Download or read book The First Afghan War 1839 1842 written by Bob Carruthers and published by . This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illustrated book tells the chronological story of the First Anglo-Afghan War using the original letters, personal diaries, official reports and dispatches written by the soldiers and politicians who took part, witnessed and died in these battles. Initially they report glorious tales of success and conquest. They tell of everyday problems of a lack of equipment and a scarcity of funds, difficulties with the local warlords, the native troops and their superior officers, and the difficult terrain and extremes of weather. As time goes on, accounts of betrayal, murder and massacre begin to dominate. From the British highpoint of the storming of Ghazni in July 1839 to the gradual and insidious rebellion of the local tribes, and finally to the appalling destruction of Elphinstone's Army in January 1842, these eye-witness accounts bring this war back to vivid life. It was "a war begun for no wise purpose, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it."

Download or read book Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 written by Archibald Forbes and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Anglo-Afghan War (also known as Auckland's Folly) was fought between the British East India Company and Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842.[ It is famous for the killing of 4,500 British and Indian soldiers, plus 12,000 of their camp followers, by Afghan tribal fighters, but the British defeated the Afghans in the concluding engagement. It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Asia between the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire.

Download or read book The First Afghan War 1838 1842 written by J. A. Norris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1967-10-02 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A examination of the unresolved problems of the first Afghan war.

Download or read book The First Anglo Afghan Wars written by Antoinette Burton and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed for classroom use, The First Anglo-Afghan Wars gathers in one volume primary source materials related to the first two wars that Great Britain launched against native leaders of the Afghan region. From 1839 to 1842, and again from 1878 to 1880, Britain fought to expand its empire and prevent Russian expansion into the region's northwest frontier, which was considered the gateway to India, the jewel in Victorian Britain's imperial crown. Spanning from 1817 to 1919, the selections reflect the complex national, international, and anticolonial interests entangled in Central Asia at the time. The documents, each of which is preceded by a brief introduction, bring the nineteenth-century wars alive through the opinions of those who participated in or lived through the conflicts. They portray the struggle for control of the region from the perspectives of women and non-Westerners, as well as well-known figures including Kipling and Churchill. Filled with military and civilian voices, the collection clearly demonstrates the challenges that Central Asia posed to powers attempting to secure and claim the region. It is a cautionary tale, unheeded by Western powers in the post–9/11 era.

Download or read book The First Afghan War 1839 42 written by Richard Macrory Hon KC and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1839 forces of the British East India Company crossed the Indus to invade Afghanistan on the pretext of reinstating a former king Shah Soojah to his rightful throne. The reality was that this was another step in Britain's Great Game – Afghanistan would create a buffer to any potential Russian expansion towards India. This history traces the initial, campaign which would see the British easily occupy Kabul and the rebellion that two years later would see the British army humbled. Forced to negotiate a surrender the British fled Kabul en masse in the harsh Afghan winter. Decimated by Afghan guerilla attacks and by the harsh cold and a lack of food and supplies just one European – Dr Brydon would make it to the safety of Jalalabad five days later. This book goes on to trace the retribution attack on Kabul the following year, which destroyed the symbolic Mogul Bazaar before rapidly withdrawing and leaving Afghanistan in peace for nearly a generation.

Download or read book The First Afghan War written by Mowbray Morris and published by . This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise outline of Britain's first conflict in Afghanistan Whereas the history of British invasion, occupation, adventure and misadventure in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century is well known to military historians, there can be little doubt that the deployment of British soldiers into that daunting and perilous country in recent times has once again brought its affairs into sharp focus. Most will understand the perennial problems of operating in difficult terrain occupied by a fierce independent people where occupation is often confined to the ground upon which the army stands. In this little or nothing has changed for any foreign army that ventures beyond the Khyber Pass. Consideration of the domination of Afghanistan became inevitable as the British Empire inexorably expanded to the entire Indian sub-continent. The first occasion the British seriously engaged the Afghans by marching into their country was in 1839. Very few survivors of the force that occupied Kabul marched back into India again and the 'peace' in 1842 was inconclusive, as history has shown. Since that time this problematic region has been an a feature of the lives of British soldiers through several wars and troubles. This book, a short sketch of the First Afghan War delivered in the most direct terms for those who seek an understanding of how it all began, underlines the uncomfortable parallels between that inhospitable region in the early nineteenth century and almost two centuries later. Available in softcover and back with dust jacket.

Download or read book Retreat from Kabul written by George Bruce and published by Sapere Books. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating account of one of the most ludicrously mismanaged expeditions in the history of warfare. Ideal for readers of Shashi Tharoor, Adam Hochschild and William Dalrymple. Afghanistan, 1839. The British East India Company dominated the Indian subcontinent, yet they were not secure in their position. Holding unjustified fears that Russia threatened India's north-western border, the Company decided to make a pre-emptive strike and ensure that this menace would be stopped by a strong pro-British Afghanistan. Thousands of British and Indian troops invaded this mountainous land to intervene in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mahommed Khan and former emir Shah Shuja-ool-Mulk. After capturing Kabul they placed the cruel, but pro-British Shah Shuja upon the throne once again, and supported him with an overwhelming military presence. However, the proud and ruthless warriors of Afghanistan were unwilling to submit themselves to British control and within three years they had risen up against their oppressors in one of the bloodiest revolts in history. George Bruce delves into a vast array of published and unpublished nineteenth century sources to uncover this campaign in which very few British survivors made it back through the snow-laden passes to India. "the worst British military disaster until the fall of Singapore exactly a century later." The Economist The Times described Bruce's books as "well researched, with a keen eye for historical detail." Retreat from Kabul is a brilliant account of the First Anglo-Afghan War. It is part of the series Conflicts of Empire, which also includes Six Battles for India: The Anglo-Sikh Wars, 1845-6 and 1848-9 and The Burma Wars: 1824-1886.

Download or read book Return of a King written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.

Download or read book The First Afghan War and Its Causes written by Sir Henry Marion Durand and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Henry Marion Durand (1812-71) was a British army officer and colonial administrator who took part in the early stages of, and later wrote a history of, the First Afghan War (1838-42). He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers at age 15 and sailed for India in October 1829. In 1839, he was part of the column of British and Indian soldiers that invaded Afghanistan under Sir John Keane. On July 23, 1839, with a British sergeant and a small number of Indian sappers, Durand blew open the Kabul Gate to the city and fortress of Ghazni and thus played a major role in the capture of the city. Durand subsequently had a falling out with his superiors and left Afghanistan; he thus was not part of the disastrous march to Jalalabad, in which a British column of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers was annihilated by Ghilzai warriors in January 1842. Durand went on to serve at other posts in Burma and India and in 1847, while on home leave in England, began writing The First Afghan War and Its Causes. He never finished the work, which his son published in 1879. Durand was critical of many aspects of British policy in Afghanistan.

Download or read book Kabul Catastrophe written by Patrick Arthur Macrory and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1839 a large British army invaded Afghanistan in order to place upon the throne a ruler deemed more friendly to the British in Delhi than the incumbent Dost Mohammed. Many voices in London warned against the foolhardy enterprise, among them that of the Duke of Wellington, who foresaw shame and disaster. The enterprise started well. The army conquered all before it, including reputedly impregnable fortresses. But only two years after being established in Kabul, attached on all sides by the hostile Afghans, the British retreated in mid-winter, 1842, trying to regain India. Of the 16,000 soldiers and others who left the city, only one person survived the journey as far as Jalalabad. It was one of the worse catastrophes to befall the British Empire.

Download or read book Dust of Glory written by Bill Whitburn and published by Helion. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Russian-sponsored attack by the Shah of Persia on Herat was the latest move in the longrunning tournament for predominant influence in Central Asia called the Great Game. Its proximity to India could not be tolerated as it threatened British designs for the expansion of trade along the Indus valley. Urged on by hawkish secretaries, hoodwinked by the wily Maharaja of Punjab and prompted by his political masters in London, the ostensibly peaceful Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, ordered the assembly of a vast army to counter the Persian move. The opportunity was also to be used to replace Shah Shuja back on his ancestral throne of Afghanistan. At the eleventh hour, Persia withdrew from its failed attack and to many a sage observer, Lord Auckland should have ordered his army back to barracks. Instead, an army of 10,000 soldiers, 50,000 transport animals and 30,000 camp followers advanced in December 1839 for the single purpose of regime change. From the very first blare of bugles and the cracking of whips, this glorious army was to prove that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. In Dust of Glory the author explores the causes of the First Anglo-Afghan War and describes its course gleaned from a multitude of sources supported by seventeen sketch maps of key actions. No lessons were learnt as five more conflicts were to follow in this country that only produces fruit, nuts and opium.

Download or read book The Afghan Wars written by Archibald Forbes and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afghan Wars, written by Archibald Forbes in 1892, is a British account of two Anglo-Afghan wars, fought between British India and Afghanistan; the first war took place from 1839-1842, and and the second from 1878-1880. Though history dictates the conclusion of both British invasions (in which neither side really wins the wars and the Britons retreat twice, but still accomplish their objectives), Forbes' account is saturated with details of the occupations and soldiers' experiences, while still conveying the overall experience and outcome of each war. It also includes illustrations of important figures and war plans which complement Forbes' descriptions. This work is perfect for students of British and Middle Eastern military history. ARCHIBALD FORBES (1838-1900) was a British war correspondent born in Morayshire, Scotland. He attended the University of Aberdeen before entering the Royal Dragoons as a private. He was injured and released from his regiment; he was working as a journalist in London when the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870 and he was drafted to the front lines as a correspondent. He became a representative for the Daily News which publicized his work in intelligence transmission. After the war, he traveled to Spain, India, Serbia, Cyprus, and South Africa, working for the Daily News and reporting on various wars and campaigns. Forbes also authored several books, including an autobiography, about his experiences.

Download or read book The Afghan Wars 1839 42 and 1878 80 written by Archibald Forbes and published by IndyPublish.com. This book was released on 1892 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Download or read book The Anglo Afghan Wars 1839 1919 written by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 19th century Britain entered into three brutal wars with Afghanistan, each one saw the British trying and failing to gain control of a warlike and impenetrable territory. The first two wars (1839–42 and 1878–81) were wars of the Great Game; the British Empire's attempts to combat growing Russian influence near India's borders. The third, fought in 1919, was an Afghan-declared holy war against British India – in which over 100,000 Afghans answered the call, and raised a force that would prove too great for the British Imperial army. Each of the three wars were plagued by military disasters, lengthy sieges and costly engagements for the British, and history has proved the Afghans a formidable foe and their country unconquerable. This book reveals the history of these three Anglo-Afghan wars, the imperial power struggles that led to conflict and the torturous experiences of the men on the ground. The book concludes with a brief overview of the background to today's conflict in Afghanistan, and sketches the historical parallels.

Download or read book The Dark Defile written by Diana Preston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the mid-19th-century war in Afghanistan documents how the British government sought to protect regional interests by attempting to install a puppet ruler only to be defeated by united Afghanistan tribes, in a volume that profiles key contributors and discusses how the war set the stage for subsequent hostilities.

Download or read book A Military History of Afghanistan written by Ali Ahmad Jalali and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Afghanistan is largely military history. From the Persians and Greeks of antiquity to the British, Soviet, and American powers in modern times, outsiders have led military conquests into the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, leaving their indelible marks on this ancient land at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In this book Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister of Afghanistan, taps a deep understanding of his country's distant and recent past to explore Afghanistan's military history during the last two hundred years. With an introductory chapter highlighting the major military developments from early times to the foundation of the modern Afghan state, Jalali's account focuses primarily on the era of British conquest and Anglo-Afghan wars; the Soviet invasion; the civil war and the rise of the Taliban; and the subsequent U.S. invasion. Looking beyond persistent stereotypes and generalizations—e.g., the "graveyard of empires" designation emerging from the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century and the Soviet experience of the 1980s—Jalali offers a nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of the way of war pursued by both state and non-state actors in Afghanistan against different domestic and foreign enemies, under changing social, political, and technological conditions. He reveals how the structure of states, tribes, and social communities in Afghanistan, along with the scope of their controlled space, has shaped their modes of fighting throughout history. In particular, his account shows how dynastic wars and foreign conquests differ in principle, strategy, and method from wars initiated by non-state actors including tribal and community militias against foreign invasions or repressive government. Written by a professional soldier, politician, and noted scholar with a keen analytical grasp of his country's military and political history, this magisterial work offers unique insight into the military history of Afghanistan—and thus, into Afghanistan itself.

Download or read book History of the War in Afghanistan written by Sir John William Kaye and published by . This book was released on 1851 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Anglo-Afghan War began in early 1839 when the British undertook an invasion of Afghanistan from India with the aim of overthrowing the Afghan ruler, Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, and replacing him with the supposedly pro-British former ruler, Shah Shujaʻ. The British were at first successful. They installed Shah Shujaʻ as ruler in Jalalabad and forced Dost Mohammad to flee the country. But in 1841 Dost Mohammad returned to Afghanistan to lead an uprising against the invaders and Shah Shujaʻ. In one of the most disastrous defeats in British military history, in January 1842 an Anglo-Indian force of 4,500 men and thousands of followers was routed by Afghan tribesmen. The British then sent a larger force from India to exact retribution and to recover hostages, before finally withdrawing in October 1842. History of the War in Afghanistan is a two-volume study of the war, based on unpublished letters and journals by British political and military officers who served in the conflict. The author, Sir John William Kaye (1814-76), was a onetime officer in the army of the East India Company who resigned in 1841 to devote himself full time to the writing of military history. The book begins with a detailed analysis of the events of 1800-1837 that led up to the war and of the "Great Game of Central Asia"--the rivalry between Russia and Britain for influence in the region that spurred British intervention in Afghanistan. This is followed by detailed accounts of the major battles and military campaigns. Kaye joins other authors in concluding that the war was a disaster for Britain: "No failure so total and overwhelming as this is recorded in the page of history. No lesson so grand and impressive is to be found in all the annals of the world." Kaye also wrote a novel based on the war, Long Engagements: a Tale of the Affghan Rebellion (1846), and several other major historical works, including The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm (1856) and the three-volume The History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-8, published in 1864-76.