The First Afghanistan War
Dec 10th, 2014 by bachmann
The history of military action in Afghanistan is full of costly successes and bitter calamities. The First Anglo-Afghan War (which even became known as Auckland’s Folly) was fought between the British East India Company and Afghanistan from 1839-1842. The campaign resulted in the death of some 4,500 British and Indian soldiers as well as some 12,000 civilians. The British motivation for an invasion and occupation Afghanistan was to check the expanding Russian Empire from creeping further into British holding interests in the south and east Asia. The war was not without its naysayers, including Lord Aberdeen and Commander-in-Chief John Keane, who even prognosticated that the war would end in catastrophe. In 1842, The British would realize that catastrophe during the Battle of Kabul and its humiliating retreat. In the end, British eventually found it untenable to occupy the territory, only to re-invade Afghanistan in 1878.
Rollo Gillespie Burslem served the British Infantry during the campaigns of 1838-1842 in Afghanistan. He participated in several battles, but also helped to survey the land for possible passes through the rugged and inhospitable mountain ranges and desert plains. Upon his return from the war, Captain Rollo Burslem authored an account of his expedition under the title “A Peep into Toorkisthan”, which was first published in 1846.
He opens his book with:
The following pages are literally what they profess to be, a record of a few weeks snatched from a soldier’s life in Afghanistan, and spent in travels through a region which few Europeans have ever visited before. The notes from which it is compiled were written on the desert mountains of Central Asia, with very little opportunity, as will be easily supposed, for study or polish. Under these circumstances, it can hardly be necessary to deprecate the criticism of the reader. Composition is not one of the acquirements usually expected of a soldier. What is looked for in his narrative is not elegance, but plainness. He sees more than other people, but he studies less, and the strangeness of his story must make up for the want of ornament.
Burslem later describes what difficulties any army would experience with traversing the harsh land:
We were now about to explore a part of Toorkisthan
which I have reason to believe had never been
visited by Europeans; the distance between Ghoree
and Badjghar is about eighty miles, across as wild
and romantic a country as can well be conceived,
consisting of a succession of difficult and in some
places perilous defiles ; the last of these was the
famous Dushti Suffaed, which leads to Badjghar.
There is a sameness in the features of these Toorkisthan
passes which renders a faithful description
tedious, from its monotony and the necessary repetition
of similar characteristic features; yet the
reader will hardly fail to draw important conclusions
from the immense difficulty and almost practical
impossibility that a modern army of considerable
numbers, with all its encumbrances, through such
a country, with any hope of its retaining its efficiency
or even a tithe of its original numerical
strength, will encounter.
He addresses the accusations of brutality and cruelty to the native population:
I am aware that ill-informed people have accused our armies in Affghanistan, especially after the advance of General Pollock’s force, of many acts of cruelty to the natives, but I can emphatically deny the justice of the accusation. Some few instances of revenge for past injuries did occur, but I am sure that an impartial soldier would rather admire the forbearance of men who for days had been marching over the mangled remains of the Cabul army.
Immediately before us lay the populous city of Koollum ;
the fortress standing on a small isolated eminence,
and the dome-shaped houses embosomed in the
deep foliage of their gardens and orchards clustered
round it for miles on every side. Immediately on
the outskirts of the city the desert commences,
which, stretching away to Bokhara as far as the
eye could reach, formed a melancholy and uninviting
background to the busy scene before us.
…human skeletons were strewed around ; as far as
the eye could penetrate these mournful relics presented
themselves ; they were very perfect, and had
evidently not been disturbed since death.
Beautifully brilliant were the prismatic colours
reflected from the varied surface of the ice, when
the torches flashed suddenly upon them as we
passed from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath,
every thing was of solid ice, and being unable to
stand on account of its slippery nature, we slid
or rather glided mysteriously along the glassy
surface of this hall of spells.
- Description:
- Burslem, Rollo Gillespie. A peep into Toorkisthān. London : P. Richardson, 1846.
- Persistent Link:
- http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:3442971
- Repository:
- Widener Library
- Institution:
- Harvard University
