by Craig Murray
Alex therefore made to General Bradford an audacious proposal, to move from surveying the Company’s new territories to exploration beyond the frontier:
Camp Bhooj 14 July 1828
Sir,
I herewith do myself the honor to transmit a Military Memoir […]
1. […] I have been forcibly struck at the meagre and uncertain knowledge we possess of the large tract of country to the Northward of that which I have traversed and […] I am most anxious to explore at the opening of the ensuing season the unknown regions –
2. […] the banks of the Loonee River […] and […] Jissulmere which has never yet […] been visited by a European, tho’ it must be an object of some interest […] as being one of the points thro’ which the French contemplated the invasion of our possessions during the late war.
3. A reference to the Map will show the vicinity of Jissulmere to the Indus […] and did it appear […] that it was possible to extend my journey to that point I should also feel most thankful for permission […]
4. I […] further [confess] a most ardent desire to descend the Indus from the point last mentioned to the Sea […] My brother’s late visit to their Capital has shown these rulers in so different a light […] that I humbly believe there must be some chance of success.
[…]
6. The opportunities which I have already enjoyed of gaining a knowledge of the character of the Natives […] and the total absence of any complaints against either my servants or myself during that period will I trust be a sufficient safeguard to Government that I will not interfere with the prejudices of the people […]
I have the honor to be
Sir
Your most Obdt Servant
Alex Burnes
D A Qmr Genl in Cutch6
Burnes was positively initiating exploration beyond the frontiers. Bradford strongly approved, writing to Malcolm with a further unequivocal commendation:
The application contained in that officer’s letter […] His Excellency conceives (undertaken by this intelligent young officer) would prove productive of great and important benefit to the Public Service
[…]
The zeal, talent and indefatigable industry of Lieutenant Burnes, His Excellency has already on several occasions much pleasure in bringing to the Knowledge of Government.7
Unfortunately, establishment of garrisons of the Bombay Army in Cutch required a great deal of work and several officers senior to Burnes in the Quartermaster-General’s Department were off sick. Burnes could not be spared. Believing this would end his cherished project for exploration, he conscientiously set out hand-over notes for somebody else:
Bombay 7th November 1828
Sir,
[…]
2.From Bhooj I proposed crossing the Runn to the outpost of the Deera Brigade […] and there instituting inquiries into the state of Parkur which, from its constant cabals, I would not assuredly have visited without previously ascertaining […] it is of some importance as being one of the few cultivated places in the desert and the resort of the disaffected from the surrounding countries […]
3.From Parkur I should have proceeded round the head of the Runn north easterly […] the Runn would have been an object of most minute inquiry – It has been represented on all our maps as ‘never passable’ but the information I received when in that neighbourhood in March last induced me to alter ‘never’ to ‘seldom’ […] cattle are abundant about the Loonee and their utility in a military point of view I had hoped to determine
[…]
8.On reaching Jesselmere I would have waited on the Rajah who is one of the five Rajpoot chiefs […] Jessulmere is said to be built as a hill fort, a plan of which would be desirable. It is also on the high road from Ajmere and indeed Hindoostan to Sind and through this channel much opium and goods are transported. Enquiries into the commerce would have occupied my minute attention […]
I have the honour etc.
Alex Burnes
D A Q M General8
Having received these notes from Burnes, Bradford wrote to Malcolm suggesting that Lieutenant James Holland, Persian interpreter on his staff, conduct the exploration.9
Burnes had been working closely with the new Resident, Pottinger, who had the direction of British policy in Cutch. Pottinger now came to young Burnes’ rescue, arguing to Malcolm that Burnes should go instead, with an analysis of Burnes’ methods as an intelligence officer which is crucial to the understanding of this biography:
there is no officer […] who is so peculiarly qualified […] to give full effect to the plan he has himself suggested. The manner in which he has on all occasions conducted his statistical investigations […] amongst various tribes of people naturally suspicious, deserves to be noted, and the happy tact that he possesses of conciliating and gratifying the natives by the kind and friendly tone of his intercourse with them at the very time he is acquiring by that intercourse, information from them […] strikes me to be peculiarly worthy of […] commendation.10
Malcolm agreed, adding that he would prefer delay to the journey being deputed to somebody other than Burnes. Bradford suggested that James Holland might then assist Burnes, and Holland’s letter makes plain that Burnes was regarded as a star: ‘I have not the presumption to suppose my exertions can ever be of the same service to Government as those of that talented officer, but I cannot refrain from expressing a belief that the exertions of two young officers […] would be of greater avail, than those of one unaided.’11
Malcolm was so impressed that he decided to transfer Burnes into the elite Political Branch, initially on an acting basis, as assistant to Pottinger. As Cutch was so recently under British control, this was a good appointment. Burnes’ elation was tempered by the financial stipulations. He was to be Assistant Resident at Bhuj and continue as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Army, but draw only one salary. He was not to be eligible for the normal substitution pay when Pottinger was absent – which Malcolm noted was ‘almost always’.
Malcolm stated these conditions would annually save the Company – and cost Burnes – over RS6,000, about £600. Burnes’ sole additional remuneration was to be RS300 per year over his army salary. Malcolm made plain that exploration beyond the frontier was the priority, and instructed Pottinger that it must ‘appear that the survey is of a secondary object […] [which] will tend greatly to allay that jealousy and alarm which might impede […] the progress of his topographical inquiries[…]’12 Indian princes were well aware that the purpose of such surveys was to prepare for the movement and operation of British armies.
Holland was already living at Bhuj with James and Alexander. The Company army had taken over the massive hill fort. The surrounding walls and towers still stand, connecting the peaks of a cluster of hills above the separately walled city. The British army encamped inside the fort, and stayed a long time – the few surviving internal buildings are barracks from the early twentieth century. The Resident lived just beneath the fort. Pottinger’s Residence stood until the earthquake of 2002; it was from 1946 in use as the Indian Army Officers’ Mess.
The armies of the Company moved their major north-west frontier post forward as British India steadily expanded. First Surat, then Kheda (Kira to the British) and then Bhuj was the military headquarters, reaching Karachi in 1839. Alexander was intimately concerned in each of these movements. He was posted in Surat from 1823 to 1824. The Cutch expeditionary force with which Alexander and James served was based in Kheda. It was there in 1828 that Alexander was initiated as a Freemason, in Benevolent Lodge No. 480, Kira.13
Today there is no memory in the town of Bhuj of a large British garrison. At the Old Palace museum, I told the curator I was researching Burnes. ‘Alexander or James?’, he immediately replied. But even he did not realise how large the British presence had been, and I am not sure he quite believed me.
The British garrison in Bhuj peaked in 1826 while war with Sind threatened. The Distribution Return of the Bombay Army gi
ves the figures shown for Bhuj:14
Date Europeans Natives
1 January 1823 Foot Artillery 38 Gun Lascars 33
Infantry 3 Infantry 1719
Pioneers 13
1 January 1826 Dragoons 543 Gun Lascars 114
Horse Artillery 74 Infantry 4990
Foot Artillery 90 Pioneers 11
Infantry 685
1 January 1828 Infantry 35 Gun Lascars 69
Infantry 3147
Pioneers 13
1 January 1830 Infantry 107 Gun Lascars 89
Infantry 1866
Pioneers 26
While Bhuj was a remote and dusty outpost, it was nonetheless a bustling one. There would have been quite a social life among the officers of the garrison, who would change as regiments were rotated. Malaria was endemic and a visit to the British cemetery is sobering. But it also reveals that not only officers but other ranks sometimes had wives at the station, and there were British children too. The cemetery is locked and difficult to access, and inhabited by a pack of wild dogs. I was not able to stay long, but enough to get a sense of the community in which the Burnes brothers lived.
The youth of those buried is shocking, most in their early twenties. James must have been fraught as the community doctor. Emily Eden notes: ‘It is melancholy to think how almost all the people we have known at all intimately have in two years died out […] None of them turned fifty; indeed all but Mr S between thirty and forty.’15 She added that John Colvin was posted to Delhi in 1826 as one of ‘a very large party of young men’. Age thirty-six, he was the sole survivor.
We can imagine Bhuj society as typical of other British stations. Any military and political work would largely be conducted in the fresh hours after dawn. The afternoon was often devoted to sports or social calls.
We know that the Burnes group gathered for regular dinners, including some modelled on the revelrous Noctes Ambrosianae portrayed in Blackwood’s Magazine. Burnes got these up with the help of the chaplain James Gray, who had participated in the original Edinburgh Noctes. Gray had been a figure on the Edinburgh literary scene; the brother-in-law of James Hogg, he was Robert Fergusson’s editor and one of Robert Burns’ friends in Dumfries, and had taught Burns’ children.16 The Burnes brothers could not have hoped to find such congenial company in Bhuj. Alex played the role of chairman in the literary debates and repartee.17 James and Alexander would be joined by Gray, Holland and other officers, with the Burnes sisters and any other available ladies. Anglo-Indian dinners were big formal affairs with huge quantities of meats, curries, wines and spirits being consumed. Each guest brought their own khitmutgar to serve them.18 It was common for a European household to have two dozen servants.
In Bombay on 28 March 1829 James Burnes made a good marriage to Sophia, daughter of Major-General Sir John Holmes. The happy couple settled down in Bhuj in a bungalow in the British lines, and there were born George (1829), Fitzjames (1830), Sophia (1832) and Holland (1833); little Sophia died just after her first birthday.19 I took flowers, but could not find her grave.
Alexander and James paid for each of their sisters, Anne, Elizabeth, Jane and Cecilia, to come out in turn to India. This was a fairly certain way for them to find husbands. They stayed with James and Sophia in Bhuj, and all caught and married their army officer. On 3 March 1831 Elizabeth married Major Richard Whish in Bombay. Ann married Captain William Ward at Bhuj on 6 April 1833, a relief after three years. On 11 July 1833 Jane married James Holland in Ahmedabad. Finally Cecilia, ten years younger than Alex, married Captain John Major at Bhuj on 12 November 1839. Thus the Burnes family was based in Bhuj for at least thirteen years.
Pottinger had made his name in 1809 as a young Lieutenant with a very daring exploration through Cutch, Sind and Kelat into Persia, then as Envoy to Persia. The journeys of Pottinger and his companion Captain Christie were the prototype of the Great Game. They travelled as Tartar Muslims, disguised as horse dealer or pilgrim. At Kelat they split and made rendezvous in Isfahan, over three months of dangerous travel later. Pottinger secretly mapped 2,412 miles, mostly never travelled by the British before.20 Christie took a more northerly route through Herat, and the conclusion they brought back to Malcolm was that a European invasion of British India through Herat was possible, through Kerman and Kelat not. Pottinger was only twenty and became Malcolm’s most trusted officer. His twenty-three-year-old companion, Captain Christie, two years later became one of the first casualties of the Great Game, dying at the head of a battalion of Persian infantry, trying to halt the advance of Russian forces. Russia had been given a formal assurance British ‘advisers’ would not fight them. In consequence, when Christie was found wounded on the field, they sabred him.
It is difficult to know what restraint the presence of his sisters and James’ wife placed on Alex’s sex life. There is no indication of a permanent local companion for Alex in his bungalow. This does not exclude there having been one. Charles Metcalfe, an Acting Governor-General, had a Sikh wife and three acknowledged Eurasian children. The doyen of Victorian Indian historians, Sir John Kaye, in 1854 wrote a two-volume biography of Metcalfe which completely omitted his racially unacceptable family. For Alex to inhabit a Scottish family circle in Bhuj was not incompatible with an unmentioned local sexual companion. As Durba Ghosh puts it, ‘For many men in colonial settlements, sexual relationships with native women were a type of public secret […] but native companions and their children were rarely seen, acknowledged or entertained at public events.’21
Pottinger was active sexually throughout his colonial career. We have no details for Bhuj, but in 1843 as Governor of Hong Kong he conducted an open affair with ‘Pretty Mrs Morgan, fair, fat and forty’ which contributed to the arguments with British merchants that led to his resignation.22 In 1847 he was quickly removed as Governor of Cape Colony because British Indian sexual behaviour was not acceptable in South Africa.23 The Cape Coast archivist recorded, ‘No other Governor of this colony ever lived in such open licentiousness as he. His amours would have been scandalous in a young man, in one approaching his sixtieth year they were inexcusable […] a cold, calculating, sneering, unsympathetic demeanour prevented men of virtue being attracted to him.’24
Malcolm and Pottinger agreed that British India needed to expand to the north-west to reach secure borders. They now sent Alexander and James Holland to explore beyond the frontiers, on the pretext of persuading the Soda tribes to stop harbouring marauders who launched regular raids into Cutch. They were to survey routes for future British army movements and positions for the defence of the frontier, and assess the political and commercial structures of neighbouring states.
On 29 September 1829 Burnes received his orders to start.25 He had been appointed Acting Assistant Quartermaster-General, a brevet Captain. Official correspondence to Burnes varies spasmodically between ‘Captain’ and ‘Lieutenant’ from 1828 to 1831.
This mission was Burnes’ first diplomatic assignment. His instructions were loose, encouraging him to survey routes over the Runn of Cutch to the Indus, to survey as much of that river as he could, and if possible press on into Sind itself. Parkar was strategically important as its oasis defined the only military route through the vast and desolate sands of the Thar desert.
Pottinger provided guidance notes. The Parkar chiefs were to understand that now the British controlled Cutch, the world had changed. On the other hand, Burnes must avoid ‘angry remonstrance’ as the chiefs were dangerous murderers. They should not stay in Parkar long, so as not to give time to the Amirs of Sind to react. They should then explore the Luni river up to Pali, on the pretext of investigating trading opportunities in opium. Pottinger would send a qasid (messenger) to meet them at Parkar with harmless instructions which they might show if challenged. Surveying must be done in secret.
you are to remember that […] your […] safety is a consideration paramount to everything else […] [you] […] should [not] go furnished with any scientific apparatus, or instruments, beyond compa
sses and small pocket sextants to take altitudes etc. It would no doubt be very desirable to have perambulators and theodolites, but I look on it that they would excite so much suspicion and surprise, as would counteract all other precautions.26
The opium trade figures prominently in all of Burnes’ explorations. In 1828, the monopoly on sales of opium from British India accounted for 16 per cent of the EIC’s revenue. Opium sales to China through agents (it was against Chinese law) paid for the vast amounts of tea the Company exported from China to the UK. Duty on this tea accounted for an astonishing 10 per cent of government revenue in London. Opium trade routes were therefore commercial information of national importance.27 The trade was so valuable the Company gave its opium agents the colossal pay of £7,500 p.a. – more than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the highest British government salary. Shipping of opium in Portuguese vessels from Karachi was a major breach in the Company’s monopoly, and a major driver behind interest in Burnes’ explorations.
The raids of Khosa tribesmen on British trade had been an irritant to Bombay and Calcutta since at least 1814, when Captain Holmes had been sent to attack Khosa raiders. These raiders were part of the excuse for British treaties in 1814 and 1819 which made Cutch a British protectorate. The British had always believed the Khosa were instigated by their nominal sovereigns the Amirs of Sind, and in 1820 a British force had marched on Parkar and attacked both the Khosas and forces of the Amirs. The Governor-General had intervened to prevent Mountstuart Elphinstone, then Governor of Bombay, from launching a full invasion of Sind.28 Alex and James Burnes had operated against the Khosas with the Cutch field force.