before, Japan had had one of the largest and most powerful navies in the world, but under the Tokugawa sakoku system of isolationism, the very construction of oceangoing ships was forbidden. With no ships and no cannon – also banned – the Matsumae were effectively defenceless against the descent.
Led by Peter’s suspect Leib Guards, the Russo-Lithuanian forces took the city and broke into the castle, using European cannon taken from the Lithuanian ship
s to batter down the mediaeval walls. After a brief struggle which culminated in the deaths of the two elder Matsumae brothers, the town were secured. Benyovsky’s wild gamble had worked, to Lebedev’s not-so-private amazement. Of course, things were helped by the fact that the Matsumae’s influential family surgeon, Sugimura Goro, had fallen from grace during the dead brothers’ power struggle and was willing to help Hidoshi and the Russians establish themselves in return for regaining his former prominence. It was primarily Sugimura who helped the Russians and Lithuanians first insinuate their way into Japanese society – a fact which means Yapontsi nationalists ever since have equated his name with Judas.
By 1801, then, when news of the now-complete Civil War was just breaking in Okhotsk, Benyovsky and Lebedev had finally established a position. Under the guise of internal Japanese trade quietly continuing with a Han that had always been a little…edgy, a little odd—and so it was not entirely a surprise to find some unusual new goods included there—Europeans other than the Dutch had finally broken into Tokugawa’s closed market. Sakoku had been, unknowingly, breached.
Things were therefore looking up for the venturers, at least for the present. But back in Okhotsk, people were getting careless. As soon as Emperor Paul heard of the successes, he sent more men and more supplies to expand the colony and the trade. The correct response, perhaps, but it meant a lot more trade going through the Amur region…a region whose precise status had been left carefully undefined for a long time, and a very good reason.
Trade with Japan had proved a surprisingly easy nut to crack, though few men would have had the daring to accomplish it. China…China was a different story…
Chapter 43: Hounded by the Afghans
“I forget the throne of Delhi when I remember the mountain tops of my Afghan land. If I must choose between the world and you, I shall not hesitate to claim your barren deserts as my own.”
– Ahmad Shah Durrani
*
From: “A History of Northern India” by Philippe Desaix (1954)-
The eighteenth century was a turbulent time for warfare and politics across the globe, to the extent that some have theorised that worldwide crises might have been precipitated by unusual shifts in climate or the coronal energy from the sun. But such speculation lies beyond the scope of the conventional historian’s work. Suffice to say that Europe was far from alone in seeing turmoil and rapid changes in that era, though in Europe the chaos of the eighteenth century soon faded into memory beside the viciousness of the early nineteenth.
Persia suffered a series of civil wars throughout the century. The long-standing Safavid dynasty was brought down by a weak Shah, Soltan Hossein, and invasions by rebellious Ghilzai Afghans out of Kandahar. The Ghilzais, led by Mir Mahmud Hotaki, killed Soltan Hossein’s brother, the Persian governor of Kandahar, and then attacked Persia proper in 1722. The Safavid response was muted, hampered by the fact that Soltan Hossein’s corrupt court did not see fit to inform him of the invasion until the capital, Isfahan, was already under siege. The Afghans starved the city out, deposed Soltan Hossein and forced him to crown Mir Mahmud as Shah of Persia.
However, the Persian armies did not recognise the legitimacy of the coronation or Mir Mahmud’s authority, and remained hostile to the Afghans. Soltain Hossein’s son, Tahmasp, fled to the Qajar tribe of the north and established a government-in-exile in Tabriz. He declared himself Shah and was recognised by the Ottoman Sultan, Ahmed III, and the Emperor of all the Russias, Peter the Great. The Ottomans and the Russians were both cheerfully using Persia’s difficulties to expand their own influence in disputed regions such as Mesopotamia and the Caucasus; however, both Constantinople and St Petersburg feared the other gaining too much influence over Persia as a whole, and so both backed Tahmasp as the rightful ruler.
Meanwhile, the Persian general Nadir Shah Afshar pretended to submit to the Afghan ruler of occupied Mashhad, Malek Mahmud, but then escaped and began building up his own army. Mashhad was a holy city and one of great symbolic importance to the Persian nation, so the Afghan occupation was more important than the city’s strategic value alone. Tahmasp II and the Qajar leader, Fath Ali Khan, asked Nadir Shah to join them. He agreed and soon halted the Afghan advance, then began to drive Mir Mahmud’s men back. He discovered that Fath Ali Khan was in treacherous contact with Malek Mahmud and revealed this to Tahmasp, who executed Fath Ali Khan and made Nadir chief of his army instead. He took the title ‘Tahmasp Qoli’ (servant of Tahmasp) and began increasing his personal power through his military command. His success in retaking Mashhad in 1726 made him a legendary figure, a Persian Alexander as many would later call him.
Nadir decided not to directly attack occupied Isfahan, but instead invaded Herat, which was controlled by the Abdali tribe of Afghans. He defeated them and many joined his army, adding valuable cavalry strength. The Abdalis assisted Nadir Shah in two epic victories against the new Ghilzai leader, Ashraf, who then fled and abandoned the city of Isfahan to the Persians in 1729. After Tahmasp made his triumphal entry into the city, Nadir then pursued Ashraf back into Khorasan. Ashraf was eventually murdered by some of his own soldiers.
The Ottomans’ gains during this Persian civil war were largely undone by Nadir’s campaign against them in 1730, though he was hampered by a rebellion by the Abdalis—who briefly seized Isfahan and consumed Nadir’s time in subduing them. The Ottoman general Topaz Osman Pasha also foiled Nadir’s plans to attack Baghdad, one of his few defeats. However, Nadir was now sufficiently powerful that he was able to force Tahmasp to abdicate in favour of his baby son Abbas III, to whom Nadir became regent. In all but name, he had become Shah himself.
Nadir’s reign had considerable consequences for Persia itself, both in his attempted reforms and in his unashamedly barbaric attitude towards subduing any internal opposition – he idolised Tamerlane and his infamous practices. Nadi’s reign would end, perhaps inevitably, in his assassination in 1747. Persia descended into a second civil war, a three-way conflict between the Qajars, Nadir’s nephew Adil Shah and a new Zand dynasty founded by Karim Khan. In the end, the Zands won, but by this time, much of Nadir’s territorial gains had been undone.[247]
But, in the long run, Nadir’s reign was perhaps even more influential for Afghanistan and the north of India than it was for Persia itself. As part of his campaign against the Ghilzais, he conquered Kandahar in 1737 and founded a new city near it, named Nadirabad after himself – aping the Alexandrian legend once more. As part of this conquest, he freed numerous prisoners of the Ghilzais, important hostages from the ruling lines of the other Afghan tribes. Among these was Ahmad Khan Abdali and his brother Zulfikar Khan Abdali, sons of the Abdali chief. Nadir took a liking to Ahmad Khan, calling him ‘Dur-i-Durrani’ (“Pearl of Pearls”) and making him head of his Abdali cavalry.
Ahmad Khan then participated in Nadir Shah’s invasion of the Mughal Empire. That once-powerful state had declined since the days of Aurangzeb, and its current ruler, Mohammed Shah, was unable to prevent encroachments by the growing Maratha Empire from the south. Nadir continued his conquest of Afghanistan, taking Kabul and Ghazni, then – using the pretext of pursuing enemy Afghans over the border – conquered Lahore and crossed the Indus. With assistance from the Abdalis, he defeated the Mughals at the Battle of Karnal in 1739. Mohammed Shah bought off Nadir’s army with almost his entire treasury; the Persians withdrew, but took with them the Peacock Throne, symbol of the Mughal Emperors, and the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-ye Noor diamonds, along with much other booty. Such was the loot, in fact, that Nadir was able to suspend taxation in Persia for three years upon his triumphal return, increasing his popularity with the Persian people.
Upon Nadir’s assassination in 1747, Ahmad Khan accused Adil Shah of having a hand in his uncle’s murder. He withdrew his Abdali forces from the Persian army, fighting their way through Adil Shah’s forces all the way back to Kandahar. The Abdali chiefs then called a Loya Jirga to choose a new leader; after nine days’ worth of indecisive squa
bbling – in which Ahmad Khan himself remained silent – Sabir Shah Abdali, a respected holy man, spoke up and declared that, despite his youth, Ahmad Khan was the only one he saw with the qualities to take up the burden of rule. The chiefs agreed and Ahmad Khan Abdali became Ahmad Shah Durrani, changing the name of the Abdali tribe to the Durranis in honour of Nadir’s nickname for him.
Under Ahmad Shah’s rule, the newly-minted Durrani tribe immediately began consolidating their power over all Afghanistan. Ghazni was taken from the Ghilzais and Kabul from its own ruler. As he did not recognise any of the claimants to the throne of Persia as legitimate, Ahmad Shah therefore did not limit his campaigns to Afghanistan, taking Herat and Mashhad in 1750-51. But the main force of his will was directed not at Persia, but at India. Exceeding his hero Nadir’s brief, Alexandrian push into the subcontinent, Ahmad Shah was able to achieve lasting success against the still-divided Mughals. After three separate invasions of the Punjab, the Mughal Emperor, Ahmad Shah Bahadur, was forced to concede all of the Sindh and Kashmir—and most of the Punjab itself—to Ahmad Shah.