The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (57 page)

In addition to all this, Gordon and his companions made another disturbing discovery. They found that Afghanistan and Kashgaria did not, in fact, meet in this great mountain fastness. A crucial gap fifty miles wide remained between them. Were the Russians to discover this too, then they would be able to claim, through their possession of Khokand, that it belonged to them. They would thus, in Sir Douglas Forsyth’s words, be able to interpose ‘a narrow wedge of actual Russian territory’ between eastern Afghanistan and Kashgaria, thereby bringing them even closer to northern India. Gordon’s party also heard worrying tales of Russian agents and caravans regularly visiting Afghanistan, access to which was still barred to British merchants and others. They further learned that Mir Wali, Hayward’s murderer, had fled the region on their approach, fearing that the British had come to seize him.

In his military report Gordon urged that immediate action be taken to strengthen Britain’s position in the southern approaches to the Baroghil and Ishkaman passes. This could be achieved by building a road northwards from Kashmir to the latter, which would also ensure control of the Baroghil. Officially its purpose would be to serve as a trade route between India and the extreme north. ‘It would attract not only the Eastern Turkistan traders who at present toil over the Karakoram,’ Gordon declared, ‘but also the Badakhshan merchants who trade with Peshawar through Kabul.’ However, its real purpose would be to enable the British to move troops northwards ‘at the shortest notice’ in the event of a Russian incursion across the Oxus towards the Baroghil and Ishkaman passes.

But in so desolate a region, much of which lay at 20,000 feet or more, how would it be known in time if a Russian invasion force had set out? Apart from native traders or travellers from the Khokand region bringing back word of obvious military preparations there, the British would be unlikely to get any warning until the invader was well on his way. One solution proposed by Forsyth was to appoint a British Agent at Gilgit. From there, where an Englishman would be reasonably safe, he would be able to gather intelligence on regions ‘which at present are a sealed book to us’. This could be done by establishing a regular network of paid native spies, as had already been done in areas where it was too dangerous, or politically unwise, for Europeans to venture. His recommendation was adopted, though not before a further reconnaissance of the Baroghil and Ishkaman passes had been carried out by one of Gordon’s party, who not only confirmed their original view but also reported that in the summer months there was ample pasturage for an invading army along the entire route.

As a result of these unwelcome discoveries, it was decided in Calcutta to encourage the Maharajah of Kashmir, who was allied to Britain by a treaty, to extend his political influence, if not his actual territories, northwards to include Chitral and Yasin, thereby enabling him to exercise some sort of control over the Baroghil and Ishkaman passes. If actual conquest proved necessary, then Britain would be prepared to give him material support. There were those in Calcutta and elsewhere who questioned the wisdom of this, however, for there were unsubstantiated rumours circulating that the Kashmiri ruler had secretly received Russian agents. If this were true, then his expansion northwards might merely result in bringing the Russians closer to India’s frontiers. While not himself questioning the Maharajah’s loyalty, Sir Douglas Forsyth warned the Viceroy ‘that Britain was in grave danger of losing the confidence of those very states which she saw as her allies against an expanding Russia. In parts of Central Asia, he declared, it was widely held that ‘Russia is the rising power, that she is destined to rise still further, that England is afraid of her, and will do nothing to oppose her progress or help those who would preserve themselves from being swallowed up.’ As a result, he claimed, some rulers were beginning to wonder whether it would not be wiser to transfer their loyalty to what they judged to be ‘the coming power’ in Asia.

Just as Calcutta was alarmed at the presence of Russian garrisons across the Pamir passes, so too was St Petersburg at the escalation in British military and political activity in regions which the Russians now regarded as lying within their own sphere of influence. This had begun innocently enough with Shaw and Hayward, ostensibly independent travellers, but already British diplomatic missions were coming and going between India and Kashgaria, undermining Russia’s gains at Yakub Beg’s court, while British military surveyors were energetically mapping the Pamir passes. What were London and Calcutta brewing up between them? As the cycle of mistrust intensified, and relations between Britain and Russia continued to deteriorate, one thing was becoming clear. While Afghanistan remained the focal point of the Great Game, with the Khyber and Bolan passes as the most likely routes for an invading army to take, the options facing the Russian generals, if that was indeed their intention, were far greater than had hitherto been thought. The imperial chessboard had been considerably extended, and play on it was about to be stepped up.

In the spring of 1874, following the fall of Gladstone’s Liberal administration, the Tories were returned to power with a massive majority. At their head was Benjamin Disraeli, who believed passionately in Britain’s imperial destiny and in maintaining a vigorous foreign policy, views which he shared with Queen Victoria. He had long been critical, moreover, of what he considered to be his predecessor’s display of weakness towards the Russians. This he was determined to put right. From now on forward policies were to return with a vengeance, and Anglo-Russian relations to cool at an ever-increasing rate. Following St Petersburg’s dramatic gains in Central Asia, India naturally commanded much Cabinet attention. Disraeli and Lord Salisbury, his new secretary of state for India, feared not so much an imminent Russian attack as attempts by St Petersburg, despite Gorchakov’s 1873 undertaking, to gain some kind of a toe-hold in Afghanistan. If this was successful it might be used as a base from which trouble could be stirred up against the British in India, or even as a springboard for a combined invasion. Disraeli was anxious, therefore, to establish a permanent British mission in Kabul, while the hawks around him urged similar representation at Herat and Kandahar.

To institute his new policies, the Prime Minister decided to appoint Lord Lytton as Viceroy in place of the Liberals’ man, Lord Northbrook, who had resigned over the government’s decision to meddle thus with Afghanistan’s highly combustible domestic affairs. On the eve of his departure for home, Northbrook had warned London that to abandon its policy of masterly inactivity would expose Britain to the risk ‘of another unnecessary and costly war’ with her unpredictable neighbour. His warning, however, was to go unheeded, and Lord Lytton, armed with detailed instructions regarding the new forward policies he was to enact, set about his task with vigour. One of his first duties was to proclaim Queen Victoria Empress of India, Disraeli’s way of pleasing the sovereign while at the same time signalling to the Russians, ‘in language that cannot be mistaken’, that Britain’s commitment to India was permanent and absolute. In other words ‘hands off.

Two other moves made by Britain around this time greatly strengthened her hand in India. One was the purchase from the Khedive of Egypt, amid intense secrecy, of 40 per cent of the shares in the newly opened Suez Canal. This waterway reduced the distance by sea between Britain and India by some 4,500 miles, and Disraeli wished to make absolutely sure that this crucial lifeline, for both troops and goods, could never be threatened or even severed by a hostile power – notably by the Russians in the event of their acquiring Constantinople and the Turkish straits. The purchase of the Egyptian ruler’s entire holding, which effectively rescued him from bankruptcy, made Britain the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company. A second major improvement in communications with India was the opening, in 1870, of a direct submarine cable link with London. Five years earlier an overland telegraph line had been completed, but traffic went via Teheran and was thus vulnerable to interference or severance in time of war. The new submarine cable was far less vulnerable. ‘As long as England holds the empire of the sea the cables will be safe from enemies,’ declared
The Times.
‘To grapple and raise them would require not only a knowledge of their exact position, and a ship specially fitted with proper apparatus and trained hands, but also more time than could be given to the task. The electric lines will lie beneath the great highways of traffic, and no grappling ship in search of them could escape notice.’ The inauguration of the new link, moreover, enabled Whitehall to maintain a tighter control over the affairs of India than ever before, it now taking hours to elicit a reply from either end where once it had taken weeks or even months.

Disraeli’s instructions to the new Viceroy, Lord Lytton, included bringing not only Afghanistan but also the neighbouring state of Baluchistan into a defensive alliance with Britain. For there lay the Bolan Pass, leading out of Afghanistan into India. Baluchistan was then torn by internal strife which threatened the throne of its ruler, the Khan of Kelat. Worried by the region’s instability, and the Khan’s inability to control the turbulent tribes, Calcutta considered deposing him and replacing him with someone more able. This was strongly opposed, however, by British political officers on the spot, who argued that it was likely to do far more harm than good. Instead, it was decided to allow Captain Robert Sandeman, an officer possessing a remarkable influence over the Baluchi chiefs, to try to bring them to heel by persuasion. In the winter of 1875, alone and armed only with a revolver, Sandeman visited the insurgent tribesmen in the mountains where he succeeded in resolving their conflict with the Khan. The following autumn, in gratitude to Calcutta for thus securing his throne, not to mention a generous annual subsidy, the Khan agreed to lease both the Bolan Pass region and the nearby garrison town of Quetta permanently to Britain.

Afghanistan, as might be expected, was to prove a far tougher proposition. Part of the problem arose from the previous policy of non-interference in Afghanistan’s affairs. In 1873, fearing the Russians more than the British, the Emir, Dost Mohammed’s son Sher Ali, had approached Lord Northbrook with the offer of a defensive treaty against a threat from the north. The Viceroy had been instructed by Gladstone’s government to turn this down, as well as to reprimand Sher Ali over certain other matters. Understandably the Emir had been angered by this rebuff from those he had considered to be his friends. It was not long after this that reports began to reach India that he was in communication with General Kaufman at Tashkent. Lytton’s orders from Disraeli were to try to undo the damage done by Northbrook’s snub by offering the Emir the treaty he had previously sought, but with the added proviso that he accept a permanent British representative at Kabul or Herat. This was so that a close eye could be kept on Kaufman’s activities at the royal court, for the Emir was now strongly suspected of being partial to the Russians and therefore not to be fully trusted. But as the less hawkish among Lytton’s advisers had warned, the presence of British officers anywhere in Afghanistan was to prove totally unacceptable to the Emir. Indeed, he would not even agree to a temporary British mission visiting Kabul to discuss such matters, arguing that he would then have no grounds for refusing a Russian one. Talks must take place, he insisted, either on the frontier or in Calcutta. Needless to say, this did little to relieve Lytton’s growing distrust of Sher Ali – not to mention St Petersburg, whose malign influence he believed to be behind it all.

‘The prospect of war with Russia immensely excites,’ he wrote to Lord Salisbury in September 1876, ‘but so far as India is concerned does not at all alarm me. If it is to be – better now than later. We are twice as strong as Russia in this part of the world, and have much better bases for attack and defence.’ In the event of war, he added with gusto, ‘a sea of fire’ could be spread around India’s northern frontiers by inciting the khanates to turn against their Russian masters. Coming from a man like Lytton – a liberal-minded and somewhat Bohemian ex-diplomat, more interested in poetry than in politics – such bellicose talk may seem out of character. However, like most men of letters and intellectuals of his day, he had an inborn dislike of Russia’s autocratic system of rule. To this were now added not only grave misgivings about St Petersburg’s intentions towards Afghanistan, but also the universally held conviction that another showdown with Russia was inevitable, either in Central Asia over Afghanistan or in the Near East over Constantinople.

Concern over Russian ambitions had been heightened by the recent publication of a book,
England and Russia in the East,
by the leading British authority on the subject, Sir Henry Rawlinson, now a member of the government’s advisory body, the Council for India. Although it added little to what he and other forward school writers had been saying since the days of Wilson, McNeill and de Lacy Evans, the book was to have a considerable influence on Cabinet thinking and on those, including the new Viceroy, responsible for the defence of India. As always with the literature of the Great Game, timing was everything. There were other books and articles which questioned the opinions of Rawlinson and his school, but they received scant attention in the largely Russophobe press. Although Rawlinson denounced those who scorned his warnings as ‘dangerous enemies’, it would be unfair to regard him and his allies as wild men spoiling for a fight. Indeed, Lord Salisbury, while a believer in forward policies, was anything but a warmonger or scaremonger. ‘A great deal of misapprehension arises from a popular use of maps on a small scale,’ he once told a worried fellow peer. ‘If the noble lord would use a larger map, he would find that the distance between Russia and British India was not to be measured by the finger and thumb, but by a rule.’ However, while he did not for a moment believe that a Russian invasion of India could succeed, he was concerned lest they incite the Afghans to attempt it at a time when British troops were desperately needed elsewhere. As he was to put it later: ‘Russia can offer the Afghans the loot of India. We can offer them nothing, because there is nothing in Turkestan to loot.’