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How to Do Empire Right?

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How to Do Empire Right? REVIEW BOOKS HOW TO DO EMPIRE RIGHT? MANAN AHMED ASIF A LAYERED, YET SELECTIVE HISTORY OF THE WEST IN AFGHANISTAN Return of a King: sion to portray Brydon as the only surviving IMAGES The Battle for Afghanistan member of an imperial army seems to have been William Dalrymple a conscious one, and deserves our attention. Ap- DOMAIN Bloomsbury, 608 pages, R799 pearing at a time when the second Anglo-Af- BLIC U ghan War (1878-80) was in full swing, Butler’s P painting sounded a cautionary note on the impe- Elizabeth Thompson Butler’s Remnants of an Army depicted the rout of the British in 1842, following the first Anglo-Afghan war. rial project in Afghanistan. It was well known by 1878, though legends out as a warning, transitioned over the years ghanistan—the lessons of the Great Game were lizabeth Thompson Butler abounded to the contrary, that Dr Brydon was into a convenient hook for all manners of florid constantly invoked and arguments made to play was one of the most celebrat- not the sole survivor of the 1842 retreat. Many fantasies of power and imperial rule—adorning the game according to a gentleman’s code. It was ed painters of military life and hundreds of the nearly 17,000 troops and civil- book covers and plates in tome after tome. a cruel irony that while the various states were scenes in the late 19th century ians who evacuated Kabul—only 700 or so were The impetus to keep trying to get the proj- enacting bloody and divisive policies in Afghan- imperial Britain. She first gar- British nationals—had survived. Hundreds of ect of Empire right in Afghanistan also comes istan, the discourse of the intelligentsia trum- nered wide fame for her painting the indigenous infantry (sepoys) were captured from another iconic myth generated by impe- peted the metaphor of a game, with all its impli- Roll Call (1874), about the aftermath of the cha- and sold into slavery by Afghan troops. A num- rial sources—a myth with just as tangential a cations of rules, procedures and equal partners Eotic Crimean War. It depicts a sad and dishev- ber of British officers and their retinues were relation to history as the one created by Butler’s engaged in daring and fun activities. This meta- eled group of soldiers awaiting the morning roll taken as hostages by the warring princeling Ak- The Remnants of an Army. This was the ‘Great phor was used to provide the necessary ring of call. It was a starkly un-romantic view of the bar Khan, who led the main force against the Game’. There are only incidental references to grandeur to a clearly imperial project resulting troops, which sparked a wide-ranging debate British. The memoirs of the British survivors this phrase in political tracts prior to the mid- in killing fields and the massive dislocation of on British military practices. Its significance as and some of the military testimonies of the se- 19th century, when it could refer to any number native populations. a cultural artifact was confirmed when Queen poys were subsequently published and debated, of conflicts—American, Ottoman, French—and Victoria purchased the painting for her own col- and were commonly known truths of imperial any number of theatres—India, Europe, America. ow, in the near-aftermath of the lection. But what sealed Butler’s reputation was London. Hence Butler’s decision to project Bry- The term became associated with British-Rus- fourth Anglo-Afghan War, William Dal- The Remnants of an Army, which was unveiled in don as a sole survivor was less documentation sian rivalry in the latter half of the 19th century, Nrymple takes the frame of Last Remnants 1879. This was her portrait of Dr William Brydon, of fact and more a comment on the high price thanks largely to the historian John W Kaye, of an Army and the intrigue of the Great Game purportedly the last survivor of the 1842 British that this frontier region could extract from the who popularised it in his Lives of Indian Officers and fills in all that Butler had elided and Kipling retreat from Kabul in the aftermath of the first Empire. Butler seemed to want to ensure that (1867). It was next invoked by Rudyard Kipling in implied. Dalrymple’s Return of a King: The Bat- Anglo-Afghan War. Against a distant and barren the general euphoria about imperial aims in Af- Kim (1901), in which the idea of the Great Game tle for Afghanistan (1839-42) is the 3-D, IMAX, landscape, the painting foregrounded a hunched ghanistan was tempered by a recognition of past acquired a cloak-and-dagger quality. 48-frames-per-second Hollywood version—fea- figure atop a tired, almost dying, horse, while a setbacks. Her painting of Dr Brydon, who had But it was only after the Second World War turing Kabul, Jalalabad, Qandahar, Peshawar, rescue party was seen charging from a fort. The died in 1873, was not a condemnation of war, but that ‘Great Game’ explicitly became, in Cold Lahore, Ludhiana, London and Moscow. Brydon painting was unveiled at a time when the Em- rather a warning, a plea to learn from mistakes. War literature, the label for a grand and roman- is joined by a wide cast of characters, native and pire was engaged in the second Anglo-Afghan Butler’s depiction of the first Anglo-Afghan tic theatre of covert war. It was then that the colonial, elite and subaltern, male and female: War and the mood was rather boisterous. war went on to become the basis of a long-en- popular press cemented a connection between there is Shah Shuja (the titular King), whom the Butler framed the war through both text and during myth on the futility of imperial interven- the postwar era and the British-Russian rivalry British wish to place on the throne in Kabul; Al- image—the title “Remnants of an Army” en- tion in Afghanistan, an image of the hubris of co- of an earlier century. The motif grew to include exander Burnes, the British political agent who dowed a sense of tragedy to the lone figure, and lonial imagination in the high steppes of Central the intrigues between the spies of the CIA and knows the land, its languages and its women the landscape against which he was pictured Asia, providing inspiration for those who want- the KGB. As the political domain of the Cold intimately; Dost Muhammad Khan, the upstart was an unforgiving, endless one. Butler’s deci- ed to do empire ‘right’. The image, which started War shifted east—towards Iran and then Af- tribal ruler occupying the throne in Kabul and seen 66 | THE CARAVAN | MARCH 2013 MARCH 2013 | THE CARAVAN | 67 REVIEW REVIEW ghal (2006) parlayed a similarly attractive mix- in 2002, but this is not a strong argument and he ture of biography and cultural history to make does not make it strongly either. He is more suc- tangible present-day contestations. In his opin- cessful in highlighting the hubris in the British ion and review pieces in the Indian, US and UK (and by corollary American) officials, as well as press, his engagement with the war in Iraq and the short-sightedness of policy in both the 19th Afghanistan is often critical though prescriptive. century scenario and the 21st century one. Just He champions the literary and musical talents of as the attempt to caution the imperial capital South Asia both at home (as co-organiser of the echoes Butler’s Remnants of an Army, making annual Jaipur Literature Festival, for example), space for the native voice as a corrective to the / CORBIS and abroad (as a co-curator for museum exhibi- current project in Afghanistan recalls the work tions and concerts). He is almost unrivalled in of Henry Miers Elliot, whose eight volumes of the English-speaking world as a historical and History of India as told by its own Historians ap- MAGES Y I OLLECTION C cultural commentator on South Asia. As such, peared between 1866 and 1877. ETT / G TSCH he is able to marshal vast resources for his work The ten chapters of Return roughly cover the U E -D from key sectors of the military, the state, and period from the first decade of the 19th century the academy. A small illustration: senior cura- to 1842. In the opening chapters, Dalrymple fo- OBANA LTON Y / R HU tors and researchers (Sue Stronge of Victoria cuses on the person of Shah Shuja, the claimant IBRAR A British military camp in Afghanistan, 1879. and Albert Museum, John Falconer of British to the throne of Afghanistan, his succession, and L Library); prominent historians (Saul David, John the machinations between the East India Com- RITISH to be scheming with the Russians; British military Keay, Chris Bayly, Ayesha Jalal, Nile Green, BN pany and the Sikh empire in Punjab in the early B HE men and their wives exemplified by Robert and Goswamy); members of the Indian, British, Af- decades of the 19th century. The Company de- T Florentia Sale; the young warrior Akbar Khan who ghan and American state apparatuses (Amrul- feated the Marathas as well as captured Delhi The ‘upstart’ tribal ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad Khan. is leading the war against the British; his native lah Saleh, Chief of Security for President Karzai; in 1801-3 and immediately looked to the north- ally, the Sikh ruler of Punjab and Peshawer, Raja Ashraf Ghani, ex-Finance Minister of Afghani- west, where Ranjit Singh’s Punjab empire had sources he is citing—incorporating large chunks Ranjit Singh; and the native informant, the munshi stan; Sir Sherard Cowper Coles, British Foreign emerged in 1801.
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