Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  The Army of the Indus had been extremely keen to sack Haidarabad, and had anticipated treasure to the value of eight crores of rupees, or £8m. When news of the surrender reached them on 7 February, the officers of the Bengal column were most disappointed.45

  The existence of the famed riches was proven when the massive sum of ten lakhs in tribute were paid over to Pottinger in coin over the space of just three days, from 7 to 9 February 1839. This was the first instalment of twenty-five lakhs collected altogether. The British were bound by treaty to hand over fifteen lakhs to Ranjit Singh; they never did. Finding provisions and carriage to buy proved much more problematic than getting the money.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Dodgy Dossier

  In England, many old India hands could not understand why an expensive war was being undertaken so far from British borders. In February 1839 the Court of Directors demanded to see all the correspondence leading to declaration of war. Hobhouse high-handedly replied that they would have to wait until the Government placed documents before Parliament – which secretly he was delaying.1

  In presenting the case for war to Parliament, Hobhouse and Palmerston faced two major difficulties. The first was Russia. The real motive for war was the desire to counter Russia in Central Asia. But Russia had backed down, disowned and removed Simonicz and Witkiewicz. On 31 October 1838 Witkiewicz had been in Kandahar, distributing 10,000 gold ducats to the Dil Khans and promising 40,000 more to help resist the British. But on 11 November Count Nesselrode, the Russian Foreign Minister, wrote to Palmerston deprecating Witkiewicz and avowing that

  there has not existed the smallest design hostile to the English government, nor the smallest idea of endangering the tranquillity of the British possession in India.

  to which Palmerston replied

  Her Majesty’s government accept as entirely satisfactory the declaration of the Russian Government that it does not harbour any designs hostile to the interests of Great Britain in India.2

  The next month Palmerston was pursuing further complaints about Simonicz. He asked the British Ambassador in St Petersburg, Lord Durham, to discover whether Simonicz had acted on instructions in promoting the attack on Herat. Nesselrode replied:

  that if count Simonicz had acted in the manner mentioned by Mr McNeill he had done what was in direct opposition to his instructions. The count had been distinctly ordered to dissuade the Shah from prosecuting the present war […] in any circumstances.3

  Palmerston’s pressing priority was to persuade Russia to accept an international system of guarantee for Turkey against the encroachment of the Egyptian Pasha, Mehmet Ali. This would mean Russia surrendering some of the diplomatic gains made in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, particularly control of the Dardanelles. Palmerston was concerned about Russian threat towards India, but had no means other than conciliation to cause a Russian withdrawal from the Bosphorus.

  So Hobhouse and Palmerston had to present a case for war in Afghanistan to avert a withdrawn threat, from a Russia they now wished to placate. They were working with Russia towards the treaty of July 1840 which contained Great Power agreement to coerce Mehmet Ali into giving back Syria to the Ottomans. This negotiation had caused great tension with Mehmet Ali’s backers in Paris. Palmerston had obtained agreement of his own Government only by threat of resignation. The Cabinet had been baffled by the sudden transition of Russia from enemy to ally against Louis-Philippe. They viewed the French King as an important liberal figure. It seemed to many leading Whig politicians not to make sense, especially when they were still heading for war in Afghanistan to thwart the Russians.

  By comparison, Palmerston and Hobhouse’s second problem must have seemed a minor annoyance – they had to account for the fact that the war was being launched against the advice of the only Afghanistan ‘celebrity’ whose name carried public weight, Alexander Burnes.

  The answer was twofold: to overwhelm parliamentarians with material; nine dense volumes of blue book were published, much of it tangentially relevant; and rigorous editing was employed. References to the Russian threat were largely excised. Burnes’ despatches were redacted to remove reference to Dost’s pro-British sentiments, or his agreement to reasonable terms. Burnes’ own policy recommendations were cut out, up to the time where he had been ordered that the policy was to install Shuja, and had started making recommendations on how to implement this.

  Nobody reading only these blue books would know Burnes had argued for alliance with Dost Mohammed. The editing was undoubtedly tendentious; they made a false prospectus for war by eliminating the alternative. There is a respectable argument for omitting passages which might offend Russia, but the systematic misrepresentation to Parliament of Burnes’ views is not defensible.

  The actual editing was carried out by William Cabell, Chief Clerk of the Foreign Office, with both Hobhouse and Palmerston then making further emendations. Under Palmerston, the entire staff of the Foreign Office in London was only about three dozen people. This was therefore a major task for overstretched officials. Two volumes dealt with Burnes’ correspondence, one anent Witkiewicz, the second Dost Mohammed. The second was the more heavily edited. The sting was drawn from the first by separate publication by the FO of correspondence with Russia in which Witkiewicz had been disowned.4

  Revisionist historians5 have portrayed the distortion of Burnes’ views as myth. But Burnes was always convinced he had been deliberately misrepresented. Writing to his friend George Jacob from Kabul in December 1839:

  I hardly thought, when writing my dispatches, that they were so soon destined to form a part of history. I would much have preferred that the whole of my views had been published rather than serving up to the public as a report only so much as the Government could digest. You would then have seen that their policy towards Dost Mohammed had been very questionable.6

  On 14 February Cabell wrote to Palmerston and Hobhouse giving the genesis of the publication strategy.7 Stating the problem as how to justify the ‘decision of the Governor-General’, without offending Russia, Cabell suggests they should initially publish nothing except the trilateral treaty with Shuja and Ranjit. The opposition would demand more, and the Government would be able to tell Russia its hand was forced. They should then publish McNeill’s letters about Persian designs on Herat and Simonicz’ role, and extracts of Burne’s letters about Witkiewicz, but also Nesselrode’s letters denying they acted on instructions. In this plan, the only material published from Burnes would relate to Witkiewicz.

  Cabell stated the aim as to demonstrate that ‘no other course was open’, while not endangering relations with Russia. He simply presumes that the Government will only publish those papers supporting its case: that this is an exercise in self-justification, not in providing material to Parliament. The editing of Burnes’ despatches was only a part of a campaign of tendentious Government handling of Parliament in the run-up to war, which cannot fail to evoke comparison with Blair’s misleading of Parliament to promote the invasion of Iraq.

  A studiously unhelpful minute8 is written by Hobhouse to Cabell instructing a response to requests from Hobhouse’s Tory shadow Ellenborough. In reply to Ellenborough’s request for any treaty with Bhawalpur, Hobhouse replied that there was no treaty that had ‘yet arrived in England’. But Hobhouse knew the treaty for the ‘loan’ of Baikhar fortress had been signed on 26 December – that the ratified copy had not yet arrived was true, but hardly a full answer. Similarly in respect of a request for any treaty with the Amirs of Sind, Hobhouse replied there was ‘no treaty yet that we are aware of’, but he had copies of the draft, and knew that three months earlier it was on the point of signature. It was in fact already signed.

  Hobhouse’s simple blanking of Ellenborough was not a legitimate way to treat Parliament. This is vital context to the editing of Burnes’ despatches, which was part of a wider distortion. To the current generation it is irresistible to note the parallels with the work of John Scarlett and Alistair Campbell in fill
eting and filtering disparate intelligence to give the entirely false picture in the ‘dodgy dossier’, on the threat from Iraq’s (non-existent) Weapons of Mass Destruction. Imperialist resource grabs, in whatever century, entail duplicity at the centre of government. This dishonesty was as shocking in 1838 as in 2003.

  Mountstuart Elphinstone was among the many in Britain who had severe doubts about the invasion. He wrote presciently to Burnes, in an undated letter which Burnes marked ‘received Cabool 25 August 1839’:

  You will guess what I think of affairs in Cabool, you remember when I used to dispute with you against having even an Agent in Cabool, and now we have assumed the protection of the state, as much as if it were one of the Subsidiary Allies in India – If you send 27000 men […] to Candahar […] and can feed them I have no doubt you will take Candahar and Cabool, and get up Shoojah – but for maintaining him in such a poor, cold, strong and remote country, among a turbulent people like the Afghans, I own it seems to me to be hopeless […] If the disgrace of a close connection with us were not enough to make it unpopular, the connection with Runjeet and our guarantee of his conquests must make us detested.9

  The Company administration was divided. The Court of Directors and the Political Committee remained very sceptical. The Government-dominated Board of Control and Secret Committee not only supported the invasion, but were planning to advance British influence another thousand miles north, not just to the Oxus (Amu) but the Jaxartes (Syr). A document approved by Hobhouse and the Secret Committee on 12 February 1839 stated that Russia aimed to conquer Khiva and Bokhara. Remarkably the paper states of Russia:

  it is her […] duty to make herself mistress of those territories, for the triple purpose of preventing the slavery of her own subjects, of giving the blessings of European civilisation to extensive tracts of great natural fertility, beauty and almost unequalled salubrity, and of diverting a great part of the more valuable commerce of India into the channel of those countries and European Russia.

  But the paper then argues that Britain equally has this right, and must do it first. As with the Indus, the spread of preponderant British influence was to be won peacefully through trade penetration using the rivers. The aim was:

  opening to commercial navigation the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers, which appear to offer an uninterrupted natural navigation of nearly 2000 miles between Kalif on the Oxus and Kokaun on the Jaxartes. The question is not whether this shall be done, but whether England or Russia shall do it. Steam vessels […] may be conveyed in frame from the Indus to the Oxus. In this way we may establish a commercial intercourse mutually beneficial, preoccupying this important navigation, and tending to ensure the friendship of those states on its borders.10

  This project to encompass the territory of modern Uzbekistan was not meant to be a distant dream, but a step which the Board of Control was instructing Auckland to take as soon as the British Army had control of Kabul. Burnes had surveyed parts of the Amu, but there was no reliable information on the Syr. That accounts for the wildly optimistic view that it was navigable from the Aral Sea to Kokhand. Equally ill-informed was the description ‘of unequalled salubrity’. I have experienced +52°C in summer and -32°C in winter in the countryside between Karshi and Samarkand.

  The EIC offices in Leadenhall Street must have been an extraordinary place to work. The correspondence of the Political Committee was drafted by John Stuart Mill. The correspondence of the Secret Committee – including this scheme – was drafted by the major novelist Thomas Love Peacock.

  Hobhouse was as actively engaged in war preparations as the communications delay would allow. He ordered that the 13th Dragoons remain indefinitely in India while the 15th Dragoons were to be sent out urgently to Bombay. Every Queen’s regiment in India was to be expanded by ten men, while 4,000 new bayonets were to be supplied.11 Hobhouse tried to speed up the mails to allow him a more direct influence. The overland route by Suez, allied with the advent of steam, had revolutionised communication and letters now took ten weeks not six months, but a twenty-week turnaround still effectively took him out of the war. Cabell organised speed trials of the official mail versus Mr Waghorn’s steam-packet service via Malta, but the results were similar.12 Mr Waghorn got the contract and Hobhouse wrote to the Egypt Office emphasising that mails must be sent on to Malta the moment they arrived.13 By 1840 Hobhouse had achieved seven weeks to Bombay and nine to Calcutta.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kelat

  Mehrab Khan of Kelat was widely believed to be sympathetic to restoring the Saduzai monarchy in Afghanistan. He had sheltered Shuja following his defeat before Kandahar in 1834, and had refused to surrender him. In fact, Mehrab had a deep sense of honour, and was acting more in accordance with his obligations to a guest than out of regard for Shuja.

  The route from Ferozepore to Kabul through the Bolan pass is long and circuitous. But Fane was initially tasked to march to Herat, not Kabul. Fane consulted, among others, Arthur Conolly and the chosen route was that which Conolly had travelled from Herat. By the time news of the raising of the siege of Herat had arrived, the army was already collected at Ferozepore for the Bolan pass.

  Most of the long march was through Kelat, which started at the Indus and continued either side of the mountain barrier they would cross, encompassing Quetta in the district of Shawl, which was to become the campaign’s forward base. Before the mountains it was sand and scrub; the mountains were bleak, and Shawl was sparsely populated. Furthermore, 1838 had brought a third successive drought year. Quetta often struggled to feed its own population.

  Even in good times, the route was ill-suited to an army, with its accompanying mass of camp followers. But this was during a disaster. The failure of rains was widespread. Kanpur was ‘in many places like a charnel house, and the river has become disgusting from the flocks of vultures tearing the starved corpses to pieces’.1

  Burnes’ career had taken off when, as a young Deputy Quartermaster-General, he had taken on the functions of a political officer. Now as a senior political officer, he found himself instructed to undertake the functions of a Quartermaster-General for the provisioning, transport and logistics of the army. Burnes’ contacts with local chiefs were essential, and he was authorised to draw an enormous sum of money – nineteen lakhs or £190,000 – on the Shikarpur bankers to procure supplies.2 He had already concluded agreements with Sarwar Khan Lohani over carriage and with Rustam Khan of Khairpur and Mehrab Khan of Kelat over provisions. He had now had to make these work, despite failed harvests.

  He found he was obliged to micro-manage. On 20 February he rode into Shikarpur alongside Willoughby Cotton at the head of the Bengal contingent. A British officer wrote home:

  Every impediment has been thrown in the way of our procuring supplies in this territory […] And it was only by Sir Alexander Burnes telling the chiefs hereabouts, that if they interfered with or impeded in his endeavours the man who had contracted to supply grain, they should answer for it most heavily, that we have managed to get grain at reasonable prices.3

  Burnes’ duties were many and various. James Atkinson, Bengal’s Surgeon-General, was travelling with the horse artillery through Sind, accompanied by Delawar Khan who was handling their logistics ‘in the employ of Sir Alexander Burnes’. At the town of Goetki the local mullah implored Atkinson’s intercession on behalf of two villagers, one of them wounded, who had been arrested for stealing baggage camels. The mullah protested their innocence, and was assured ‘that the culprits would be handed over to Sikunder Burnes, who would act in the case according to the evidence advanced’.4 The name evidently carried public confidence in Sind. Burnes consistently intervened to prevent executions.

  The Army of the Indus had about three camp followers to every soldier, fewer than usual in India. There was one driver for every three camels, of which there were tens of thousands. Each horse had two attendants – a groom, and a grass-cutter who had the dangerous job of going out for forage. There was a driver for every two
draught bullocks, of which there were numbers for each cannon, tumbril and cart. There were drovers for load bullocks and mules. There were messengers, and palanquin and dhoolie bearers for carrying the sick and wounded, at least two relays of four for each casualty. There were hundreds of lascars who pitched and struck the tents and vast numbers of personal servants. The rank and file slept ten or twelve to a tent; each tent had a cook, dhobi and water carrier. There were herdsmen who supplied the army with mutton, and mobile chicken farms. There were merchants who set up camp bazaars, selling victuals, fabrics, weapons, jewellery, bed linen, shawls, medicines, aphrodisiacs, firewood, brassware, earthenware and furniture. Bankers and moneylenders had their stall with private doctors, barbers, letter-writers, fortune-tellers and entertainers. There were also the women, attached and unattached, and dancing boys for those so inclined.5

  Macnaghten, Burnes, D’Arcy Todd and Cotton on 21 February 1839 discussed the available intelligence. Eldred Pottinger and Colonel Stoddart had been forced to quit Herat after continuing quarrels with the wazir, Yar Mohammed, despite the lavish sums Pottinger had given him. Burnes had heard from McNeill that the Shah, who still had not evacuated Ghorian, might again attack Herat; he had also heard from Kandahar that Witkiewicz was in the city. Another agent had informed Burnes that Baluch tribesmen were planning to block the Bolan pass.