{"id":2847,"date":"2014-12-10T09:07:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T14:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/preserving\/?p=2847"},"modified":"2014-12-10T09:07:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T14:07:13","slug":"the-first-afghanistan-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/2014\/12\/10\/the-first-afghanistan-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Afghanistan War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kabul3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The history of military action in\u00a0Afghanistan is full of costly\u00a0successes and\u00a0bitter 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\u00a01839-1842. 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\u00a0invasion and occupation\u00a0Afghanistan was to check\u00a0the expanding Russian Empire from creeping further into British holding interests in the south and east Asia. The war\u00a0was not without its naysayers, including Lord Aberdeen\u00a0and Commander-in-Chief\u00a0John Keane, who even prognosticated\u00a0that the war would end in catastrophe. In 1842, The British would realize that catastrophe during\u00a0the Battle of Kabul and its humiliating retreat. In the end,\u00a0British eventually found it\u00a0untenable to occupy the territory, only to re-invade Afghanistan in 1878.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rollo Gillespie Burslem served the British\u00a0Infantry during the\u00a0campaigns of 1838-1842\u00a0in Afghanistan. He participated in several battles, but also\u00a0helped 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.<\/p>\n

He opens his book with:<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 through a region which few Europeans have ever\u00a0 visited before. The notes from which it is compiled were written on the desert mountains of Central\u00a0 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\u00a0 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Burslem\u00a0later describes what difficulties\u00a0any army would experience with traversing\u00a0the harsh land:<\/p>\n

We were now about to explore a part of Toorkisthan\u00a0<\/em>
\nwhich I have reason to believe had never been\u00a0<\/em>
\nvisited by Europeans; the distance between Ghoree\u00a0<\/em>
\nand Badjghar is about eighty miles, across as wild\u00a0<\/em>
\nand romantic a country as can well be conceived,\u00a0<\/em>
\nconsisting of a succession of difficult and in some\u00a0<\/em>
\nplaces perilous defiles ; the last of these was the\u00a0<\/em>
\nfamous Dushti Suffaed, which leads to Badjghar.\u00a0<\/em>
\nThere is a sameness in the features of these Toorkisthan\u00a0<\/em>
\npasses which renders a faithful description\u00a0<\/em>
\ntedious, from its monotony and the necessary repetition\u00a0<\/em>
\nof similar characteristic features; yet the\u00a0<\/em>
\nreader will hardly fail to draw important conclusions\u00a0<\/em>
\nfrom the immense difficulty and almost practical\u00a0<\/em>
\nimpossibility that a modern army of considerable\u00a0<\/em>
\nnumbers, with all its encumbrances, through such\u00a0<\/em>
\na country, with any hope of its retaining its efficiency\u00a0<\/em>
\nor even a tithe of its original numerical\u00a0<\/em>
\nstrength, will encounter.<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u00a0addresses the accusations of brutality and cruelty to the\u00a0native population:<\/p>\n

\u00a0I 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\u00a0 can emphatically deny the justice of the accusation.\u00a0 Some few instances of revenge for past injuries did\u00a0occur, 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Immediately\u00a0<\/span><\/em>before us lay the populous city of Koollum ;\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
the fortress standing on a small isolated eminence,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
and the dome-shaped houses embosomed in the\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
deep foliage of their gardens and orchards clustered\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
round it for miles on every side. Immediately on\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
the outskirts of the city the desert commences,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
which, stretching away to Bokhara as far as the\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
eye could reach, formed a melancholy and uninviting\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
background to the busy scene before us.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0…human skeletons were strewed around ; as far as\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
the eye could penetrate these mournful relics presented\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
themselves ; they were very perfect, and had\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
evidently not been disturbed since death.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beautifully\u00a0<\/span><\/em>brilliant were the prismatic colours\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
reflected from the\u00a0varied surface of the ice, when\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
the torches flashed\u00a0suddenly upon them as we \u00a0<\/span><\/em>
passed from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
\u00a0every thing was of solid ice, and being unable to\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
stand on account\u00a0of its slippery nature, we slid\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
or rather glided\u00a0mysteriously along the glassy \u00a0<\/span><\/em>
surface of this hall of spells.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\n
Description:<\/dt>\n
Burslem, Rollo Gillespie. A peep into Toorkisth\u0101n. London : P. Richardson, 1846.<\/span>\u00a0<\/dd>\n
Persistent Link:<\/dt>\n
http:\/\/nrs.harvard.edu\/urn-3:FHCL:3442971<\/a><\/dd>\n
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Repository:<\/dt>\n
Widener Library<\/dd>\n
Institution:<\/dt>\n
Harvard University<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The history of military action in\u00a0Afghanistan is full of costly\u00a0successes and\u00a0bitter 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\u00a01839-1842. The campaign resulted in the death of some 4,500 British and Indian soldiers as well as some 12,000 civilians. The British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2559,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2847"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2898,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions\/2898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}