Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 By the same author:

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA, 1828-1834

COMMITMENT TO EMPIRE: PROPHECIES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA, 1797-1800

TWO VIEWS OF BRITISH INDIA: THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. DUNDAS AND LORD WELLESLEY, 1798-1801 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775-1842

EDWARD INGRAM Professor of History at Simon Fraser University

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1984 by FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.

This edition published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright© 1984 Edward Ingram

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ingram, Edward, / 9 4 0 - In defence of British India: Great Britain in the Middle East, 1775-1842. 1. Great Britain— Foreign relations— Asia 2. GreatBritain—Foreign relations— 1789-1820 3. Asia— Foreign relations—Great Britain Rn: Edward Roger Ingram Ellis I. Title 327.41*05 DA47.9.A75

ISBN 0 -7146-3246-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or, with­ otherwise out the prior permission of the publisher. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 To DARLING, for telephoning Mr. WigglesworthWigglesworth Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon. Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 CONTENTS

Preface xi List of maps XV Notes on references xvii I Introduction 1 II Great Britain's Great Game: A Proposal 7 III The End of the Spectre of the Overland Trade, 1775-1801 20 IV The Role of the Indian Army at the End of the Eighteenth Century 48 V The Failure of British Sea Power in the War of the Second Coalition, 1798-1801 67 VI Towards Entanglement with Persia, 1799-1801 78 VII Lord Mulgrave's Proposals for the Reconstruction of Europe in 1804 103 VIII The Royal Navy at the Strait of Hormuz, 1807-1808 117 IX An Excursion to the Kingdom of Kabul, 1807-1809 130 X Rules of the Great Game in Asia, 1798-1829 152 XIXI TheThe StrugglStrugglee oveoverr thethe PersiaPersiann Mission,Mission, 1828-18351828-1835 179

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 XIIXII ThreeThree ApproachesApproaches toto thethe GreatGreat GamGamee iinn AsiAsiaa 204 Bibliography 218 Index 232

IDBI-A* iixx This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 PREFACE

Anybody visiting England during the Falklands Crisis, as I did, might have assumed that the English middle class are the most xenophobic people in the world. He would have been wrong. A gathering of Canadian historians, Canadian by birth that is, can beat the English hollow any day, particularly if talking about the work of an ethnic (as they call us immigrants) who has had the effrontery to write about their fatherland. I recently had the privilege of overhearing four of my 'real' Canadian colleagues (a Marxist, a feminist, a liberal, and a radical — every variety of foolishness represented except the Freudian) as they gave as superb an exhibition of cultural arrogance as one could hope, let alone expect, to meet. They were talking about a highly and justly acclaimed account of the European penetration of British Columbia, written by a New Zealander who does not hide his awareness of the world beyond Europe and North America. Any immigrant to Canada would guess what was said about the book. Underestimates the C.P.R., com• plained the Marxist; no comparison with Ontario, complained the liberal; nor with the United States, complained the radical. Treats the Indians as parties to their own oppression, complained the feminist. How pleased with themselves all of them were, as they proved their modernity by pinning on the appropriate badges of intellectual respectability in the hope of hiding from themselves their imprisonment in a cosy Canadian middle-class world. A sugges• tion that the book under discussion was very helpful to anybody interested in Bengal or Dahomey received the cut direct. What could that matter ? One sensed — almost — where are they ? None of the four Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 could conceive of a world of which the bourgeois capitalist white North American male was not in control. Lament it, even abhor it as three of them seemed to do, it must, nevertheless, be the case. Asia, Africa, the Middle East, large areas inhabited by large numbers of people with long and interesting histories: all of them go for nothing. Their existence impinges upon the Canadian's view of his world only

xi IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

when he feels compelled, quite unnecessarily, to take sides upon a question of world politics; the rights of the Palestinians being one favourite, Poland another. Ironically, the design and fittings of the Canadian intellectual fortress are copies of foreign originals. As one of my four colleagues admitted on a better day, the trouble with Canadian history is that nothing has happened here which is not an echo of a sound made somewhere else. The statement is just as true of the historical profes• sion. The current echo is the fad for the so-called 'new' social history. Walk down the corridor of my department and the very walls will murmur to you the names Geertz, E. P. Thompson, and Lawrence Stone, until you have a headache. Faint not, however. Relief is at hand. At one end of the corridor, as you approach the office of The International History Review, you will be refreshed by a different murmur: Namier, Kedourie, Elton, Howard; all gloriously able to write about plain people in plain words. I am tired of big questions and big answers. The answers are given too easily and, worse, the questions are too easily asked. Sometimes, if one is really clever, one need not explain anything, hardly even read anything — or not about the past: frames of reference, as they are called, wander from office to office accompanied by nods of approval, one day to round up some silk weavers at Lyons, on another some miners in the Kootenays, on yet another some Civil War soldiers in Missouri: it does not seem to matter where or when (should I offer some indigo cultivators in Oudh?). Nothing similar need be feared here - no Viennese quackery, no neo-Marxist chari• varis - for here are to be found only detailed studies of aspects of imperial defence and of British interests in the Middle East. The obsession with safety of so many of the Englishmen who lived in India or visited the Middle East was one of their most admirable and touching traits. They knew that a world beyond their own existed, even if they feared it, knew they could not comprehend, and doubted Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 whether they could control it. They tried, however, and for a while succeeded in controlling it remarkably well; much better than 'real' Canadians preaching to the twentieth century from behind the ram• part of Ronald Reagan's quiff. Critics of my work have told me not to try to write like A.J. P. Taylor; not to be rude about A.J. P. Taylor; have said that I do write like A.J. P. Taylor. All of them are wrong. Mr. Taylor is a fine writer

xii PREFACE

and a fine historian. However, when I began to write, 1 found an equally fine model. To acknowledge my debt to Professor Elie Kedourie for his example, his encouragement, and his help, is always a pleasure. I should be satisfied if these essays were to give him a fraction of the enjoyment his essays always give to me. He will certainly enjoy the maps, drawn by Ruth Baldwin, who can do everything. Many of the essays published here have been published before during the last thirteen years. I have not changed them much, but I have tried to brush up the prose. One has little enough to say with• out making the little one has more difficult than necessary to read. Chapter two appeared in The International History Review; chapters three, eleven, and twelve, in Middle Eastern Studies; chapter four in Military History Journal; chapter seven in The His• torical journal; chapter eight in Military Affairs; chapter nine in The journal of Indian History; and chapter ten in The journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Chapter five was read to the North-West Coast Branch of the North American Conference on British Studies, at Eugene, Oregon, in April 1982. Acknowledge• ments are due to the following: to the Controller of Her Britannic Majesty's Stationery Office for use of Crown-copyright material in the Public Record Office; to Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for use of Crown- copyright material in the India Office Library and India Office Records; to the United States Archives and Records Service; to Dr. R.J. Bingle, Assistant Keeper, and Martin Moir, Deputy Archivist, at the India Office Library, for their kindness and help; to the Rt. Hon. the Viscount Melville and Lady Patricia Lucas-Scudamore; to the Trustees of the Broadlands Manuscripts; to the British Library, the Buckinghamshire Record Office, Leeds Public Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Maritime Museum, the Scottish Record Office, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the Uni• versity of Nottingham Library, for use of material from their collec• Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 tions. The chapters of this book had to be typed many times, partly because my assistant, Ian Macdonald, and Ruth Baldwin, in her disguise as the Lady R.B., the very managing Managing Editor of The International History Review, were such ruthless critics of my sentences; partly because Barbara Barnett is such a particular typist.

xiii IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

My thanks to all of them. They were kind to take so much trouble with my work and anybody who has a complaint about it may complain to them. I should not have the courage. E.R.I. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

xiv MAPS

I The Great Game in Asia 13 II Egypt and the Red Sea 23 III The Mediterranean 1798 70 IV Persia and The Caucasus 85 V The Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf 119 VI Sind, the Punjab, and Afghanistan 138 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

XV This page intentionally left blank Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 NOTES ON REFERENCES

ABBREVIATIONABBREVIATIONSS

Add. MSS British Library, Additional Manuscripts Adm. Public Record Office, Admiralty Records cd court of directors of the East India Company Dropmore * Historical Manuscripts Commission: Report on the Manuscripts ofJ.B. Fortescue, Esq., Preserved at Drop- more Dundas Two Views of British India: The Private Correspondence of Mr. Dundas and Lord Wellesley, 1798-1801 EIC East India Company EUL University of Edinburgh Library Manuscripts Film. MSS India Office Library, Microfilmed Manuscripts FO Public Record Office, Foreign Office Records ggic governor-general in council gicB governor in council at Bombay IO India Office Library, India Office Records IOL India Office Library, London MSMSSS Eur Eur.. India Office Library, European Manuscripts NLNLSS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh PROPRO Public Record Office Manuscripts RGSRGS Royal Geographical Society, London SIRIO Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago IstoricbeskagoIstoricheskago Obschestva sc secretsecret committe committeee o off ththee EastEast Indi Indiaa CompanyCompany SP Public Record Office, State Papers Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 SRO Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh USNA United States National Archives, Washington DC WO Public Record Office, War Office Records

xvii THE INDIA OFFICE RECORDS

The India Office Records are being rearranged and given new titles. Whenever possible, these are used in references. When the old titles are used, they are abbreviated. The abbreviations are explained in the bibliography.

SPELLING, DATES, AND TRANSLITERATION

A fondness for parading foreign names and titles pronounced in accents borrowed from operetta is one of the Canadian Broadcast• ing Corporation's most irritating habits. It caught the habit from historians, who would do better to stick to the usage recorded by Oxford University Press. The port at the southern end of the Red Sea that gave its name to a variety of coffee should be spelt the same way as the coffee: Mocha not al-Mukha. The latter may be closer to the Arabic, but it is not Arabic; nor is it English. This book is written in English, or what is supposed to pass for it, from mostly English sources, for mostly British and North American readers. No doubt Malcolm Yapp, for one, will be as critical of my rendition of foreign names and places as he was once before; only to find Firuz Kazem- zadeh just as critical of him. On this occasion, as so often, ignorance is the better part of sense. All dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar, in use in Russia, was twelve days behind. The governor-general of Bengal is referred to here as the governor- general of India (his title after 1833). The British government in India, either whenever the Supreme Government, as the government of Bengal was known, was acting on a question of defence and foreign policy on behalf of the governments of Madras and Bombay, or whenever such a question would affect all three of them, is

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 referred to as the government of India. So that nobody will be misled, may I point out that the government of India ruled only British India and helped its allies to rule.

xviii I

INTRODUCTION

The British Empire existed for the welfare of the world. Mahatma Gandhi

Great Britain in the early years of the nineteenth century suffered from a complaint Imperial Germany suffered from less seriously a century later: her political and economic interests were difficult to bring into line. If Germany, industrializing rapidly, unevenly, and late, were to reach her place in the sun, she depended upon access to the foreign markets and foreign capital over which she grew more and more frightened of losing control as she became more and more willing to use force to obtain it. Germany was more fortunate, however, than Great Britain. An attempt to seize control over the part of the Continent of greatest economic importance to her might reasonably be made at her moment of optimum military power. Great Britain, on the other hand, except for a moment in 1917, lacked the military power to make a similar attempt to reconcile the demands of the empire that symbolized her status as the only world power, with the European market she needed most but was least able to control. The dilemma of Great Britain can be exemplified thus: the crea• tion of the British Empire in India had to be interrupted in 1805 at the behest of the Russians, in order first to create a Third Coalition capable of fighting France and, after its collapse, to fight against

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the Berlin Decrees. Not until the Continental System had been destroyed, could the creation of the British Raj be completed by the destruction in 1818 of the Maratha Confederacy. If this connection between events in India and Europe seems surprisingly deliberate, it is meant to be so. The so-called fatal fondness for empire that supposedly bedevilled the British Establishment in the twentieth century had its origins one hundred and fifty years earlier. The conquest of an empire in America, followed, after the loss of part of 1 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

it, by the creation of a second empire in Asia, left the British wearing the trappings of the Columbian Era at a time when its most notice• able symbol of power, the battle fleet, had lost the ability to deter• mine the outcome of wars. The possession of India symbolized the pretensions of Great Britain to be a world power while failing to turn into an economic asset, becoming instead an increasingly burdensome strategic liability. The essays that follow are intended to illustrate the prob• lems arising from the need to defend an Indian empire against the effects of fluctuations in the European balance of power, preferably by isolating the empire from the European political system. What might be seen until 1800 as an aspect of the traditional eighteenth- century rivalry between Hanoverian Great Britain and Bourbon France, turned thereafter into an attempt to consolidate the Napole• onic Empire by demonstrating, if necessary by feinting at India, Napoleon's ability to force Great Britain to accept an overseas and Asiatic future. In 1800 and again in 1807, the British had to make the choice they were determined never to make again, and until 1915 never had to make, of choosing between the defence of their Indian empire and the destruction of the empire being created by their European enemy on the Continent. In 1830 the British formally recognized what had been hazily apparent since 1800: that the strategies devised to deal with a challenge from France would have to be adapted to meet a challenge from Russia. The strategies devised by the British to forestall and later to counter the expansion of European empires into the Middle East are known as the Great Game in Asia, which began in 1798 in response to the French invasion of Egypt. The term ought not to be confined to the defence of India against Russia when every plan made during the nineteenth century had its origin in plans made in the Napoleonic Wars against France. A second meaning of the term — and, techni• cally, the correct one - must, however, be applied only to relations Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 with Russia and only to the period between 1828 and 1842. These were years when the British planned an offensive in the Middle East which they expected to gain them enough time to solve the problem of how to defend India by reforming its inhabitants. As both mean• ings of the term are useful, both of them are used here. The beginning of the Great Game in Asia coincided with, even if it did not itself cause, the end of the Columbian Era. When, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Alfred Thayer Mahan prophesied 2 INTRODUCTION

a great future for navies, especially for battle fleets, as the protectors of the overseas trade on which industrialized capitalist states would depend more and more to maintain social stability without having to redistribute wealth, he was quickly challenged by Sir Halford Mackinder, who relegated navies to an unimportant role in the creation of the continent-wide territorial empires depending on rail• ways which would dominate the twentieth century. Neither was right.1 Far too much has been made of the railway as well as of the battle fleet. Mackinder's states had existed for more than a century and for the same century navies had lost the power and importance assigned to them by Mahan. The British had learned during the Napoleonic Wars that sea power was no match for a continental- style army. The superior strategic mobility of sea power was an illusion, because moving large numbers of men by sea in the age of sail was as difficult as moving them by land. Fortunately for the British, Napoleon was overpowered by Austria and Russia before dry rot and his ship-building programme enabled him to make another and probably successful attempt to overpower Great Britain at sea. The limits of British sea power are illustrated here by an examination of the consequences at sea of the French occupation of Egypt during the war of the Second Coalition. The conquest of an empire in India, which would most clearly represent Great Britain's claim to the status of world power, caused a strategic problem as soon as a feint at invasion of India could be used as a lever to control British actions in Europe. Martin Wight, probably thinking of Great Britain but misunderstanding her history, defined a world power as a state able to exert on the Continent power derived from the rest of the world.2 Great Britain, however, was a state able in favourable circumstances to exert around the world power derived from the existence of a necessary ally on the Continent. Austria, later Prussia, later still France, and last of all the carnivorous United States: somebody had to be found either deter•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 mined to prevent the creation of a European empire or, next best, capable of destroying it. The need of a similar ally in Asia to help the British to defend India would draw the British into the Middle East; an area in which they had no interest as important as keeping out. In the Middle East as in Europe the preferred British ally was a grand alliance. All of the Middle Eastern states were to recognize their common interest in resisting whoever Great Britain had desig• nated the enemy. The British would try as hard to avoid choosing 3 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

among the Middle Eastern states as they would to avoid the choice between fighting to defend the British empire or to maintain the European balance of power. L. Carl Brown, for one, scoffs at the British attempts to stabilize the Middle East.3 One wonders why. Elie Kedourie does not scoff at them. Nor need one scoff at the various principles enunciated by the Hapsburgs in an attempt to organize a large chunk of central Europe. Many men resisted them, of course, as was to have been expected, and after they had been toppled by strident petty nationalism just as many, including the British Labour Party, were to pine for them.4 None of this matters. The British were also to have been expected to act in defence of their own interests; to recognize that unless all of the Middle Eastern states could be per• suaded to do as the British asked, they would drag the British into the interminable squabbles between them instead of helping to forestall the crises between the great European powers which alone en• dangered the British. Measured by European standards, the Middle Eastern states in the early nineteenth century were weak. The question often asked by the British and never answered to their satisfaction was whether such weakness was a form of strength. Discount the states themselves, discount their armies, and one was left with their terrain: often hot, often dry, often mountainous, always suited to irregular warfare to be waged by Bedouin to the west, Bakhtiari in the centre, and Pathans in the east. If the safety of Great Britain's Indian empire could be left to the disorder characteristic of Middle Eastern states, the quarrels among them might effectively separate India from the European political system. What if they did not? The British who hesitated to choose among the Middle Eastern states also hesitated to ignore them. Such a risk could be taken only if either the Royal Navy or the Indian Army could be counted on to defend British India. Neither seemed up to the task. The British in the Napoleonic Wars and after made ingenious Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 attempts to extend the range of their sea power far inland. Colonel Francis Chesney's Euphrates Expedition was only the most famous expedition of many. The attempts, however, were all failures. If force should have to be used to defend British India, and an appropriate ally could not be found, the Indian Army would have to be asked to take on a task it had never performed, never would be able to perform, and had not been intended to perform: to win victory in battle, maybe over European troops. 4 INTRODUCTION

The suggestion that the Indian Army was meant to act as a splendid symbol of British power rather than as an effective instru• ment of it was dismissed by Malcolm Yapp as bizarre.5 His own account of Lord Ellenborough's Afghan adventures would seem, however, to corroborate the suggestion.6 And this is how the Indian Army thought of itself when fighting at the end of the eighteenth century to resist the role of imperial expeditionary force being devised for it by the president of the board of control for India. Such resistance did not make the Indian Army exceptional, but typical: typical in the eighteenth century of the men who went out to India to make their fortunes and who conquered an empire while doing it; equally typical later of the pukka sahibs who had no hope of return• ing to England before their retirement, and who lived comfortable contented lives only so long as India could be treated as if nobody else lived there and they need only represent the empire rather than rule it. The pukka sahib, as the Anglo-Indian civil servant became known, was not expected to act like one of the heroes G. A. Henty created as a guide in whose footsteps the successors to Tom Brown and Harry Flashman were expected to follow. He was expected only to appear to be a hero. Success was registered by an ability to stand still. This principle is illustrated here by the antics of the British agents in Persia. The plans for empires drawn up for the board of control and the foreign office by all the men who played the Great Game in Asia were not necessarily meant to be carried out. They were meant to attract attention. Rather like the disciples of Gropius and Mies who design buildings to win prizes while hoping their buildings will never have to be built. Or is it we, the public, who have to cherish such a hope? The essays published here illustrate the reasons for the entangle• ment of the British in the Middle East and the effect of the conquest of an empire in India upon Great Britain's role in the Napoleonic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Wars and the Concert of Europe. Six varieties of entanglement are considered. The first is economic: the role of trade as an instrument of power and as an alternative to war. The second is social: the faction-fighting and vested interests of officials trying to turn post• ings in uncomfortable and unknown Middle Eastern cities into successful careers. The third is tactical: the sort of fighting done by the British and expected of others. The fourth is strategic: the plans made for the wars expected. The fifth is geographic: the role of the 5 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Middle East in the Napoleonic Wars. And lastly, the sixth is politi• cal : the place of the Middle East in the dreams of empires dreamt by the British throughout what they thought of as the heyday of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. They were wrong, of course. During the Industrial Revolution and partly because of the population explosion accompanying it which left the British in need of foreign food, Great Britain as great power declined. She rose again only when she showed her willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to transform herself into a military power modelled on Imperial Germany. What a pity that she nevertheless failed to win the prize she deserved: victory in the First World War. She had certainly not won the Napoleonic Wars, nor done enough to deserve to. The Great Game in Asia was one of the results of her inadequate performance.

NOTES

1. See P. M. Kennedy, 'Mahan versus Mackinder. Two Interpretations of British Sea Power,' Militdrgeschichtliche Mitteilungen (1976), pp. 39-66; Martin Wight, Power Politics, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester, 1978), pp. 68-80. 2. Wight, p. 56. 3. L. Carl Brown, Two Views of the Middle East,' International History Review, iv (1982), 446. 4. Trevor Burridge, 'Great Britain and the Dismemberment of Germany at the End of the Second World War,' International History Review, iii (1981), 569 fn.10. 5. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, xlix (1980), 149. 6. M. E. Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798-1850 (Oxford, 1980), pp.442-3. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

6 II

GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME: A PROPOSAL

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

A state, like a class, has its moment in history and must make the best use of it. Failure to do so means premature decline and, perhaps, unnecessary poverty. Great Britain's moment came in the 1830s when, as the first industrialized state, she tried to create the condi• tions necessary for her stability as the first world power. That the attempt was a failure was shown by her defeat in the First Afghan War. The attempt is now known as the Great Game in Asia and it began one hundred and fifty years ago, on 29 December 1829, when the president of the board of control for India, Lord Ellenborough, told the governor-general, Lord William Bentinck, to open up a new trade route to Bukhara.1 If the Great Game is treated as the struggle for control of Central Asia — Halford Mackinder's Heartland, whose possessor was to dominate the world — the game is going on today. That is not how the subject should be treated. The Great Game was an aspect of British

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 history rather than of international relations: the phrase describes what the British were doing, not the actions of Russians and Chinese. Nor, although the Russians sometimes made the same calculations as the British, should the Great Game be reduced to the absurdities of game theory or systemic analysis. Rather, it was an attempt made by the British in the 1830s to impose a view on the world and, after• wards, to escape the consequences of their failure. The Great Game in Asia was an attempt to prevent the Swing to

7 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

the East from leading to the end of the Columbian Era. By the middle of the eighteenth century, sea power had meant wealth for almost four hundred years. The connection between the two reached its apogee in 1763, in the peace of Paris at the end of the Seven Years War; as did the power of Great Britain. The British had driven the French out of North America and India; they had pried their way into the carrying trade of Asia and had brought off the commercial revolution on which the success of their industrial revolution would depend. Henceforth, the British looked east. They were not obliged to do this by the loss of their American colonies. Europe and North America would always be the most important British markets, for both investment and the sale of manufactured goods. But the present is not the future, certainly not for the British, who have always treated the present as less important than the future and the past. The future for Great Britain was to be found, at any given moment, in Asia, where Chinese and Indians might one day buy everything they showed no inclination to buy in the early nineteenth century. The most solid manifestation of the Swing to the East was the empire in India conquered by the British between 1757, the date of Robert Clive's victory at the battle of Plassey, and the destruction of the Maratha Confederacy by the marquis of Hastings in 1818. The conquest of India would transform Great Britain as great power from a peripheral state in Europe, where Great Britain's own security and increasingly large and profitable overseas trade could usually be protected by a powerful navy, into a continental state in Asia with geographically and strategically unsatisfactory frontiers behind which a foreign elite became more and more worried about the difficulty of keeping control. Their quest for security would entangle them in relations between Middle Eastern states, in whose affairs they otherwise had no interest, and it is this problem of how to defend India, rather than the solution to the problem tried out between 1830 and 1842, which is often mistakenly called the Great Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Game in Asia. The alarm of the British about the security of their empire in India had its origin in an equivalent swing to the east on the continent of Europe. The pre-eminent power of France in the mid-eighteenth century, like the world power of Great Britain one hundred and fifty years later, depended on not having to choose between the defence of overseas and European interests. When the defeat of France in the Seven Years War was followed by loss of control over Poland, 8 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

the fulcrum of the European balance of power began its gradual move eastwards from the Burgundian Circle to the Holy Alliance.2 Like all shifts in the European balance of power, this one was most clearly shown in the Middle East. Despite, or perhaps because of, the aberration of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, whose significance historians of ideas tend to overestimate, the terms of and the various reactions to the treaties of Munchengratz in 1833 represented a recognition that the long-term future in early nineteenth-century Europe lay with Russia. Whereas the ideological imperialism of France would eventually destroy her own power, the partition of Turkey might make Russia invulnerable. Herein lay one cause of the Crimean War. As soon as Great Britain as great power was transformed by the conquest of India into a dual monarchy, her European enemies could give up the difficult task of invading the British Isles for the simpler task of creating a sphere of influence in the Middle East. The danger feared by the British from European control over Turkey and Persia, for example, was not invasion but rebellion and bankruptcy. The British government hated, and was not permitted, to spend money; the government of India had no money to spend. To put down a rebellion while preparing to resist what might turn out to be only a feint at invasion, might use up its credit. Such fears depended upon a belief in the power of Islam, something people nowadays may not think far-fetched. If Turkey had been turned into a protectorate of France or, later on, Russia, an ideological lever could have been used against the British in India in the way that ideas of liberalism and nationalism were used to cause instability in the Austrian Empire. Or, if they were not, as Prince Metternich expected them to be used. This meant that British India would have to be defended not only cheaply but far away. According to G.J. Alder, the Great Game in Asia began in British plans to resist the Franco-Russian invasion of India expected to follow the treaty of Tilsit in 1807.3 Even if Alder is

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 permitted to equate the Great Game with the defence of India, 1798 would have to be chosen instead of 1807 as its beginning. The British, who had been expecting a new French attempt to drive them out of India since 1784, interpreted Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt as an attempt to set up a forward base in the Middle East. Even the most parochial Englishman realized by 1800 that, despite the collapse of the Second Coalition, peace could not be made with France until the French army of occupation in Egypt had been driven out. Although 9 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

this would do little to help re-establish the European balance of power, it was necessary for the stability of British India. Except that the British were entangled by their Egyptian expedition in the local politics of the Middle East, their attempts to defend India in the nineteenth century by connections with the Middle Eastern states are better separated from the Great Game in Asia. The Great Game was planned as an offensive which might help the British to avoid the price of their military weakness. The British were not well equipped in the early nineteenth century to repulse an invasion of India, brush off a feint at invasion, or put down a rebellion. Even in their heyday, the British were never as powerful as they were rich, because in order to keep down the power and pretensions of the state, they refused to keep up a large army. The existence of the British army had to be disguised in the early nineteenth century by scattering it in garrisons overseas. The Indian Army, made up of Indian troops commanded mostly by Scots, was large and on view - being on view was its most important duty - but was meant to serve as a paramilitary police force. Its task resembled the task given in England to the militia, volunteers commanded by gentlemen who saw to it that equality was never allowed to challenge liberty by an attack on private property. The Indian Empire was the most valuable piece of property owned by the British; so valuable that, unlike Canada, they never thought of trying to slough it off. The Indian Army was meant to keep it in order, but as the effectiveness of the army depended upon the prestige of the British, it was a symbol rather than an instrument of power. Defeat in the First Afghan War and the need of an ally in the Crimean War proved that the British were incapable by themselves of defending their empire in India by military means. None of this surprised the British, although they were dis• appointed by it and had played the Great Game in Asia in the hope of avoiding such a disagreeable experience. They were more surprised

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 by the limited use they had been able to make of their sea power. In an age of sail, the navy could contribute little to the defence of British India except to monitor the sea lane around the Cape of Good Hope. In the war of the Second Coalition, the monsoons had made a blockade of the Red Sea difficult to keep up; the strength of the current through the Straits had contributed to the failure of the Dardanelles Expedition in 1807; during the First Mahomet Ali Crisis in 1832, the fleet was needed in Portugal and Belgium. Despite 10 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

these failures, one origin of the Great Game in Asia was a dream of extending the range of sea power far inland. As early as 1823, William Moorcroft, while travelling beyond the North-West Frontier, had dreamed of the day when steamers would carry British goods from Bombay up the Indus to Attock and onwards to Afghan• istan and Western Turkestan, or up the Jhelum into Kashmir and China.4 The best-known steamers were sent up the Euphrates to stand between Mahomet Ali and Mahmud II; the most important were the ones never put into service on the Indus. If the British had no army capable of fighting another European state — because nobody will mistake Wellington's excursions into Spain or the battle of Waterloo for victories over Napoleonic France - and if the navy could not guarantee to keep the French out of Egypt and Syria nor limit the expansion of Russia in the Caucasus, the British would have to rely for the defence of British India upon their own effortless superiority. Here is the origin of the Great Game in Asia. The first industrialized state and the first free society — in its own eyes, naturally - was to take advantage of its superior techno• logy, its steam power, its iron, and its cotton goods to take over and develop the economy of Central Asia. British goods would be followed by British values, in particular respect for private property, because, given security for the just rewards of labour, nomads would settle down and oasis cities surrounded by tribes of herdsmen would be turned into territorial states with agreed frontiers on the Euro• pean model. The Great Game in Asia was partly, therefore, an attempt to draw lines on a map. The Great Game was begun by Lord Ellenborough and the duke of Wellington, but the goals to be reached and the methods to be used in reaching them were then revised by Sir Henry Ellis, a member of the board of control for India in Earl Grey's administration from 1830 to 1834, who explained to the foreign secretary, Viscount Palmer- ston, how to play. The game was Great Britain's response to the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 treaties of Turkmanchay in 1828 and Adrianople in 1829, which were seen by the British as steps towards the transformation of Persia and Turkey into protectorates of Russia. This interpretation of the treaties would change the British perception of their world. Although the British had fought hard against the French Revolution, they had never been particularly frightened of it: they were far more frightened by the Napoleonic Empire momentarily legitimized by the treaty of Tilsit. Their need of Russian help in replacing imperialism 11 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

with balance of power in the international system prevented their noticing in the 1820s until too late that the Russians, unlike the British, had stopped choosing in the Middle East between the security of their empire and the maintenance of the European balance of power. After 1829, when change in the Middle East was perceived as a threat, as leading to contagious unrest, stability became the primary British goal in the area. The British planned not to take control of the area themselves, rather to prevent anybody else from taking control of it. This would require the creation of a zone of buffer states behind which would be created a second zone of protectorates. The buffer states were to be Turkey, Persia, and the territorial states based on Khiva and Bukhara that the British hoped would grow out of the expansion of their trade. The protected zone to be set up behind the buffer zone would stretch in a horseshoe from the Persian Gulf, up the Indus by way of Sind and the Punjab, into Afghanistan. From Bir on the Euphrates opposite Aleppo round to Attock on the Indus opposite Peshawar, British sea power would provide security for the traders who were to push forward British goods and values, stamp• ing the area with the Union Jack before the Russian Empire could get into it. This vision determined the degree and type of interest taken by the British in the various parts of the Middle East. Turkey was to be preserved as drawn on a map in 1829. What happened inside it was to be ignored, although the British hoped that the sultan would build up an army large enough to keep his vassals in order and to police his frontier with Russia. Although the British would not have wanted Russia to become a naval power in the Mediterranean and, there• fore, preferred the sultan to keep control of the straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, they did not much care what happened to the Turkish Empire in the Balkans. Batum, Erzerum, Baghdad, Syria, Egypt: these were the areas needed to help separate

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Great Britain's Asiatic empire from the European balance of power. The determination of the British not to change their priorities during the Great Eastern Crisis led them to search for a site in the Middle East which might indicate their ability, as well as their willingness, to defend Asiatic Turkey against Russia.5 Persia, too, was to be drawn on a map. In the north-west she was to keep the frontier laid down by the treaty of Turkmanchay. This should satisfy the Russians: they, after all, had laid it down. The

12 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

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13 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

danger zones in Persia were her northern and eastern frontiers. Her northern frontier had either to be drawn along the River Atrek, or to be left undelineated until the transformation of Khiva and Bukhara should permit the partition of Transcaspia. In the east, Persia must be made to give up her claims to Herat. This decaying fortress in a once fertile valley at the western end of the Paropamisus Mountains had been selected, with the islands of Kishm in the Persian Gulf and Aden at the entrance to the Red Sea, to be the most western outpost of the British Empire in Asia. Unlike Aden and Kishm, Herat cannot be reached from the sea. Its use would depend upon the transformation of Afghanistan from a group of trivial and warring principalities into one state ruled by a dependant of the government of India, an ally whose foreign relations would be conducted on his behalf by the governor-general and the foreign office. In the 1830s, the British thought they had found such a ruler in Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, a former amir of Afghani• stan who had been living as a pensioner of the British at Ludhiana since his overthrow in 1809. The First Afghan War originated in plans made earlier in the decade to provide the limited military support - and little was thought to be required - necessary to put Shah Shuja back on the throne at Kabul and to help him take over Herat. In return for this help, Afghanistan would be thrown open to British trade and to the beneficial and stabilizing influence built into British goods. Access to Afghanistan was to be provided by the development of the Indus and Sutlej rivers as trade routes, which in itself would demand unhindered access to Sind and the Punjab. The Great Game in Asia therefore depended upon a closer connection between the British and the states along their North-West Frontier. Although the British did not want, and did not mean, to take over these states, they could no longer be permitted to change their relationships with one another. The rulers of Sind, the Punjab, and Afghanistan must live in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 harmony while encouraging the British trade which was sure to destroy them by transforming their subjects into Asiatic copies of the new-model, self-reliant Englishmen whom evangelicals and utili• tarians admired. The Great Game in Asia began in the British attempt between 1832 and 1834 to negotiate commercial treaties with Maharajah Ranjit Singh of Lahore and the amirs of Sind, and the first interruption of this magnificent British daydream was caused by the determination of the amirs of Sind to be left alone. 14 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

If the failure of the British to win the Great Game in Asia was implicit in their disappointment with the amirs of Sind, their actual failure resulted from their much more bitter disappointment with the Afghans. The British succeeded in 1839 in putting Shah Shuja back on the throne at Kabul. They could not keep him there. Probably they could have done so: they had not expected to have to. As the agent of the higher things they represented, he should have been welcomed, but he was not. The rebellions in Afghanistan, the disastrous retreat from Kabul, and the punitive expedition sent in 1842 to avenge the national honour, were a prophecy of the dilemma in which the British would find themselves in Egypt after 1882. They did not want to be in Egypt; they wanted to find some Egyptians to whom they could hand it over; but the Egyptians must be reason• able : they must realize that progress and the common interest meant paying one's debts. The British stayed put in Egypt. They pulled out of Afghanistan. By 1882, they had realized that Utopian visions may have to be realized by force; or that one must hang on to what one needs, even if self-esteem compels one to pretend that it is also for the good of others. And one should not underestimate the British Empire. It was good for others. The young Gandhi said so. The failure of the British in the First Afghan War to turn Afghani• stan into a client state which could be developed along British lines meant that the Great Game in Asia could not be won. The British, unable to impose their own order on the Middle East, would there• fore spend the rest of the century trying to prevent the Russians from doing in Turkestan what Great Britain had been unable to do and, when that proved impossible, trying to limit the consequences. This attempt to make sure that a game which could not be won should not be lost, led the British in dizzying circles as they tried over and over again to answer the same questions. If they could not prevent the expansion of the Russian Empire into Turkestan, should they try to limit its influence by means of a connection with Persia, by a second

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 attempt to turn Afghanistan into a protectorate, or by demonstrating Great Britain's ability to attack Russia all over the world ? The last meant, in practice, in the Black Sea or hiding behind a Continental ally. The effects of Great Britain's failure to win the Great Game in Asia were delayed for thirty years by the development of steam power in warships, which gave the British navy its last moment of strategic importance. Failure in Afghanistan had been accompanied by

IDBI-B 15 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

success in Turkey. The treaty of Unkiar Skelessi had been replaced in 1841 by the Straits Settlement; Great Britain's interest in the preservation of Turkey had been shown to be a European interest; and when Russia seemed, in the conduct of her dispute with France over access to the Holy Places, to be trying to treat Turkey as a protectorate rather than a buffer state, her pretensions were resisted by force. They were not, however, resisted by Great Britain, who had ridden to the Crimea on the coat-tails of Austria and France. Despite this handicap, the neutralization of the Black Sea gave the British the opportunity to return to the area should it seem necessary. Until the Russians began to rebuild their Black Sea fleet in the years following the revocation of the Black Sea Clauses in 1870, the defence of India against Russia was left to the nationalist uprising in the Caucasus predicted to follow the landing of a few British troops. The uprising was to be a copy of the uprisings on the Continent on which the British had counted so often during the Napoleonic Wars and which had taken place nowhere except in Spain. The Crimean War must not be treated as a farce, nor as a war with no causes and no results. It was one of the few successful invasions of Russia in modern times and one theory of Indian defence, the Punjab School founded by Lord Lawrence on the principle of masterly inactivity in Central Asia, followed from the assumption that limited military movement could have dramatic political consequences. Why else were the British so worried about the stability of India ? The strategic legacy of the Crimean War explains why the British remained unperturbed about the expansion of Russia in Turkestan, until the Russians moved in the 1870s into Transcaspia and the area inhabited by the Tekke-Turkomans along the northern frontier of Persia, partly in search of a lever in Central Asia equivalent to the lever the British had possessed in the Black Sea.6 Similarly, the British search for a base in the eastern Mediterranean during the Great Eastern Crisis was an attempt to retain an old advantage despite new

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 circumstances. By the 1870s, the British were on the defensive in Central Asia, reacting rather than taking initiatives, unable any longer to make local circumstances dovetail with imperial needs. Even the Second Afghan War was a response, an attempt to prepare for, if not to forestall, the Russian annexation of Merv. Given the difficulty of forcing the Straits against Russian opposition, and, after 1882, against opposition from the sultan and the Three Emperors' League, 16 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

the British debated for fifteen years, from the late 1870s until the early 1890s, whether they should, after all, defend India by an offensive in Central Asia. Such a strategy would mean a choice between Afghanistan and Persia. Sir Garnet Wolseley often chose Persia: his great rival, Sir Frederick Roberts, chose Afghanistan. Nothing new was said in the debate between them. Everything had already been said between 1798 and 1828, when the Persian Con• nection had been the orthodox strategy for the defence of British India. The Great Game in Asia was partly a response to the destruc• tion of the Persian Connection by the treaty of Turkmanchay. Gordon Martel would have one believe that the debate in the late nineteenth century between the theorists of the defence of India was irrelevant, because by the 1890s the defence of India had been relegated to a lower place in the scale of Great Britain's most vital interests.7 Frontier quarrels with Russia in Central Asia were to be patched up in order to demonstrate to Germany that the Franco- Russian Alliance was not directed against Great Britain. If it were not, the future was not as bleak for Great Britain as the Germans were trying to prove, and Great Britain need not respond to pressure from Germany to join the Triple Alliance. One can sympathize with the Germans about this. They were telling the truth, except that, in the short run, the danger to Great Britain would come from them not from Russia, and by their own actions in the Moroccan Crisis they proved it. This assessment would drag the British into the First World War. As soon as the states with access to the Middle East were revisionist not legitimist, the British were bound to take part in a European war. They fought the First World War for the reason they had fought the Crimean War, because they had failed to win the Great Game in Asia. The First World War seemed to be a great victory for Great Britain. If one looked at the pink blotches on the world map in 1919, never had the British Empire been larger and seemed more secure.8

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 The states threatening both the European balance of power and the stability of British India had all been destroyed. So, unfortunately, had Great Britain. The state that came out of the First World War was not the state that went into it. The introduction of conscription was the surrender of liberty to equality, against which one hundred and fifty years earlier Great Britain had waged war for almost twenty-five years. Nor was the British Empire that came out the one that went in. Owing to the price of the victory and the principles by

17 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

which the terms of peace were to be justified, there was unrest everywhere in the empire. The British had neither the strength nor the will to continue acting as the leading world power while, and perhaps by, repressing demands for self-rule. The difference between appearance and reality was exposed most cruelly in the Caucasus. The foreign office, headed by two former viceroys of India, Lord Curzon and Lord Hardinge, saw that the Great Game in Asia seemed to have been won after all. British troops were at Constantinople, at Batum, and at Baku. Russia was in turmoil. Surely it should be possible to draw new lines around new buffer states to stand between Russia and the recreated British pro• tectorate in Persia? The partition of Germany and the recreation of Poland seemed to be taking Europe back to the mid-eighteenth century, re-establishing the pre-eminence on the Continent of France. The partition of Turkey and of the Russian Empire in the Middle East ought similarly to establish the pre-eminence of Great Britain in Asia. Curzon and Hardinge had found in Batum the forward base from which the British might manage, by the use of sea power and without a Continental commitment, to maintain the stability of the new buffer states they hoped to create. If the opportu• nity to consolidate the British Empire were not taken, however, the empire would collapse.9 Curzon and Hardinge were right. The British Empire did collapse: it turned into HMS Hood and the prince of Wales. This gap between appearance and reality was not all British self-deception, however. The adjustment of the British to decline was so uncomfortable partly because it was so long delayed by other states, by the self-absorption of Americans and Russians. In the twentieth century, the inter• national system made too heavy demands on the British. They had tried for the last time in 1915 to defend their empire and help maintain the European balance of power without having to choose between them. The failure of the Dardanelles Expedition led to the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 horrors and exhaustion of the Western Front. By 1919, the British were too tired and too poor to risk war with Turkey and Russia in an attempt to reverse their failure to stabilize the British Empire in 1842. To protect the empire from the effects of fluctuation in the European balance of power had been the purpose of playing the Great Game in Asia. And the British had lost.

18 GREAT BRITAIN'S GREAT GAME

NOTES

1. Sc to ggic, 29 Dec. 1829, IO L/PS/5/543. 2. H. M. Scott, Trance and the Polish Throne, 1763-64,' Slavonic and East European Review, liii (1975), 370-88; and 'The Importance of Bourbon Naval Reconstruc• tion to the Strategy of Choiseul after the Seven Years War,' International History Review, i (1979), 17-35. 3. G.J. Alder, 'Britain and the Defence of India - The Origins of the Problem, 1798- 1815,' Journal of Asian History, vi (1972), 14-44. 4. G.J. Alder, 'Standing Alone: William Moorcraft Plays the Great Game, 1808- 1825,' International History Review, ii (1980), 204-5. 5. Adrian Preston, 'Frustrated Great Gamesmanship: Sir Garnet Wolseley's Plans for War against Russia, 1873-1880,' ibid., pp.256-9. 6. Beryl Williams, 'Approach to the Second Afghan War: Central Asia during the Great Eastern Crisis,' ibid., p. 220. 7. Gordon Martel, 'Documenting the Great Game: "World Policy" and the 'Turbu• lent Frontier" in the 1890s,' ibid., pp. 288-90. 8. Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars (London, Pelican, 1974) pp. 72-3. 9. John D. Rose, 'Batum as Domino, 1919-1920: The Defence of India in Trans• caucasia,' International History Review, ii (1980), pp. 283-4. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

19 1ll

THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE, 1775-1801

We don't want to have Egypt. What we wish about Egypt is that it should continue attached to the Turkish Empire, which is security against its belonging to any European Power. We want to trade through Egypt, and to travel through Egypt, but we do not want the burthen of govern• ing Egypt. Viscount Palmerston1

To be admired by the British during the nineteenth century, foreigners needed to be warlike or dead. The dead were preferred, particularly classical Greeks, but live Arabs were their closest com• petitor. The attraction of Arabia was its emptiness. Nothing was there, or nothing the British recognized: they remembered Alex• ander and Antony. According to the viceroy of India, as late as 1871 British policy in Arabia 'originated in a geographical error.'2 Since the Napoleonic Wars the British had learned little. They had learned enough. The usefulness of the Arabs' oil and the raucousness of their quarrels disguise how small, until the First World War, were the economic interests in Arabia of the great powers. Their policies reflected their interests elsewhere. As Palmerston had predicted in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 1861, digging the Suez Canal was a mistake: 'It requires only a glance at the map of the world to see how great would be the naval and military advantage to France in a war with England to have ... a short cut to the Indian seas.'3 The canal gave features to what was sensibly seen as desert. Visualized by the British at the end of the eighteenth century, this desert had two edges. One side, as far as Constantinople, Smyrna, and Aleppo, was allotted to the Levant Company; the other, beyond Basra, Muscat, and Jedda, to the East

20 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

India Company. Unfortunately for the British, in 1798 Bonaparte invaded Egypt and stepped between them. The dangers from such an invasion were well understood. The British had debated the advantages and disadvantages of a connection with Egypt for twenty-five years. Prominent in the debate and twice the British agent in Egypt was the most famous advocate of the overland trade, George Baldwin. Maps of the Indian Ocean current in 1800 appear misleadingly accurate. Africa appeared much as today. Certain areas, however, were only slightly surveyed; the east coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea.4 'I do not think,' said a British naval officer of the Red Sea, 'there is any place of large extent so little surveyed or known.'5 Twenty-five years earlier Warren Hastings, the governor-general of Bengal, had proposed asking the Egyptians to pilot British ships up to Suez until the British could produce an accurate chart. The pro• posal led nowhere because a plan to develop the overland trade, made by Hastings at the same time, was vigorously opposed by the Turks. It was equally enthusiastically supported by Baldwin.

I For the two hundred and fifty years since the Ottoman conquest, the Red Sea had been barred to the Franks; most of the Englishmen who visited it were pirates. During the eighteenth century, while, theoretically, Europeans were not permitted beyond Mocha, the sherif of Mecca admitted them, in practice, to Jedda.6 Although highly profitable, the Red Sea trade had never been large, and in the middle of the eighteenth century it declined, as foreign trade declined throughout the Ottoman Empire except where individual provincial governors were strong enough locally to preserve order.7 The British blamed the decline on the arbitrary behaviour of local officials; particularly on 'a most destructive measure introduced of forcing...

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 [merchants] to give presents, which was only an inducement to oppress that the gift might be greater.'8 British trade from Arabia to Europe similarly declined when the Levant Company stopped trading to Egypt after the Seven Years War.9 When Warren Hastings and George Baldwin tried briefly to revive the trade, the impetus came exclusively from India and Egypt. In 1766 Ali Bey el-Kebir, the Mameluke governor of Cairo, over• awing his rivals, seized sole power in Egypt.10 As a preliminary 21 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

to declaring his independence of the sultan, he planned to revive Egypt's foreign trade, in itself a challenge to the sultan's control over Arabia. To revive trade with India, in 1770 his lieutenant, Abu el- Dhahab, invaded the Hejaz, capturing Jedda and Mocha. Christian vessels, he proclaimed, were henceforth to be welcome.11 One or two stalwart Englishmen, who, despite the hazards, had continued to trade to the Red Sea, now obtained permission to bypass Jedda and sail directly to Suez. They were followed two years later by the government of India. In December 1772 Warren Hastings decided to send a vessel to Egypt from Calcutta, as a token of Great Britain's interest in reviving trade with the Middle East. At the same time a small joint stock company was incorporated at Calcutta for the purpose of trading to Suez, and Hastings bought a share and selected its managers.12 His official interest was less commercial than financial: by promoting the overland trade, and establishing a British connection with Egypt, Hastings hoped to remedy his short• age of funds at Calcutta. By 1770, ten years of economic exploitation, followed by famine, had compelled the East India Company, under the increasingly critical gaze of parliament, to take steps to limit the private trade of its employees, and had caused a serious depression in Bengal. Both developments drove Englishmen in India to seek new sources of wealth. As one such source, trade to the Middle East had the added attraction of keeping British capital out of the hands of foreigners. The reliance of French, Dutch, and Scandinavian merchants in India upon British capital to compete with the East India Company's sales in Europe was a second reason for the shortage of cash at Calcutta, which restricted the government of India's credit.13 Hastings hoped that if the company's employees would invest their capital in trade to the Middle East, the trade would both hamper Great Britain's competitors in India and increase the funds available. Arabs and Egyptians, who had little to export, would pay for their imports in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 cash. Capital would not be diverted from India, and, if Bengal's manufactures sold profitably, taxes there might even be raised.14 Both credit and revenue might benefit. The government of Bombay, where the East India Company's employees were permitted to trade on their own account until 1804, was even more interested than their countrymen at Calcutta in the expansion of trade with the Arabs. The area in the Middle East traditionally sufficiently stable to offer a profitable market was

22 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

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IDBI-B* 23 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Baghdad. In 1773 Baghdad was suddenly devastated by plague, compelling the British factors at Basra to evacuate. After their return the following year the damage done to the local economy was com• pounded by invasions from Persia. What was lost at Basra could not be made up at Bandar Abbas or Bushire. Owing to a quarrel between the government of Bombay and the ruler of Persia, the East India Company's export of woollen goods to the Persian Gulf had been disrupted, never to recover, leaving the country traders at Bombay, who relied heavily on British capital, in need of an alternative outlet in the Red Sea.15 The Turks for political reasons and the Levant Company and East India Company for commercial reasons only foresaw keener com• petition. The expansion of trade with Egypt from India suffered setbacks, from shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean and continuous upheavals in Egypt, where Abu el-Dhahab had overthrown his master. In 1775, however, a commercial treaty was negotiated between Warren Hastings and Abu el-Dhahab, by which Suez was officially opened to British traders, who were to pay lower duties there than they had paid to the sherif of Mecca at Jedda.16 This initiative was peculiarly ill-timed. The Turks, who had recently lost another in their succession of wars with the Russians, believed the British to have been partly responsible. The British had aided the Russians in the Mediterranean by protecting their fleet from the French: as a result the Russian navy had defeated the Turks.17 A moment that symbolized the traditional British policy of treating Russia as a natural ally against France and the equally traditional Turkish policy of treating France as a natural ally against Russia, was not an ideal one for seeking new trading rights in the Ottoman Empire. The Turks were determined to prevent British vessels in the Red Sea from sailing beyond Jedda. The British might send dispatches through Egypt to India, as long as Arab boats were used to transport Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 them between Jedda and Suez, but trade was still to be banned.18 The Turks talked grandiloquently of their fear of Christians defiling the holy places, but were actually frightened of upsetting the delicate balance of power in the Hejaz. Their obstinacy was caused by the state of affairs there rather than by that in Egypt. A flourishing trade overland might indeed have encouraged the Mameluke beys to declare their independence, but when Abu el-Dhahab was killed, shortly after signing his treaty with Warren Hastings, they reverted 24 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

instead to their previous factional rivalries. The condition of Egypt was not suited to profitable trading. However, it suited the interests of the sultan. The sultan was supported in his opposition to British trade with Egypt by the sherif of Mecca. In 1772 the sherif had driven the Egyptians out of the Hejaz. He was just as determined to drive the British from Suez. As a warning, in 1776 he confiscated the goods British merchants had unloaded at Jedda, not returning them until threatened with a naval bombardment.19 The sherifs had been at odds with the Ottomans since the founding of the dynasty. The Egyptian trade threatened both of them. Power in the Hejaz had long been shared between the sherifs and the Ottoman governors, symbolized by their division of the customs revenue at Jedda. Whereas the governors, who came and went too often, had too few troops and were too far from Constantinople to rule effectively, the sherif was only one among many sherifian chiefs. Each of the two partly relied upon the support of the other and both relied upon trade. The Hejaz was fed on Egyptian grain, paid for with coffee and the customs duties levied on goods from the East. As long as the Red Sea remained closed beyond Jedda, all goods, wherever they were bound, paid duty upon being unloaded there; which explains why Christians had not been forbidden to sail beyond Mocha. A second source of revenue was the annual pilgrimage from Egypt. The pilgrims spent lavishly at the fairs held upon their arrival at Jedda, and brought a subsidy with them from Egypt, which was distributed by the Ottoman governor to keep the sherifian families contented with Ottoman rule. At the same time, the troops who escorted the pilgrims provided an annual reminder of Ottoman power. A precarious balance was in consequence main• tained between Arabs and Turks in the Hejaz which depended upon the maintenance of existing trade relations with Egypt.20 Despite the advocacy of George Baldwin, the British proved as

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 willing as the Turks were determined to maintain their existing patterns of trade in the Middle East. Baldwin was not the first advocate of the overland trade in the late eighteenth century, but he became the best known. He had been trading in the Levant since 1760. Seeing an opportunity for higher profits, he had gone back to London in 1775 and quickly persuaded the East India Company to appoint him its agent at Cairo. Upon his return to Egypt, however, he was equally quickly disillusioned at his prospects:

25 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

The Turk, who had been silent, began to complain ... the sherif of Mecca began to complain that the port of Jedda would suffer ... the East India Company cried out that their trade would suffer; the Turkey Company cried out that they would be ruined.21 Baldwin was silent about the most serious handicap to trade, the effect of the continuous upheavals in Egypt. Despite Hastings's treaty, the beys levied higher duties at Suez than those levied by the sherif at Jedda. By 1780 the trade from India to Egypt had been abandoned and, until the Napoleonic Wars, few British ships again risked the passage to Suez.22 The reasons may have changed, but the policy of the British in Egypt between the Seven Years War and the Suez Crisis was remark• ably consistent: to keep everyone out, including, ideally, themselves. The apparent turcophilia of Sir Robert Ainslie, the British envoy at Constantinople from 1775 to 1794, was in fact an accurate represen• tation of Great Britain's priorities. That Great Britain had no vital interests in the Middle East was attested by the infrequency of Ainslie's instructions. The Levant Company feared the overland trade as a rival to their own failing trade in eastern goods through Aleppo; also because, if the Turks were offended by it, they might retaliate against them. The East India Company was prepared to send dispatches through Egypt but not goods. Sending goods over• land would subvert its monopoly; on the other hand, dispatches, unaccompanied by goods, might become ruinously expensive. Ainslie believed that the existing route by way of Baghdad was much the cheaper.23 As a result, in 1777 the East India Company ordered Warren Hastings to obey the sultan's decree prohibiting British ships from sailing beyond Jedda.24 The British government's only interest in Egypt was opposition to the French. Great Britain had traditionally opposed France in the Mediterranean because, by the middle of the eighteenth century, it had been re-established as the guiding principle of British foreign

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 policy to check France wherever possible; to the British, the balance of power meant that all other states ought to help them. Similarly, France had opposed Great Britain. If the British began to trade overland the French might do so as well, thus undermining the British position in India as they were already helping to undermine it in America. Although arguing about the advantages and disadvan• tages of colonial and continental warfare was a favourite pastime in Great Britain, the war of the American rebellion — in which, deserted 26 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

even by Russia, the British lacked their usual prerequisite of a Euro• pean conflict, a continental ally who would fight as the principal - was no time to reassess the relative economic importance of various colonies. The pre-eminence of India had to await the loss of America.

II

To prevent French intervention in Egypt, the British withdrew. For the same reason they presently, but only briefly, returned. At first Austrian and then French plans to trade with Egypt culminated in January 1785 in an agreement with the beys, by which the Red Sea was to be opened up to French overland trade.25 Unlike the British on hearing about Warren Hastings's treaty, the French made vigorous efforts to persuade the Turks to agree.26 French merchants in India, who had seen what had befallen the British, were more hesitant. In Great Britain by this time India was increasingly the responsibility of Henry Dundas, the first and most famous president of the board of control for India, who proved susceptible to the appeal of the overland trade, and was equally alarmist about the danger from France to the British in India. As soon as America was lost, Dundas took 'it for granted that [in any Anglo-French war] India is the first quarter to be attacked.'27 In 1784 he therefore asked the British ambassador at Paris to find out whether the French were making any plans in the East likely to be furthered by a connection with Egypt.28 The ambassador replied that the French had no immediate plans, but were seeking a fast and reliable route overland for their dispatches and their agents, in the hope of meddling more effectively in the relations between the Indian states.29 This pre• diction was enough for Dundas. Anything acquired by the French must also be granted to the British. The British are often mocked for their sensitivity to European influence in the Middle Eastern states. Their anxious attempts in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 nineteenth century to limit the expansion of Russian influence, as the cheapest way to maintain order in India, were copied from the French. French attempts in the late-eighteenth century to challenge Great Britain's dominance of the trade to the East and to drive the British from India by means of alliances with the Middle Eastern states, often appear as bizarre as the coalitions negotiated by the British to forestall a French or a Russian invasion. Earlier in the century, when their struggles with the British in India began, the 27 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

French had quickly appreciated the importance of the overland routes. A French consul had long resided at Baghdad and, owing to the efforts of a French mercenary, they had considerable influence in Sind.30 After the treaty of Paris in 1783, they attempted to follow up these advantages by negotiating alliances with Karim Khan of Persia and the imam of Oman. Both attempts were failures. The French envoy arrived at Isfahan without any presents in the middle of one of the revolutions characteristic of late-eighteenth century politics in Persia.31 Until the Kajars defeated their rivals the Zands in 1795, Persia, as Dundas realized, was too unstable to be of value as an ally.32 The power of Oman, however, was increasing, and the imam seemed to be willing to co-operate with the French by attacking Bombay. The French envoy to Oman therefore argued that the French should try to create a sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf maintained by their consuls at Muscat and Basra.33 Although the Bourbons preferred Egypt to the Persian Gulf as a base from which to challenge the British, they were unable to make effective use of either. As always, their ambitions were curtailed by their poverty. According to David Kimche, the French failed because their policies contradicted one another: a connection with Persia and Sind depended upon the co-operation of the sultan, a connection with the beys upon the partition of the Ottoman Empire. British merchants, on the other hand, 'not troubled by such considerations as official policy or grand strategy,' might seize any opportunity of profit.34 Nothing could be further from the truth. British overland trade was hampered by an identical consideration. The French had one advantage: Kimche's alternatives were not the necessary choice. The French, who might try to open up the route through Egypt by helping the sultan to overawe the beys, would then not have to choose between their European and Asiatic interests, the choice which be• devilled the British. In the Napoleonic Wars against France, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 throughout the nineteenth century against Russia, the British had to beware lest their strategy for defending India against invasion or the repercussions of enemy expansion should destroy the Ottoman Empire, thus upsetting the European balance of power. The British had been aware of this danger from the start. The overland trade was destroyed by a principle, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, one of the grandest of British strategies. Baldwin, frustrated in his attempt to develop the overland trade, 28 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

had returned in 1780 to London. In February 1785, in preparation for submitting the suggestion to the cabinet, Dundas asked him whether Egypt might provide a faster and more reliable route to India than Constantinople or Baghdad. Baldwin naturally replied that Egypt would. He added that if goods as well as dispatches were sent, a connection with Egypt would solve some of British India's more pressing administrative problems. As Warren Hastings had previously argued, expanding the trade to the Middle East would increase the supply of cash available at Calcutta; the postal service alone might bring in £30,000 every year. Egypt might also provide a recruiting ground for the Indian Army,35 with which Dundas was dissatisfied, because the sepoys recruited in Oudh were unwilling to travel. If a major war might have to be waged against France in the East, the Indian Army had to be made strategically mobile. These potentialities, in Baldwin's opinion, would naturally be best ex• ploited by him. In April 1785 he applied to be reappointed the East India Company's agent at Cairo.36 The cabinet, which in 1785 meant Pitt the Younger, decided to investigate, asking the board of control to summarize the advantages of the various routes to the East. The disadvantage of the Egyptian route was the peculiar climate in the Red Sea. For most of the summer, during the south-west monsoon, sailing ships could not enter the Red Sea; for most of the winter, during the north-east monsoon, they could not leave.37 For half the year goods and dispatches could be sent out to India easily; for the other half they could be easily sent home: they could not be easily sent both ways in one season. The board therefore recommended that, as each of the routes to India was quickest at certain times of the year, ideally Great Britain should develop all of them.38 Although Baldwin underestimated these difficulties, he under• stood that, even if the advantages of a connection with Egypt should prove illusory, Great Britain had an overriding interest in not leaving

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Egypt to the French. The dangers from French influence in Egypt were exactly as Palmerston later claimed:

France in possession of Egypt would possess the master key to all the trading nations of the earth ... She might make it the awe of the eastern world, by the facility she would command of transporting her forces thither by surprise in any number and at any time — and England would hold her possessions in India at the mercy of France.39 Here was a new reason for continuing an old policy. From the

29 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

moment - after the passing of Pitt's India Act in 1784 - that the British began to see themselves as principally a territorial power in India, they understood that their safety would depend upon their ability to prevent any great European power from dominating the eastern Mediterranean. In June 1785 the British ambassador at Paris repeated his warning about the reason for French interest in Egypt. By the end of the year, however, the French were known to have encountered the same difficulties as had Warren Hastings. Egypt remained in disorder; French merchants in India remained hesitant of competing against the British; and, although the French government had wondered whether to invade Egypt to impose order, it had decided that the cost would outweigh the advantages.40 Its finances at the end of the American war prohibited changes in foreign policy: its attitude to the Russian annexation of the Crimea revealed it, however, to be mentally prepared for them. The French had decided, as the British did a century later, that in supporting the Turks they had backed the wrong horse.41 After the suggestion was first made in 1770 by their ambassador at Constantinople, the French had thirty years in which to grow accustomed to the radical change in policy implied by an invasion of Egypt. In 1786, despite the opposition of Sir Robert Ainslie, who disliked him, Baldwin was appointed British consul-general at Cairo. The differences between the two men were not solely personal. Although the Turks had told Ainslie that they would refuse to ratify the commercial treaty between the French and the beys, the British government did not believe them.42 Nor did the British any longer hope to convince them that they must not ratify it, because the British no longer wished to deny the French, but rather to obtain equal rights with them. Ainslie, opposing the French, had placed British interests in Egypt in their traditional Mediterranean context.43 Baldwin and Dundas, who had introduced an Indian context, hoped Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 by copying the French and by establishing a connection with Egypt to increase the safety of British India. It was not coincidental that Baldwin was sent to Cairo at the time that Earl Cornwallis went out to Bengal. In Pitt's India Act the primary British goal in India was stated to be peace. The British possessed enough territory; their European rivals possessed almost none. Further wars of conquest should therefore be unnecessary and, as a corollary, the British would not interfere with the Indian states unless France did. Then 30 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

they would support whoever was opposing the French. This policy was not as detached as it might appear. The British expected the French to interfere in Indian politics, as they had previously done, in alliance with Mysore, and planned to counteract them in alliance with the Maratha Confederacy. 'Your principal attention,' Corn- wallis was told, 'must be to avoid shaking the friendship and con• fidence of the Marathas.'44 Baldwin in Egypt, who, like the Marathas in India, was supposed to be a means of containing the French, was also supposed to be a means of destroying the East India Company: his instructions reflected a number of Dundas's obsessions. Baldwin was to promote trade and communication with India, by obtaining equal rights with the French in the Red Sea; to report on French activity; and to intercept both French agents and unauthorized Englishmen bound for India.45 Dundas was almost as fearful of the consequences of allowing British settlers to reach India as of foreign agents. Both would cause trouble, but settlers would sap the empire from within, as they had sapped the Portuguese Empire, by demanding to be treated as Englishmen not merely as subjects.46 They would also become decadent. Dundas subscribed to Montesquieu's theories of the enervating effect over time of the tropical climate. Each genera• tion should start out fresh and virile from England or, better still, Scotland. Dundas disliked the East India Company as heartily as he did the French and tried in 1785-6 to destroy their monopoly. His first method was by encouraging foreign trade with India, provided that foreigners would recognize British sovereignty;47 his second was a plan for transferring to London the company's Indian debt. Dundas suggested that the company's employees should make the transfer, by exchanging their capital in India for bills on the funded debt, to be redeemed by the East India Company at five per cent interest upon their return home to London. The arrangement was meant to pro•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 vide more funds in India for the purchase of goods, to be sold at a higher profit in Europe, in turn permitting creditors from India to be repaid without difficulty.48 As Dundas had probably expected, the scheme, when tried, failed. It had two flaws worth noticing here. As Warren Hastings had realized, the East India Company's employees could obtain a better return on their money by lending to foreigners, who, as long as they were encouraged to trade, would need to borrow. Secondly, the 31 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

overland trade might offer a better way both to transfer capital to England and to destroy the company's monopoly by competing against their sales at London. In 1786 Dundas was in the first flush of power. Not until his difficulties in parliament over the Declaratory Act two years later did he give up hope of winding up the East India Company in order to appoint himself India's first secretary of state. Dundas was soon disappointed, because Baldwin quickly failed to keep his promise to develop the overland trade. British policy in the Middle East at the end of the eighteenth century was regularly overtaken by events. Upon Baldwin's return to Egypt in 1786, he found a Turkish army trying to re-establish Ottoman control. Instead of negotiating with the beys, as Warren Hastings and the French had done, Baldwin asked the Turkish commander to open up the whole of the Red Sea to British trade. He naturally refused, referring the British to Constantinople, where the Porte likewise refused.49 The following year, in need of the goodwill of both the British and the French, owing to the outbreak of another in the Turks' series of wars with the Russians, the Porte repeated its previous offer: dispatches might be sent to India through Egypt.50 Even if accepted, however, the offer would make little difference to the prospects of trade, which was hampered less by the Turks than by local conditions. Since Baldwin had left six years earlier, Egypt had been ruled by a coalition of Mamelukes led by Murad and Ibrahim Beys, who remained in power until defeated by Bonaparte at the battle of the Pyramids in 1798. After 1783, when they eliminated their rivals, they ceased to pay tribute to the sultan. Taking advantage three years later of European protests against their extortions,51 the sultan had therefore sent an army to Egypt, not to restore direct Ottoman rule (the Turks like the French were afraid of the cost of occupation), but to divide Egypt more evenly among the beys. They might then be more likely to pay tribute. Although the Turkish army had to be Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 recalled from Egypt in order to fight in the war against Russia, which permitted Murad and Ibrahim to regain most of their power, they were never unchallenged and continued to pay tribute as the sultan had hoped.52 The compromise suited the sultan: it was disastrous for Egypt, which remained in disorder until the arrival of Bonaparte. By 1790 the British had realized that disorder in Egypt would prevent their developing the overland trade. They remained con• vinced of the potential of Egypt as a trade route, but could only wait 32 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

for conditions there to improve.53 Presently they decided not to wait. Owing to a change in foreign secretaries, British policy in the Middle East was reversed. Baldwin, although sent to Cairo by Dundas, was paid by the foreign office. As long as the duke of Leeds, who was increasingly a cypher, was foreign secretary, foreign policy was formulated by Pitt. When it affected India, Dundas had expected to be, and had been, consulted. In 1791 Leeds was replaced by Lord Grenville. The effect was noticeable at once. Within a year, Grenville was insisting that Baldwin should be recalled from Cairo, because 'as far as I am able to judge of the services which he performs, or of the advantage which results to the public service from his residence there, they do not appear to me to justify the expense.'54 The expense was an excuse. Grenville's objection to Baldwin was a legacy of one of the most celebrated controversies about British interests in the Middle East, the Ochakov Affair.

Ill

Like so many British initiatives in Turkey, the most dramatic being the Crimean War, the Ochakov Affair was a question of European, not Middle Eastern politics. When the British decided to forbid Catherine II to annex Ochakov in 1791, they had yet to find out where it was. They chose to believe that while Turkish it provided a route to Poland; that denying it to Russia would buttress their Prussian alliance. Both calculations were attempts to maintain a balance of power by finding in Poland and Russia a new source of naval stores while cutting off supplies to France and Spain. The critics of the policy were not necessarily blind to the future identity of Anglo-Turkish interests in the Middle East: they were used to co• operating with Russia. Pitt had to give way, because even his cabinet colleagues grew frightened.55 His most influential critic in the cabinet

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 was Grenville, who was convinced by the Ochakov Affair that Great Britain would never be able to maintain a balance of power in alliance with Prussia alone. Throughout the French Revolutionary Wars, Pitt's claim that an alliance with Prussia offered the only hope of driving the French out of Holland, was countered by Grenville's claim that Great Britain also needed the help of Russia if the balance of power in Europe were ever to be restored.56 These priorities were reflected in strategies. Grenville saw Revolu-

33 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

tionary France as a continental power. He opposed Dundas's strategy of colonial conquest on the ground that it could never force a decision in Europe. After 1794 Grenville could count on the support of the Portland Whigs, particularly the newly appointed secretary-at-war, William Windham, obsessed with 'the idea of Bellum internicitnum and the invading of France.'57 Dundas countered that Great Britain should concentrate upon defending her own colonies from the enemy, then upon attacking the enemy's colonies, because her prosperity derived from her sea power and her overseas trade. The peace negotiations at Lille in 1797 failed, partly because Grenville, thinking that the objects for which the British had gone to war had not been achieved, did not want peace, whereas Dundas, who did want peace, would not return Great Britain's colonial conquests to obtain it because they had been his object from the start. During the war of the Second Coalition the cabinet grew more sharply and bitterly divided. By 1800 they could agree no better on what principles to negotiate than they had earlier proved able to decide where and how to fight.58 If, however, during the war of the First Coalition, Grenville and Dundas had pursued opposite goals, their strategies had had an identical effect in the Middle East. Because Baldwin was paid by the foreign department, Egypt was one overseas area for which Grenville was responsible and which he might evacuate. By demanding in April 1792 to recall Baldwin, Grenville implied that the East India Company's need to defend British India from French interference could not be permitted to complicate British policy in Europe. For two years, with the support of Pitt, Dundas persuaded Grenville to delay, because of the service performed by Baldwin in forwarding information to India. Owing to his efficiency at the outbreak of the war, Cornwallis had been able to take the French at Pondicherry by surprise.59 In 1794 Grenville was adamant. If the East India Company valued Baldwin, they must pay him.60 The company did not value Baldwin. As they knew Dundas Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 had sent him to Egypt in the hope of destroying them, they would hardly welcome a request to pay his salary. Baldwin's recall took two years to reach him, and he remained in Egypt for two more. He left in the spring of 1798,61 exactly when Dundas became anxious for him to stay. The prospect in 1798 of a French invasion of Egypt revived all of Dundas's previous fears. One important difference, however, should be noted. Dundas's interest in Egypt had become negative, defending British India by intercepting 34 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

the French; his earlier positive interest in the overland trade had been lost. In 1794, Baldwin had at last succeeded in negotiating a treaty with the beys, by which the Red Sea was to be opened to British traders on the same terms as to the French. To prevent the Turks from again interfering, Baldwin recommended that instead of asking them to ratify the treaty, they should be informed that, according to the British, previous Anglo-Turkish treaties gave the British access to all Turkish ports.62 Unfortunately for Baldwin, Dundas was by this time paying no more attention to him than Grenville had. Dundas had abandoned his plan of promoting the overland trade as a method of destroying the East India Company's monopoly. Instead, during the war of the Second Coalition he devised an alternative, whereby the company's employees would remit their capital to England in India-built ship• ping. When the company resisted this plan, he first tried to persuade the governor-general to support it, then abandoned it.63 After the Declaratory Act, Dundas had also abandoned his attempt to destroy the East India Company, trying as an alternative to manage it. In 1793 he renewed its charter for twenty years, and was content to remain the first president of the board of control, not secretary of state. As Baldwin's appointment had accompanied the beginning of Dundas's clash with the East India Company, his recall now accompanied its end. There was news of increasing French activity in the Middle East throughout the war of the First Coalition. Grenville's cousin, Spencer Smith, the British minister at Constantinople, reported a French attempt to increase their influence at Muscat. The imam was bound to respond, as the British understood, because, if he offended the French, their privateers based at Mauritius would cut off the profitable slave trade to Zanzibar from which he derived most of his income.64 Baldwin recorded a similar French interest in Egypt;65 and from Switzerland the British minister explained the enemy's inten•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 tions. The French were still seeking a fast and reliable route to India, free from interception by the British, as the best method of meddling in Indian politics and undermining the British position without effort or expense.66 The Directory was following the advice offered in 1785 by the French envoy to Muscat and was making another attempt to estab• lish French influence around the Persian Gulf. Two advantages were expected. A landing in Egypt might be followed by a march overland 35 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

to India, screened by Persian irregular cavalry. Alternatively, if the sultan should try to oppose a French attempt, ostensibly on his behalf, to destroy the beys, the Persians could prevent him from reinforcing the beys by an attack on Baghdad. This French offensive deserved a better fate than most British schemes for the defence of India, because the French were willing to sanction the annexation of Baghdad by Persia, which the British were bound to refuse.67 Un• fortunately for the French, however, their initiative was again badly timed, and as their envoys had been obliged to travel in disguise, they were further handicapped by having no presents to give. In 1796, Persia was too heavily committed against Russia. Aga Mahomet Kajar had been compelled to evacuate Khorasan to defend Azer• baijan and Mazenderan from an invasion which threatened the existence of Turkey and Persia and was only called off because of the death of Catherine II.68 Grenville was confident that the British need not pay any attention to such developments. Whenever the French tried to divert the British from forcing a decision in Europe, the temptation must be resisted. Grenville and Windham had the same objection to fighting the French in the Middle East as in the West Indies: 'If you extend your operations,' Windham warned Pitt, 'they will, for that reason, concentrate theirs.'69 In 1798, Grenville refused to believe that the French would invade Egypt, where they could have no effect on the decisive battles to be fought in Italy and on the Rhine and which would be as foolish as the British expeditions to Santo Domingo. When the French did invade, they were bound to suffer the same fate: death from disease. A French army in Egypt, said Grenville, 'certainly does us less harm than it would anywhere else.'70 Considerable misunderstanding about the British reaction to the French expedition to Egypt was caused by Holland Rose.71 During the First Coalition, Dundas paid little more attention than Grenville to Egypt. The board of control believed that French agents in India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 were ineffective.72 French soldiers in the armies of the native states were assumed to have the same aim as British soldiers, to return to Europe with a large fortune in a short time; the imam of Oman was assumed to be as sensitive to British as to French pressure, and for the same reason; and, as long as the beys continued to fight over Egypt, the French had no hope of reviving the overland trade. Great Britian's only interest in Egypt was the prevention of a French invasion.

36 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

In 1796, after Spain had joined France against the first coalition, the admiralty decided to pull the British fleet out of the Mediterra• nean. So strongly was Dundas opposed to this decision that, to persuade the admiralty to change its mind, he offered to postpone two of his beloved expeditions to the colonies, to provide the troops and ships necessary for an expedition to capture a Mediterranean base. In an argument chosen for its appeal to Grenville, Dundas claimed that a British fleet was needed in the Mediterranean, if the British were to be able to intervene in southern Europe.73 Dundas meant that a fleet was needed in the Mediterranean to defend British India. His purpose was exposed by his friend, Sir Mark Wood, who proposed to overcome the difficulties of supplying and maintaining a fleet in the Mediterranean by the seizure of Malta.74 Malta might have been a barrier against a French invasion of Egypt; it was not a suitable base from which to blockade the French fleet at Toulon.75 The anxiety of Dundas to forestall the French in the eastern Mediterranean revealed his changing conception of Great Britain's interests in the Middle East. The group demanding the most vigorous action were the British sailors in the area. In 1795 Sir Sidney Smith, the brother of the minister at Constantinople, had been seconded to the Turkish navy to command a squadron of privateers. He warned Grenville that, if ever the French should occupy Egypt, they would be able to divert the eastern trade from the route round the Cape of Good Hope to the overland route via the Red Sea. Three years later Rear-Admiral John Blankett, who was about to be sent to patrol the Red Sea, gave a similar warning to Dundas.76 Perhaps the most dire predictions were to have been expected from the navy, whose alarm may have been self-serving. While Blankett was in the Indian Ocean he captured only two prizes. He would have been made richer had he been permitted to disrupt Arab trade with Egypt by a blockade of Mocha and Jedda. Blankett's arguments echoed Baldwin's, with one striking difference: Baldwin had stressed the value of the overland

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 trade to the British not to the French. Admiral Blankett arrived in the Red Sea in the spring of 1799. He had been sent from England the previous summer, to blockade Bonaparte in Egypt and prevent the French from sending troops or envoys to Mysore, but had been seriously delayed on his journey. Shortly after his arrival he reassessed Great Britain's priorities. Owing to the probability that the French would revive the overland trade, the danger from their occupation of Egypt was 'far more 37 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

formidable to our interests than the visionary attempt of passing to India.'77 According to Blankett, Great Britain's commercial supremacy in the East might as a result be endangered. At the correct season light goods, tea, coffee, spices, and muslin, still the most popular and profitable imports to Europe, could be shipped from Surat to Marseilles in ten weeks. Instead of trying to develop the economy of Egypt, Great Britain now had to make sure that it did 'not remain in an active state or in active hands.'78 The method Blankett proposed of attacking the French in Egypt was to cut off trade between Egypt and Arabia, where the French tried to obtain the goods they were unable to obtain from France. Blankett expected that, as soon as the Arabs had witnessed a demonstration of British sea power, they would agree to give up trading to Egypt out of fear of the effects of a British blockade. 'The governments of the country are fickle and without system,' reported Blankett, 'their commerce temporary, and their agriculture precarious.'79 Blankett first wrote to the British agents at Constantinople, Bagh• dad, and Basra, in an attempt to persuade the Porte to forbid the trade. At the end of August 1799, however, he decided not to wait for a response and to make an attempt to overawe the sherif of Mecca. Although Blankett expected, on his arrival with his squadron at Jedda in September, to 'be listened to with every attention,'80 the negotiations were inconclusive. The sherif agreed to forbid his sub• jects to trade with the French by way of Suez, provided Blankett would help him to drive the French from Kosseir, reopening the trade routes to Upper Egypt. Blankett refused. It would suit the British better, and would be simpler, to bombard Kosseir whenever neces• sary. Blankett was as interested in destroying all trade in the Red Sea as in preventing the Arabs from trading with the French.81 Confident that his show of force, if not his arguments, had impressed the sherif, Blankett broke off the negotiations, setting sail Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 for India to spend the winter refitting at Bombay. He could not afford to delay his departure, or he would have been imprisoned in the Red Sea by the monsoon, and a decision to blockade Jedda and Mocha would anyway have to be taken by the government of India. Blankett's argument in support of a blockade was simple. The Arabs used the profits from the sale of coffee to the French and from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca to buy corn in Egypt. Tf we stop up the trade in corn,' said Blankett, 'we starve the Arabs.'82 38 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

When Blankett returned to the Red Sea in the spring of 1800, he produced a second argument in support of the suppression of trade there. The sherif's connection with the French, essential for the political stability of the Hejaz, was to be treated as a sign of rebellion. The sherif,' said Blankett,.. means an obstinate independence of the Porte.'83 This was an exaggeration. As soon as the Turks lost control over Egypt, a connection with the French was indispensable to the sherif. His dilemma was made more serious by the rise in Arabia of the Wahabi. Early in 1798 the sherif had appealed to Constantinople for support. As he obtained none, his troops were forced to retreat to Mecca before a Wahabi advance as far to the south-east as Taif. In 1799 a truce was negotiated, and in May 1800 the Wahabi leaders joined the pilgrimage at Mecca.84 The sherif knew that the truce would not last. He was not seeking his indepen• dence: cut off by the French and the Wahabi he had been forced to fend for himself. This suited him no more than it suited the British. The sherif had been as adamant as the East India Company in denouncing Warren Hastings's treaty. The sultan, the sherif, and the British were all equally well served by mild disorder in Egypt and by the suppression of overland trade.

IV Dundas paid no more attention to Blankett's demands for the sup• pression of trade in the Red Sea than he had paid during the First Coalition to Baldwin's suggestions for promoting it. The original attraction of British trade overland had been its challenge to the East India Company's monopoly, likely to supplement not to divert British trade to the East. Dundas had been willing to encourage French trade to India around the Cape of Good Hope, and he remained willing to encourage Portuguese trade. One condition was attached: the Portuguese were to hand over their territory in India to

85 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the British. Like Benthamite liberal offers of equal opportunity, some opportunities were to be more equal than others. The best method Dundas knew of expanding trade to the East, and of making it more profitable, was by paying for the goods bought in India from surplus Indian revenues. Without a territorial base, trading on a large scale was impossible: until industrialization provided a suit• able export in cotton goods, the trade would draw too heavily upon metropolitan funds, and an export trade, however suitable the

39 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

goods, depended upon political power locally and the suppression of native manufactures.86 Dundas treated trade as a political weapon, because he was primarily interested in tribute. The British, he observed, 'ought rather to value the importance of that Empire (in a commercial view) from the great annual additions which its remittances make to the capital of this country than on account of any additional wealth to be derived from its consumption of our produce and manufactures.'87 When Dundas renewed the East India Company's Charter in 1793, he promised parliament an annual tribute of at least £500,000.88 In the Middle East, as in India, trade had been valued by Dundas principally as a convenient and profitable way of remitting the tribute of India to London. The Levant Company rather than the East India Company might have benefited commercially from anticipating the French in the eastern Mediterranean, because the outbreak of war had provided an opportunity to challenge their traditional superiority in the Levant. The French trade was soon ruined. So, however, was British trade. The Levant Company suffered from a lack of naval protection, particularly at Smyrna, their one large factory; also because perish• able goods often spoiled at Gibraltar while awaiting a convoy.89 In 1795 Sir Sidney Smith observed that the Levant trade was 'at its last efforts.'90 The company could withstand neither the rigours of war nor French competition. In 1798, during the negotiations for the Anglo-Turkish alliance, it sought access for its merchants to the Black Sea.91 Although the Turks were as dilatory as always in giving an answer, knowing, if the British were to be allies, that they could not refuse outright, there were signs that they might finally agree.92 In the interval the Levant Company had changed its mind. During the peace of Amiens, when the British expected their influence at Constantinople to decline, the Russians, as a concession to Bona• parte, urged the Turks to end all restrictions on trade in the Black

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Sea. Upon learning of this the British insisted that they must share any privileges given to others, although they also offered to give up their own privileges in order to deny the French theirs.93 The com• parison was pointed. In the Black Sea the British feared competition from France: in the Red Sea, momentarily, Dundas had welcomed it. The British had returned to, and reaffirmed, their policy of dis• couraging all interest in the Middle East, if necessary their own, and, if unavoidable, their trade. Cotton goods would eventually alter

40 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

British methods, but not the British goal: to discourage all change in the Middle East. Unlike the Levant Company's trade, British trade from India to the Middle East suffered neither during the war of the First Coalition, nor from the French invasion of Egypt. The East India Company itself made little profit from the trade. Its few goods, mostly wool• lens, were unpopular. Turks and Arabs preferred French woollens; Persians could buy British woollens more cheaply from the Russians. An attempt by the company to revive the sale of woollens in Persia was a failure.94 Eighteenth-century experiments at expanding the eastern trade overland through Russia rather than by sea around the Cape of Good Hope were not, therefore, as whimsical as they may appear. Owing to the restrictive system of ship-building practised by the East India Company,95 freight charges around the Cape of Good Hope had not fallen, as they should have done, given the technical improvements in ship-building.96 Although the East India Company no longer traded profitably to the Middle East, its employees at Bombay, who controlled the private trade and much of the country trade from India, made handsome profits. Until 1804 Bombay was exempt from the prohibi• tion against private trading gradually imposed after 1768 at Madras and Calcutta. As a result the private traders had become the most powerful voice in the government, and British expansion in western India was tailored to their needs. The private trade was as useful to the government of Bombay as it had been to Warren Hastings and for the same reason. As Arabs and Persians exported little and paid for their imports in cash, the traders were a useful source of credit.97 Bombay, which lacked an adequate revenue from land, had other• wise to apply for subsidies to Bengal. When Admiral Blankett recommended a blockade of Jedda, and Bombay opposed the measure because it could think of no alternative market in the Middle East, Blankett understood why it had refused. 'Whole Jobs,'

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 he said, 'would have been materially injured by any check given to the trade of the Red Sea.'98 The governor-general of India, the Marquis Wellesley, was equal• ly opposed to a blockade of Jedda. His reasons were political, not commercial, nor financial as Warren Hastings's had been. A block• ade of Jedda would interrupt the annual pilgrimage to Mecca from Surat, and might irritate Great Britain's Muslim subjects in India. As soon as the British in India began to see themselves as a territorial 41 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

rather than as a mercantile power, their fear of Muslim fanaticism turned into a recurring nightmare. Wellesley never feared the French army in Egypt and would take no risks in India to drive it out. Correctly assuming that Dundas would not permit it to remain, he was anxious that the campaign against it should be waged as part of the European, not as an Indian, war." When Dundas failed to prevent the French from invading Egypt, he was, as Wellesley had assumed, determined to evict them. By the end of the eighteenth century the challenge to the British in India from France was not commercial but political. The French could not rival Great Britain's trade to the East, because they could not rival her territory: they might destroy one by attacks on the other. While one of George Baldwin's two British interests in Egypt declined, the second therefore increased: the British needed to bar Egypt to the French, as the easiest method of defending British India. This assumption explains Dundas's choice amongst the routes to the East. He expected the French to invade Syria, not Egypt, because, in his opinion, from Syria they could more easily invade India.100 The monsoons in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf would hamper an invasion as they hampered trade and overland communication, and, if the French did not sail immediately, the British could close the straits of Bab el-Mandab. Unfortunately for Dundas, he knew that to endanger British India the French would not have to invade: a feint would be as threatening, and Egypt as suitable as Syria for a base. The French in Egypt would have finally acquired their reliable route to the East. The danger from threats of invasion was the danger of rebellion and bankruptcy. A feint might provoke the Indian states to attack the British and their subjects in India to rebel; the British might have to put down a rebellion at the same time as fighting a war. They would win, even Dundas at his most alarmist expected to win, but victory might prove ruinously costly. Dundas had promised the British a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 tribute from India: he did not expect from them a subsidy. Nor did they offer one. The East India Company spent six months in 1798 trying unsuccessfully to persuade Pitt to reimburse the £750,000 they had shipped to India to pay for mobilizing the army against a possible French invasion.101 Instead Pitt offered all the money he could raise to help Grenville in his search for a grand alliance.102 Dundas had feared that this would happen, which explains why he repeated in the spring of 1798 the traditional arguments about the 42 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

danger to Great Britain from a revival of the overland trade;103 arguments he had himself previously ignored. They were an aspect of the traditional hostility to France, and Dundas hoped they would provoke the traditional response. For most of the eighteenth century, Great Britain's political interests in the Middle East had taken second place to her trade; even the danger from foreigners had been commercial, symbolized by the spectre of the overland trade. After 1798 Great Britain's priorities were reversed: political interests formally took precedence. The outcome was ironical. Although British trade with the Middle East had been declining, the British soon began to ask whether the cheap• est and least controversial method of defending British India would be its revival. Wellesley in 1810 wished to stabilize Persia, the earl of Aberdeen in 1829 to stabilize eastern Anatolia, and Ellenborough at the same time to stabilize Turkestan, by means of trade but not for the profits. Bonaparte persuaded the British to stop flirting with Adam Smith. They talked of the free play of forces, but, as the Germans later complained,104 in the Middle East they meant to be the only force. By means of trade the Middle East might be turned into a British sphere of influence. Should the trade prove profitable, so much the better.

NOTES

1. Palmerston to Clarendon, private, 1 March 1857, E. Ashley, The Life of Viscount Palmerston (London, 1879), ii. 125. 2. Ggic to secretary of state, 3 April 1871, IO L/PS/5/27. 3. Palmerston to Russell, 8 Dec. 1861, Ashley, Palmerston, ii. 325. 4. For a description, see C.N. Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1793—1813 (London, 1937; Frank Cass, 1966), pp.98-120. 5. A Bissell, A Voyage from England to the Red Sea and along the East Coast of Arabia to Bombay (London, 1806), p. 67. 6. See Hakluyt Society: The Red Sea at the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Sir W. Foster (London, 1949); and F. Charles-Roux, V Angleterre, ITsthme de Suez et VEgypte au XVIII siecle (Paris, 1922). 7. For a time this was the case at Basra. See A. Amin, British Interests in the Persian Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Gulf (Leiden, 1967), pp.53-7. 8. J. Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1773 (Edinburgh, 1790), ii. 188. 9. A.C. Wood, History of the Levant Company (London, 1935; Frank Cass, 1964), pp. 136-64. 10. See P.M. Holt, 'The "Cloud Catcher": Ali Bey the Great of Egypt,' History Today, ix (1959), 48-58; and, for a contemporary account, S. Lusignan, A History of the Revolt of Aly Bey against the Ottoman Porte (London, 1783). 11. Bruce, Travels, i. 105. 43 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

12. Hastings to Ali Bey, 31 Dec. 1773, Imperial Record Department: Calendar of Persian Correspondence (Calcutta, 1925), iv. 121; 'Proposals for a Trade to Suez,' 1773, Add. MSS 29210, fo. 426. 13. P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976), pp. 155-7; H. Furber, John Company at Work (Cam• bridge MA, 1948), pp. 81-2; O. Feldback, Indian Trade under the Danish Flag, 1772-1808 (Copenhagen, 1969), p. 56. 14. Baldwin to Ainslie, 20 June 1778, SP 105/54. 15. Amin, Persian Gulf, pp. 68-107; H. Furber, 'The Overland Route to India in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,' Journal of Indian History, xxix (1951), 122-3. 16. For the terms, see Receuil des Traites de la Porte Ottomane, avec les Puissances étrangéres depuis le premier traité conclu en 1536 ... jusqu'a nos jours, ed. Baron I. de Testa (Paris, 1864), i. 482. 17. M.S. Anderson, 'Great Britain and the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74,' English Historical Review, lix (1954), 39-58. 18. Hayes to Weymouth, 3 Jan., 3 June 1776, SP 105/52; Ainslie to Weymouth, 18 Nov., 3 and 17 Dec. 1777, SP 105/53. 19. 'Report for the Year 1776,' IO G/17/5; Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia (1792), i. 236-7. 20. M. Abir, 'The "Arab Rebellion" of Amir Ghalib of Mecca (1788-1813),' Middle Eastern Studies, vii (1971), 185-7. 21. G. Baldwin, Political Recollections Relative to Egypt (London, 1801), p. 7. The Levant Company refused to appoint Baldwin their agent. Company to Baldwin, 2 Sept. 1777, SP 105/120. 22. For details, see H.L. Hoskins, British Routes to India (London, 1928; Frank Cass, 1966), pp. 10-11, 14-18; and P.J. Marshall, 'The Bengal Commercial Society of 1775,' Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xlii (1969), 173-87. 23. Ainslie to Weymouth, 18 June, 17 Sept. 1779, SP 105/55. For the earlier history of the 'direct' route, as the route through Baghdad was called, see Furber, 'Overland Route,' pp. 105-26. 24. Cd to ggic, 4 July 1777, IO E/4/623, p. 745; Weymouth to Ainslie, 11 July 1777, SP 97/53. 25. For the terms, see Testa, Traites, ii. 78. 26. L. Pingaud, Choiseul-Gouffier: La France en Orient sous Louis XVI (Paris, 1887), pp. 113-25. 'The greatest efforts have been made of late,' remarked Ainslie, 'by more than one of the Continental powers to establish an influence at this Court, to the Detriment of our Establishments in India. The grand scheme is to force a Trade to and from Europe and India by the Red Sea and failing that, by Basra.' Ainslie to La Touche, 7 April 1782, IO G/29/17. 27. Dundas to Sydney, [2] Nov. 1784, PRO 30/11/112, fo. 60.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 28. Instructions to Dorset, 9 Jan. 1784, Royal Historical Society: British Diplo• matic Instructions, 1689-1789, ed. L.G.W. Legg (London, 1934), vii. 306. 29. Hailes to Carmarthen, 28 April 1784, Dorset to Carmarthen, 22 July 1784, Royal Historical Society: Despatches from Paris, 1784—1790, ed. O. Browning (London, 1909-10), i. 5, 16. 30. E. Barbe, Le nabab Rene Madec: Histoire diplomatique des Projets de la France sur le Bengale et le Pendjeb, 1772-1808 (Paris, 1894), pp. 138-40, 171-7. 31. For an account of his embassy, see Count L.F. de Ferrires Sauveboeuf, Memoires historiques, politiques, et geographiques de voyages ...en Turquie, en Perse, et en Arabie, depuis 1782 jusqu'en 1789 (Paris, 1794). 32. Dundas to Lushington, 3 March 1796, IO G/29/21. See also G.R.G. Hambly,

44 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

'Aqa Mohammad Khan and the Establishment of the Kajar Dynasty,' Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, i (1963), 161-74. 33. A. Auzoux, 'La France et Muscate,' Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique, xxiii (1909), 529-36. 34. D. Kimche, 'The Opening of the Red Sea to European Ships in the Late Eighteenth Century,' Middle Eastern Studies, vii (1972), 65. 35. 'Heads of a Conversation between Mr Dundas and Mr Baldwin in February 1784, ' PRO 30/8/360, fo. 288. Baldwin, Recollections, p.24, gives the date as 1785, and was undoubtedly correct. 36. Baldwin to Dundas, 26 April 1785, PRO 30/8/361, fo. 12. 37. Or so the British assumed. Rainier to Nepean, 11 May 1799, Rainier MSS 7. 38. 'Paper prepared by Lord Mulgrave for the Use of Mr Dundas,' [April 1785], PRO 30/8/360, fo. 338. Despatches sent by the third route, by sea around the Cape of Good Hope, even in the best season took at least four months, usually five to six. Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p.111. 39. 'Mr Baldwin's Thoughts upon the Subject of Egypt,' 3 May 1785, PRO 30/8/ 360, fo. 14. 40. Dorset to Carmarthen, 30 June 1785, Despatches from Paris, i. 61; Hailes to Fraser, 26 Jan. 1786, ibid., p. 97. 41. M. S. Anderson, 'The Great Powers and the Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1783-4,' Slavonic and East European Review, xxxvii (1958-9), 17-41. 42. Carmarthen to Ainslie, 19 May 1785, FO 78/6. 43. Ainslie to Carmarthen, 11 and 27 March 1786, FO 78/7. 44. Sc to ggic, 21 July, 21 Sept. 1786, IO L/PS/5/537. 45. 'Draft of instructions for Mr Baldwin,' May 1786, IO G/17/5. 46. Dundas to Wellesley, 4 Sept. 1800, Dundas, p. 286. 47. Dundas to Grenville, 27 Sept. 1786, Dropmore, i. 268; Carmarthen to Eden, 24 Feb. 1787, Add. MSS 34467, fo. 20. 48. 'Memorandum of a Conversation between Dundas and the Secret Committee,' 15 July 1785, IO H/369.A, p. 5; cd to ggic, 16 July 1785, IO Draft Despatches to Bengal/4, p. 84. 49. Baldwin to Carmarthen, 11 April 1787, FO 24/1; Ainslie to Carmarthen, 2 and 25 June, 10 July 1787, FO 78/8. 50. Baldwin to Carmarthen, 2 April 1788, FO 24/1. 51. Ainslie to Carmarthen, 11 and 27 March 1786, FO 78/7. 52. S. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Selim III, 1789- 1807 (Cambridge, 1971), pp.217-18. 53. 'Report ... Relative to the Trade with Turkey,' 9 Oct. 1790, FO 78/11; Fawkener to Leeds, 19 Oct. 1790, Add. MSS 38394, fo. 80. 54. Grenville to Dundas, 1 April 1792, Dropmore, ii. 263. 55. A. Cunningham, 'The Oczakov Debate,' Middle Eastern Studies, i (1964-5), 209-37; M.S. Anderson, Britain's Discovery of Russia, 1553-1815 (London, 1958), pp. 143-85. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 56. J.M. Sherwig. 'Lord Grenville's Plan for a Concert of Europe, 1797-1799,' Journal of Modern History, xxxiv (1962), 284-93. 57. Malmesbury's diary, 24 Sept. 1797, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmeshury, ed. earl of Malmesbury (London, 1884), iii. 590. 58. E.D. Adams, The Influence of Grenville on Pitt's Foreign Policy, 1787-1798 (Wash. DC, 1904), pp. 55-70; E. Ingram, 'A Preview of the Great Game in Asia - Ill: The Origins of the British Expedition to Egypt in 1801,' Middle Eastern Studies, ix (1973), 296-314. 59. Dundas to Pitt, 16 Nov. [1793 ?], PRO 30/8/157, fo. 325; Grenville to Dundas, 45 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

25 Jan. 1793, Dropmore, ii. 373; ggic to cd, 1 Aug. 1793, The Correspondence of Charles, First Marquess Cornwallis, ed. C. Ross (London, 1859), ii. 225. 60. Dundas to Grenville, 17 Aug. 1794, Dropmore, ii. 621. 61. Baldwin to Pitt, 29 March 1796, PRO 30/8/111, fo. 79; Baldwin to Dundas, 25 April 1798, WO 1/344, p. 75. 62. Willis to Grenville, 20 May 1794, FO 24/1; Baldwin to Grenville, 10 Oct. 1794, ibid. 63. Dundas to Wellesley, private no. 7,18 March 1799, Dundas, p. 130; Dundas to Wellesley, private no. 13, 14 June 1799, ibid., p. 164; Wellesley to Dundas, private, 29 Jan. 1800, ibid., p. 224. 64. J.S. Smith to Grenville, 25 April, 20 July, 25 Sept. 1797, FO 78/8; Malcolm to Wellesley, 1 Feb. 1800, IO G/29/22, p. 13; ggic at Bombay, 23 April 1807, IO F/4/257, no. 5650. 65. Baldwin, Political Recollections, p. 30. See also D. Froment, Du Commerce des Europeens avec les lndes, par la Mer Rouge, et par I'Egypte (Paris, 1799). 66. Wickham to Baldwin, 22 Jan. 1796, Wickham to Grenville, 27 Nov. 1796, The Correspondence of the Right Honourable William Wickham from the Year 1794, ed. W. Wickham (London, 1870), i. 252, 482. 67. Manesty to sc, 10 June 1796,23 Oct. 1797, IO G/29/23.B. See also the account of his embassy by the French envoy. G.A. Olivier, Voyage dans Vempire Ottomane, I'Egypte, et la Perse (Paris, 1801-7). 68. For the policy of Russia, see statements by the tsarina and Rostopchine in S1RIO, xxiii. 254, 267-69, and Rostopchine to Voronzovff, 22 Feb. 1796, Arkhiv Kniazia Vorontsova, ed. P. I. Bartenev (Moscow, 1870-95), viii. For the campaign in Persia see the letters from the Russian ambassador at Constanti• nople in Vorontsova, xiv. 34, and xivii. 47, and C.F.P. Masson, Memoires secrets sur la Russie (third edition: Amsterdam, 1802), iii. ch. 1. 69. Windham to Pitt, n.d., Navy Records Society: Private Papers of George, Second Earl Spencer (London, 1913-24), i. XIX. 70. Grenville to Dundas, 2 June 1800, PRO 30/8/140, fo. 157. 71. J. Holland Rose, 'The Political Reactions of Bonaparte's Eastern Expedition,' English Historical Review, xliv (1929), 48-58; which misled A.B. Rodger, The War of the Second Coalition (Oxford, 1964), pp.39-40, 128. Both men exaggerated the effect of the invasion upon the strategy of the British govern• ment and the government of India. Wellesley's initiatives in Persia, for example, were not designed to counter the danger of overland invasion. 72. Douglas to Wellesley, private, 1 Jan. 1798, Add. MSS 37308, fo. 66. 73. Dundas to Huskisson, 3 Nov. 1796, Add. MSS 38734, fo. 221; Dundas to Spencer, private, 28 Oct. 1796, Spencer, i. 323. 74. Wood to Pitt and Dundas, 4 Nov. 1796, Spencer, ii. 437; Wood to Dundas, 16 Aug. 1798, SRO GD 51/1/768/39. 75. Nelson to Addington, 27 Sept. 1803, Add. MSS 34953, fo. 157; Nelson to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Hobart, 22 Dec. 1803, Add. MSS 34954, fo. 158. 76. W. S. Smith to Grenville, private and secret, 13 Jan. 1795, Dropmore, iv. 4; encl. in Dundas to Grenville, 13 June 1798, Add. 37274, fo. 57. 77. Blankett to Duncan, 17 Aug. 1799, IO Bombay/SPP/381/6, p. 4898. 78. Blankett to Windham, 22 June 1799, Add. MSS 37878, fo. 131. 79. Blankett to Spencer, 24 June 1799, Spencer, iv. 195. 80. Blankett to Nepean, 18 Dec. 1799, Adm. 1/169, fo. 796. 81. Ends. nos. 2-3 in Blankett to Nepean, 18 Dec. 1799, Adm. 1/169, fos. 799, 800. 82. Blankett to Windham, 21 Jan. 1800, Add. MSS 37879, fo. 17. 83. Blankett to Spencer, 30 June, 12 July 1800, Spencer, iv. 221, 222; Blankett to admiralty, 30 June 1800, Adm. 1/170, fo. 190.

46 THE END OF THE SPECTRE OF THE OVERLAND TRADE

84. J.L. Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia (London, 1829; Frank Cass, 1968), p.326. See also L. A. O. de Corancez, Histoires des Wahabis ... jusqua la fin de 1809, ed. Baron S. de Sacy (Paris, 1810). 85. Dundas to Wellesley, private, with end. no. 3,28 Oct. 1799, Add. MSS 37274, fos. 280, 293. 86. See P. Nightingale, Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784—1806 (Cam• bridge, 1970), pp.236-44. 87. Memorandum by Dundas for the Cabinet, 31 March 1800, Duke University Library, Melville MSS. 88. Parliamentary History of England, ed. W. Cobbett (London, 1820), xxx. 509. 89. SP 105/337, pp.250-3; SP 105/122, pp.32-51. In 1795 the French captured thirty vessels bound for the Mediterranean. 90. W.S. Smith to Grenville, private and secret, 13 Jan. 1795, Dropmore, iv. 4. 91. Bosanquetto Grenville, 3 Nov., Grenville to J. S. Smith, 9 Nov. 1798, FO 78/20. The Levant Company did not pursue the question vigorously, because the directors either did not trade at all or were satisfied with existing outlets. Liddell to Hammond, 5 Feb. 1799, FO 78/21. 92. J.S. Smith to Grenville, 30 Oct. 1799, FO 78/22. Smith had obtained two notes from the Turks permitting the British the privileges of most favoured nation in the Black Sea. 93. Elgin to Hawkesbury, 25 Feb. 1802, FO 78/35; Hawkesbury to Elgin, 10 May 1802, FO 78/36; Straton to Hawkesbury, 25 May 1802, FO 78/37; Hawkes• bury to Straton, 3 Sept. 1802, FO 78/37. 94. Memorandum by Bruce, 1 April 1809, IO G/29/30; Lovett to Manesty, 30 Dec. 1803, IO G/29/24.A. For details, see E. Ingram, 'From Trade to Empire in the Near East — II: The Repercussions of the Incident at Nakhilu in 1804,' Middle Eastern Studies, xiv (1978), 182-204. 95. This was the system of 'hereditary bottoms.' Each builder who had previously built for the EIC had the right to replace each of his ships after four voyages. In 1790 the number of voyages was raised to six. 96. R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1962), p.265. 97. Blankett to Rainier, 10 Sept. 1800, Adm. 1/170, fo. 445. 98. Duncan to Wellesley, 1 Jan. 1800, IO Bombay/SPP/381/9, p.46; Blankett to Windham, 21 Jan. 1800, Add. MSS 37879, fo. 17. 99. E. Ingram, 'A Preview of the Great Game in Asia -1: The British Occupation of Perim and Aden in 1799,' Middle Eastern Studies, ix (1973), 12-14. 100. E. Ingram, 'The Defence of British India — I: The Invasion Scare of 1798,' Journal of Indian History, xlviii (1970), 571-3. 101. Minutes of sc, 28 Aug., 10 Sept., 10 Dec. 1798, IO L/PS/1/9. 102. See J.M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France 1793-1815 (Cambridge MA, 1969), pp.97-115. 103. Dundas to Spencer, April 1798, Spencer, ii. 317; Dundas to Grenville, 13 June Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 1798, Add. MSS 13459, fo. 1. 104. E. zu Reventlow, Deutschlands Auswartige Politik (third edition: Berlin, 1916), p.93.

IDBI-C 47 IV

THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

While the East India Company are permitted to hold the revenue of India, they must furnish money for the payment of military expenses upon the spot; but beyond that I cannot see any good reason why the British Empire in India is to be protected by any other troops than those employed for the protection of the rest of the Empire. Henry Dundas1

To evangelicals and utilitarians early in the nineteenth century, anglicizing India was to atone for the sin of its conquest. Given an opportunity, Indians would be delighted to adopt English attitudes and customs, Christianity in particular, which would consolidate British rule by introducing Indians to 'loyalty, submission, obedi• ence, quietness, peace, patience and cheerfulness.'2 The panacea for all social ills, Christianity would reduce the danger of rebellion. In the late eighteenth century Englishmen had not been so ashamed of their conquest, nor so confident that, even if they wished, they might atone for it. The possibility of conciliating Indians appeared doubt• ful, the danger of rebellion permanent. The danger was increased

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 after 1798 by the equally permanent fear of European invasion. There was no alternative to ruling India by force: the question to be answered was how to do so efficiently and just as cheaply. The question provoked an argument in India and in London about the proper role of the Indian Army. The East India Company was theoretically a trading company whose principal export was in fact men. These young men, un• educated and untrained, had one outstanding merit: they did not run

48 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

away in battle. The British conquered much of India, partly because they could rely upon the Indian princes to quarrel with one another, partly because they could rely upon their troops to run away. The British had no doubt about the value of European discipline and leadership. While Bonaparte was in Egypt, the British were certain that no Turkish army could bar his way to India.3 They were equally certain that, if reinforced by one or two Englishmen, the Turks would be transformed into an efficient fighting force.4 For the same reason the British were anxious to prevent individual Frenchmen from travelling overland to India.5 Even if Sindhia, who employed them, should not choose at first to fight the British, he would be able to overpower the other Indian states. Although the governor- general, the Marquis Wellesley, claimed in 1798 that these French• men were Jacobins,6 their opinions were less of a threat than their presence. The security of British India depended upon its singular military system. If the Indian states, who relied heavily on irregular cavalry, should ever have put into the field an equal number of regular infantry, trained and led by Europeans, the British Indian Army would have lost its singularity. In the late-eighteenth century everyone agreed that the stability of British India depended upon its army: they disagreed about what could be expected of it and how it should be organized. The British did not have one army in India but two, the king's and the East India Company's; both of which were split into three. Part of each was stationed in each of the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, each with its own commander-in-chief. The largest army was always in Bengal, or rather in Oudh, to guard the North• west Frontier and to be paid by the nawab-vizier.7 One of the attractions of subsidiary alliances was to be found in the increasing numbers of troops maintained at the expense of British allies. The armies in Bengal and Madras were composed of three categories of troops: sepoy regiments commanded by Englishmen, regiments of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the East India Company's European infantry, and regiments of the British army serving temporarily in India.8 At least the officers served temporarily; few of their men survived the journey and the climate to return home to England. Rarely were any of the company's Euro• pean infantry stationed at Bombay, because their principal function was to police the predominantly Hindu (and, in the eyes of English• men, very finicky, owing to their high caste) troops in Bengal. In all three presidencies, the efficiency of the army ostensibly depended 49 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

upon the quality of the junior officers who commanded the troops of the East India Company. These officers might be junior; they were not young. Whenever the company enlarged its armies, it increased the number of junior officers because they cost less. Promotion was slow. The difference in age was one cause of the persistent tension between the officers of the company's army and those of the king's, because whenever they served together, the king's officers, although often younger and junior in rank, always took precedence.9 The other causes of tension were social and administrative. The king's officers, who made their careers by patronage and purchase, considered themselves socially superior to the company's officers. They were, of course, but less so than if they had all been serving in England. Many of the most eligible bought themselves out of regiments being sent to India. Lord Cardigan did, for example.10 One of the obstacles in the way of all proposals to amalgamate the two armies was the social impossibility of permitting company's officers, who served only in India, to trans• fer into royal regiments for service in England, where they would mingle with noblemen and gentry buying themselves back into their regiments. A similar obstacle, from the opposite point of view, was the refusal of the company's officers to contemplate a system based upon patronage and purchase. One could not make a good living in the British army in the late eighteenth century: to make sure of a successful career one needed a private income.11 But to make their living was why the company's officers went out to India. This fact, more than anything else, determined their view of the role of the Indian Army. An officer in the Indian Army went to India to make his fortune. Typically, the younger son of an impoverished Scot would be spurred on by dreams of returning to Britain to set up in society. In this he resembled the Frenchman who took service with Sindhia;12 but the British service, offering hardly less spectacular rewards to a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 few, appeared to offer more certain rewards to everyone else. The appearance was deceptive. Very few men returned to emulate Jos Sedley, by parading their wealth in Vauxhall Gardens; enough did to encourage others to follow them.13 The hazards were considerable. The climate was vile, the natives beyond comprehension. The assumption that until the arrival of the evangelicals, with their zeal for reform, Englishmen and Indians had happily intermingled, how• ever attractive, is false.14 The East India Company provided neither 50 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

retirement pensions, sick leave, nor a return passage to England.15 Few of its officers lived to need one. Of the approximately 280 cadets sent to India each year between 1793 and 1808, one in four returned. In the ranks the death rate was just as high: 2,000 reinforcements were needed annually to keep the king's army in India up to strength.16 The Indian Army was organized by its officers, not to make it an efficient fighting force (because at the end of the eighteenth century, despite its deceptively easy victory in the Fourth Mysore War, it was not efficient), but to provide an equal chance for everybody to make his fortune. The three best ways to do this were booty, allowances, and money lending. What the Indian Army most enjoyed was the leisurely siege of an Indian fortress, because in a continent where the rich traditionally hoarded their wealth, the booty from a successful siege might be considerable. Cornwallis had been persuaded to con• cede to the army the right to everything captured in fortresses taken by assault. But when Seringapatam was stormed in 1799, and the booty from the treasure of Tipu Sultan was reported to be worth between eight and ten crores of rupees, Wellesley tried to resist.17

The army conceive [Wellesley told Dundas] that as the place was taken by storm, they are, of right, entitled to what was found in it. This is certainly an erroneous opinion, and if the principle has been established, and so large a sum ... had been seized by the army and distributed, it is impossible to calculate the mischievous effects which would have resulted to our military power in India. Having resisted in principle, Wellesley gave way in practice, as he always did when pressed to stand firm against the army, much to the annoyance of the president of the board of control, Henry Dundas, who had hoped to use the captured treasure to pay off the East India Company's debt and even, should there have been enough, to pay for Great Britain's contribution to the Second Coalition.18 Dundas never abandoned hope of surplus revenues from India. Ideally, victories in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 India were to pay for the British defeats in Europe. While booty occasionally brought spectacular rewards (General Harris, the commander-in-chief at Madras, retired to England after the fall of Seringapatam with £150,000),19 the generals always received most of it and the most of them were in the king's army. A more reliable source of wealth for the company's officers was their allowances. The three most important were batta, the bazaar fund, and revenue money. Batta was a cost of living allowance and was

51 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

usually highest in Bengal. The bazaar fund, the perquisite of com• manding officers on station or in the field, was a levy on the bazaars that supplied their units. Revenue was the military equivalent of the allowances paid to the commercial residents employed by govern• ment of Bombay out of the profits they made from selling the company's goods; a commission on the net revenues of each presidency shared among the field officers on the staff according to their rank.20 These three were official sources of wealth: unofficial, but equally lucrative sources, were contracting for the bullocks without which the Indian Army could not move, and lending money to Indian princes at exorbitant rates of interest. For example, most of the company's employees at Madras, both civil and military, were implicated in the scandal of the nawab of Arcot's debts. The importance of allowances and the jealousy with which they were guarded were clearly understood by Wellesley, who resisted the efforts of Dundas to reduce them.

I take the opportunity of requesting [Wellesley told Dundas before the war with Tipu Sultan], that you will take particular care not to permit any allowance, which I have found it necessary to make to any of the officers in this army, to be curtailed. A great effort was to be made, and it was essential to send the men of the first talents in the army into the field full of zeal and cordiality ... If you reduce their appointments, it will be impossible to carry on government here in great emergencies.21

At the end of the eighteenth century, going into battle was not conceived by the officers of the Indian Army to be part of their regular duties. The exceptional effort of fighting merited exceptional reward. The best guarantee that everybody would have an equal chance to make his fortune and return in moderate style to England was promotion by seniority.22 No newcomer from home was to overtake his elders because he had influential or wealthy friends. However, to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 this otherwise rigid system, two striking exceptions were made. There was no equivalent barrier to profiting from connections in India, and the opportunity for making such profits was increased, because by the end of the eighteenth century, the most coveted posts in the Indian Army were not on station but in the administration and the diplomatic service. The only exception was the few promotions to major-general, and they were less attractive than they would otherwise have been while Dundas, who would not openly admit it,

52 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

refused to make a company's officer commander-in-chief.23 The situation was most noticeable in the government of Madras. So inadequate were the company's civil servants at Madras, the juniors 'idle, dissipated, and extravagant,' and their seniors ignorant and stupid, as Wellesley called them, that the employment of soldiers throughout the department of revenue had almost become a principle.24 If appointments in the revenue departments appealed to junior officers, their seniors often hoped to be made a resident at one of the native states. A residency was the quickest route to the coveted baronetcy, the guarantee of social position in England and the highest honour, excepting the occasional Order of the Bath, to which an Indian Army officer might aspire.25 In 1801 Colonel William Palmer was considered to be disgraced because, after employment for ten years as the resident with Sindhia, followed by four more as the resident at Poona, he was recalled without a knighthood to command a station in the Upper Provinces. The habit of employing soldiers as diplomatists had begun early, with marked effects on Anglo-Indian diplomacy. By the time Sir John Shore left India in 1798, the residencies at Poona, Hyderabad and with Sindhia, were all staffed by soldiers. Wellesley continued the habit by sending soldiers to Mysore, Lucknow, Baroda, and Tehran. Despite repeated orders from the board of control that soldiers should not do civilian jobs, not until 1832 was the order obeyed, ironically at the insistence of the duke of Wellington.26 Even then the political agencies in the Middle East remained the perquisite of soldiers.27 These coveted positions were not obtained by seniority but by the notice of the governor-general, and they often carried with them promotion at least to acting higher rank. In 1798 the resident at Hyderabad, Major William Kirkpatrick, was convalescing at the Cape of Good Hope where he met Wellesley on his way out to India.28 Kirkpatrick returned a lieutenant-colonel and military secre•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 tary to the governor-general. Later on, he became his foreign secretary. The most notorious example, however, was the career of Sir John Malcolm. In 1800, when a captain, Malcolm was sent on a mission to Persia, as a reward for attracting the notice of Wellesley during the crisis leading up to the Fourth Mysore War.29 He rose within seven years to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and, when Lord Minto arrived in India in 1807, Malcolm had no hesitation in apply• ing for preferment through Minto's son, with whom he was 53 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

acquainted.30 The outcome was a second mission to Persia and the acting rank of brigadier-general. When Malcolm suggested that this should be a substantive promotion, and not merely a diplomatic ornament designed to give him equal precedence with the French ambassador to Persia, Brigadier-General Gardane, he apparently overreached himself. The commander-in-chief protested, in the terms one might expect, that Malcolm

may certainly possess military talents of a superior kind, but I cannot learn by any enquiry in this part of the country that they have been manifested; the opportunity only may have been wanting, for I have been informed that he has never been so situated as to command even a battaflion] in time of peace. There can consequently be no evidence of his competency to conduct an army, but the open manifestation of great superiority seems necessary to support a measure of supersession and to reconcile the minds of the super• seded.31

Malcolm, however, had his way. At Minto's insistence, he was given command of the army that Minto was planning to send to the Persian Gulf.32 The exceptions to the general rule of promotion by seniority reveal the extent to which, by the end of the century, the Indian Army saw itself less as a fighting force than as a military bureaucracy. It was in India neither to conquer nor to colonize (the English never colonized India), but to administer. Nevertheless its officers behaved as colonists. The East India Company, however badly it may have ruled, tried to rule everyone in the same way. It was as determined as Dundas, therefore, to prohibit settlement in India. Settlers, who would demand to be treated not as subjects but as Englishmen, would merely be copying the already unruly behaviour of officers of the Indian Army. A typical example was given by Captain Shuttle- worth, the assistant-surgeon at Seringapatam, who flogged an Indian in 1801 for refusing to supply hay for his horse without payment. At his court-martial the court decided not to find him

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 guilty of ungentlemanlike conduct, letting him off with a reprimand. An equally typical example was given by Lieutenant Dodd, who forcibly obtained money from Indians by torturing them, but whose only punishment was suspension of rank and pay for six months. When Arthur Wellesley protested against the light sentence, Dodd deserted to Bombay, presumably to join the Marathas.33 Working for the Marathas might be even more hazardous than service in the Indian Army, but plunder was a way of life to them. 54 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

According to Henry Dundas, as the employees of the East India Company gained so much from the empire, they had the greatest vested interest in preserving it. Dundas wanted the company's civil servants to volunteer for the militia, to prove their willingness 'to sacrifice their lives in defence of those interests upon which every• thing essential to them in life must depend.'34 Dundas might have said the same of the army; but for the defence of those interests the Indian Army was hardly adequate. It was not only, in the eyes of the king's officers, unorthodox: it was unwieldy. The symbol of the Indian Army was its baggage train.35 Its most splendid victories were perilous; it proved decidedly incompetent against Tipu Sultan in the Third Mysore War; and his defeat in one campaign seven years later took Arthur Wellesley quite by surprise.36 The most serious deficiency of the army was not its performance in the field, but the time it took to get there. In the summer of 1798, when Wellesley demanded an immediate invasion of Mysore, the commander-in- chief at Madras replied that it would take six months to mount an offensive, and three months to prepare an effective defence.37 One of the principal causes of the delay was precisely the privilege of con• tracting for bullocks that army officers at Madras held so dear. Although the Madras army had suffered from continuous inter• ference by the previous governor, Lord Hobart, it was the opinion of Wellesley that if this timetable were the best that they could offer, they were 'a useless burden upon the finances of the Company.'38 Whether the Indian Army was inadequate depended upon one's opinion about its proper function. On this question serious disagree• ment arose, not only between Dundas, the officers of the army, and the East India Company, but also between Dundas and two of his governors-general, Sir John Shore and Lord Wellesley. Dundas was certain that, once America was lost, Great Britain's future wealth and greatness would depend upon India. The challenge to it, should one come, would come from France: the next time Great Britain

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 fought France, Dundas took it for granted that the war would be fought in Asia.39 This assumption determined his attitude to the Indian Army. Its size must depend upon the size of the other Euro• pean armies in the East, and 'we must never lose sight of having such a force there as to baffle all surprise.'40 Given the time it took to send reinforcements to India, Dundas wanted to station permanently in India an army large enough and dashing enough to capture the French territories at the outbreak of war, to defend the British

IDBI-C* 55 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

territories against a subsequent European invasion, and to attack the enemy anywhere in the East.41 In the autumn of 1798, for example, Dundas wondered whether he might be able to drive Bonaparte out of Egypt by attacking him from the Red Sea with between 10,000 and 20,000 men.42 The role given to the Indian Army by Dundas was less Indian, therefore, than imperial. 'It is laid down as an axiom applicable to the conduct of extensive warfare by this country,' he always insisted, 'that our principal efforts should be to deprive our enemies of their colonial possessions.,43 In the East this task would be assigned to the Indian Army. To Dundas, it was merely a part of the imperial army that happened to be serving in India. Dundas was in a quandary. He had an army in India for which he had designed an imperial role, whereas the officers who commanded the army had vested local interests that prevented them from playing it. The solution to this problem seemed to be Earl Cornwallis. Corn- wallis had made his reputation by being defeated at Yorktown. In the British Army it has always been wiser to lose the right battle than to win the wrong one. Defeats in America easily outranked victories in India.44 Cornwallis went out to India in 1786 with a plan to amalga• mate the East India Company's army with the king's. The company's officers would be given local commissions from the king, valid only in India. At the same time, 5,000 more troops would be sent out from England, to be paid by the company, and an equal number of native infantry would be disbanded.45 As soon as the Indian Army was put under the control of the Horse Guards, it would become the imperial task force Dundas needed. The moment Cornwallis reached India, however, the plan was abandoned. Cornwallis decided that, until the Indian Army had been reorganized and retrained, it was incapable of fulfilling such a taxing role. The sepoys, who disliked going outside their own presidencies and refused to go overseas, would have to be persuaded to travel, and their officers persuaded to ape their British regular colleagues. Corn•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 wallis was anxious to reduce both their official and unofficial methods of making money: to eliminate, as Dundas wished, 'that pernicious idea of plunder and corruption which exists in the Indian Army.'46 His attitude towards these abuses, as he considered them, paralleled his attitude towards the civil service. He was determined to purify both. If the company's employees were paid high enough salaries and promised large enough pensions, they would have no need to peculate. Cornwallis, whatever his limitations, was an up- 56 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

right man, rather in a Victorian idiom than a Georgian one. But Dundas was a man of his own time: he was more perturbed by the inefficiency in the army than the corruption. Owing to the Indian Army's tawdry performance in the Third Mysore War, Cornwallis, as he was about to return to England, revived the plan of amalgamating the company's army with the king's.47 When the news of his plan leaked out in 1796, it provoked an uproar. The army formed a committee of officers to fight for its cause in London, and all but refused to carry out its orders until Shore agreed to disregard the instructions he received to cut down its allowances.48 The state of the army accounts for an aspect of Shore's administration for which he has often been criticized: his policy towards the Indian states.49 Although Shore considered that the British had no business to meddle in their quarrels and that nothing threatening to the British would come of them,50 he had no choice but to keep out. Given the doubtful loyalty and doubtful competence of the Indian Army, and the incompetence of the commander-in-chief,51 Shore could not afford the risk of a general war. Cornwallis must not be held solely responsible for the controversy he caused. It would have been settled more easily, had it not become entangled in a more serious controversy between Dundas and the East India Company. Where Cornwallis miscalculated was in asking the officers of the Indian Army to behave in India as they would have been expected to behave in England. This requirement offended against the first law of English social life: that conduct matters more than birth or the source of one's wealth. The nabobs were criticized upon their return to England, not for the way in which their money had been made, but for the way in which they spent it. Only when Bingley's sisters fail to behave according to the standards of the gentry does Jane Austen remind them in Pride and Prejudice that their fortunes have been made in trade. The officers of the Indian Army were aspiring to a social position in England, not in India. To

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 ask them, as Cornwallis did, to behave in India as if they had already attained this position, would of itself have prevented them from making enough money to be able to attain it. The British have often behaved like natives; they have often claimed (as Ellis did in George Orwell's Kyauktada), that in the colonies copying the natives was the only sensible way to behave. English standards of conduct would be inappropriate. But recognition locally would be equally unreward• ing. The British, when they returned home, as they inevitably would 57 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

unless they died first, wanted recognition in England for their work in India. Why else were the officers of the Indian Army there ? In his quarrel with the East India Company, Dundas could not expect any support from Cornwallis's successors as governor- general. As Shore had been employed by the East India Company, his support might have carried little weight on any matter except finance. Wellesley proved to be an accomplished administrator and pretended to be a statesman (perhaps why Dundas had been opposed to his appointment), but he disagreed with Dundas both about the pace and the extent to which the British should expand their territory in India and about the best way to organize the Indian Army. Wellesley saw the Indian Army as a police force, able to police not only the British territories but the territories of allies. Wellesley's constant lament over the decline of Great Britain's Indian allies gave away his eagerness to seize control of them. Nowhere was this made clearer than in his dealings with the nizam of Hyderabad. Wellesley would have hated Hyderabad to turn to a powerful and independent state. He wanted a more amenable and useful client. He objected to the French mercenaries who commanded some of the nizam's troops, for example, not because they were incompetent, as they were, not even because they were French (at the time he said nothing of Sindhia's Frenchmen), but because he could not control them. He objected equally strongly to encouraging the nizam to employ British mercenaries.52 In what became his characteristic manner, Wellesley pressed the nizam to disband the troops trained by his mercenaries and to replace them by units of the Indian Army. Any other reform of his army 'might render it more efficient for his purposes, whatever they may be.' But an enlarged subsidiary force, concluded Wellesley, 'would tend to strengthen him for our purposes only, and would give him no additional means, but rather weaken him, in any contest with us.'53 Wellesley's expansiveness brought him into collision with Dundas Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 about the proper size of the Indian Army. Each time that he annexed another territory or made another subsidiary alliance, Wellesley formed new regiments of sepoys. However, as he had also inherited Cornwallis's doubts about the sepoys' loyalty, each time he enlarged the company's army he demanded equivalent reinforcements from England. Otherwise the king's troops might not be able to police the company's army effectively. The agreed proportion was usually one in four or one in five. This meant that in 1800, when Wellesley had 58 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

created a sepoy army of at least 90,000 men, he was demanding an increase in the number of European troops stationed in India to approximately 30,000.54 As Dundas at that time could round up only 27,000 troops both to defend Portugal and to invade Egypt, he resented Wellesley's insistence that his demand was not excessive, because at least one quarter, and possibly one third, of the European troops stationed in India must be assumed at any moment to be sick. An establishment of 30,000 might put only 20,000 troops into the field. Dundas repeatedly rejected Wellesley's demands for reinforce• ments, arguing that an increase in the size of the Indian Army every time the British defeated a supposedly dangerous enemy would be absurd. According to Dundas's calculations, the number of troops in India (king's plus company's) had risen from approximately 70,000 in 1793 to 112,000 in 1799. After the partition of Mysore, a reduc• tion to 80,000 and the recall of three king's regiments home to England (despite Wellesley's protests) should be perfectly safe.55 Wellesley was right to insist that large numbers of the British troops in India were always sick; one of the best arguments for retaining possession of the Cape of Good Hope, seized from the Dutch in 1796, would be its use as a conditioning and repairing centre for British troops on their way to and from India.56 Despite this, Dundas rejected both Wellesley's figures and his justification for them. Dundas refused to regard the Indian Army solely as a police force. To be more efficient than the armies of the native states was not enough. Dundas wanted to use the Indian Army for imperial ends; Wellesley was determined, if possible, not to let him. Their differences emerged clearly over the Egyptian Expedition. Dundas had talked of sending an expedition to drive the French army from Egypt almost from the moment it had landed there. Wellesley, in a rash moment in 1799 after conquering Mysore, had offered to send an Indian army to the Red Sea to help.57 He immediately withdrew his offer, and thereafter resisted every per•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 suasion.58 Wellesley knew, of course, that should he ever receive direct orders from Dundas he would have to obey them, but until that moment the campaign against the French in Egypt was to be fought from Europe with European allies, the Russians and, if un• avoidable, the Turks.59 The Indian Army would be more suitably occupied in preparing for war against the Maratha Confederacy or, in moments when Wellesley seemed likely to have an opportunity to impose his will on the Marathas by diplomacy, in attacking Batavia 59 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

or Mauritius. Wellesley had sound Indian reasons for wishing to capture these enemy outposts, because the depredations of French privateers had caused an outcry at Calcutta.60 Such plans also had the advantage of seeming to coincide with Dundas's priorities. Partly because of the controversy provoked by Cornwallis and partly because of Wellesley's opposition, Dundas never did succeed in imposing on the Indian Army a role that would have fitted it to sustain his imperial vision. The troops finally sent from India to the Red Sea in the spring of 1801 to co-operate with the Egyptian Expedition, by moving slowly and failing to respond to changing circumstances, arrived at Cairo after the French had surrendered and contributed nothing to the British victory.61 In London the East India Company had given up all hope of their doing so; but 'I hope in God ... [they] will still reach Egypt,' remarked the chairman to Wellesley, .. if only as an excuse for the vast expense.'62 The most significant reason, however, for the success of the Indian Army in withstanding Dundas's schemes of reform was the behaviour of the East India Company itself. The officers succeeded in preserving their allow• ances, and their opportunities multiplied as Wellesley continued to enlarge the army, because they formed an unnatural alliance with the company, theoretically their employer, against Dundas and the board of control. The issue over which this battle was waged was not Cornwallis's reforms themselves, but the fate of the East India Company's Euro• pean infantry. To suggest that the Indian Army was inadequate is not to imply that the king's troops in India were necessarily better. They had one great advantage, however: they could be sent overseas. Even if nothing else were changed, if the company's regiments of European infantry could be amalgamated with the king's infantry, a larger force would be more readily available in India for strategic deployment throughout Asia. Dundas might finally be able to combine his two loves, his love of surplus revenue Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 and his love of colonial wars. According to Dundas, this plan possessed additional advantages, both political and financial. In 1793 the king's army in India was established at approximately 9,500 infantry and the company's European regiments at 7,000. Their actual strengths were closer to 6,000 king's infantry and 6,500 company's. By 1799 these figures, as Dundas wished, were reversed, for the numbers of the company's European infantry had sharply declined. The king's authorized establishment had risen to approxi- 60 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

mately 22,000, while the company's had fallen to 5,000: their actual strengths were 14,000 and 4,000.63 The East India Company had great difficulty in recruiting for its regiments, because the Horse Guards did everything possible to hamper it. Consequently, not only did their numbers fall but, according to Wellesley, because they were recruited from foreigners at the Cape, their loyalty was even more suspect than the loyalty of the sepoys.64 To amalgamate the two forces might make them more reliable as well as more useful. The amalgamation might also have made the European army in India less expensive. Dundas claimed that the company's European troops were more highly paid than the king's troops and that their authorized establishment usually mustered fewer men.65 The chair• man of the East India Company did not challenge this claim,66 but Sir Cyril Philips has. However, when Philips argues that the company's regiments were the less expensive, it is difficult to be certain whether he is comparing the cost of one of its European or one of its sepoy regiments.67 Although Dundas always hoped that he would be able to draft the company's four remaining European regiments either into the king's army or into the company's artillery, he was aware of the strength of the company's opposition. He admitted to Wellesley in 1799: 'I am not disposed to resume the contest again, unless there were sufficient ground to induce me to do so.'68 There was neither an occasion nor a sufficient ground before Dundas resigned from the board of control in the spring of 1801. Two reasons may explain why the East India Company was so opposed to this reform. First, the company was afraid of losing its patronage. The directors nominated the cadets who went out to India to become officers. This procedure provided a powerful weapon against the board of control, because the smallest sign that the government seemed to be trying to gain control of Indian patron• age would provoke an uproar in the House of Commons. Dundas was sufficiently sensitive to the danger that in 1788 he and Pitt had

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 accepted amendments to the Declaratory Bill specifically designed to check any increase in ministerial patronage.69 Similarly, in 1799, Dundas was willing to allow the company to raise four additional regiments of sepoys to replace their European regiments, precisely in order that their patronage should not be diminished.70 Second, the company was equally afraid that disbanding its European regiments was only the first step towards taking away its political power,71 which was certainly what Dundas had originally intended. It feared 61 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

being obliged to pay for policies over which it had no control. Nobody need doubt that the company would have had to pay. When the East India Company tried to obtain funds from Pitt to pay for the mobilization of the Indian Army against a possible coalition between Tipu Sultan and the French army in Egypt in 1798, Pitt refused to admit that the defence of British India was a vital national interest.72 It was, of course, and he knew it, but he wanted the East India Company to pay for it. The most attractive feature of the Indian Army was its freedom from the control of parliament. Pitt's attitude in 1798 only confirmed the attitude implicit in the Declaratory Act passed ten years previously. The board of control had insisted, against spirited opposition from the East India Com• pany, that it had the right to send reinforcements to India whenever it wished and to compel the East India Company to pay for them. The government, claimed Pitt and Dundas, had 'the undoubted right... to send any part of the king's forces to the British possessions in India ... [and] by the powers with which we conceive ourselves legally invested, to direct the application of the revenues of those posses• sions to the objects necessary for their security.'73 Although Dundas later admitted that the company could not be required to pay for more than 10,000 king's troops out of its own revenues, and that any additional troops would have to be paid out of the revenues of Oudh, and also of Ceylon which Dundas was preparing to annex to the Crown,74 the point had been made that the government was deter• mined to use the revenues of India as it wished. The proposal to disband the East India Company's European regiments was, there• fore, stoutly resisted, forcing the company into an alliance with its own recalcitrant officers. The company was the more willing to compromise with them, because it shared the officers' premiss: the Indian Army was an Indian police force, not an imperial expedition• ary force. Dundas's imperial wars in the East were otherwise likely to be charged against the revenues of the government of India.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 To blame Cornwallis for the failure of his plans to reform the Indian Army would be unreasonable. The officers had too strong an ally in the East India Company. The strength of the company in English politics at the end of the eighteenth century can too easily be underestimated. Despite all the criticism of its maladministration, the support of the company had been necessary for Pitt, and an open attack upon its privileges would have been an attack upon chartered rights, the bastion of the English system of government. It would 62 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

have incited the City of London, if no other groups, to rally to the company's support. The passage of the Declaratory Act had been a serious setback to Dundas. The government's majority on the occasion had been so slight that, although Dundas successfully took more vigorous steps to manage the East India Company, he would never again risk a clash with it in the House of Commons. His attempt to disestablish the company and to become the first secretary of state for India had failed. While Cornwallis and Dundas un• doubtedly prejudiced the Indian Army against all reform, their opponents were successful because they hid themselves in the battle for supreme control over British India between Dundas on the one hand and the dominant groups in the East India Company on the other. The one hoped and the others feared that the reform of the Indian Army would provide the means of winning this battle. Until it had been won, however, no new role would be prescribed for the Indian Army. Ruling India through the East India Company offered the British many conveniences: militarily it was a handicap. By the time the battle between the East India Company and the board of control had been won by the government and a new role had been prescribed for the Indian Army, it was too set in its old ways. It was headed towards its signal catastrophe during the First Afghan War.

NOTES

1. Dundas to Sydney, [2] Nov. 1784, PRO 30/11/112, fo. 58. 2. Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals; and on the Means of Improving it,' Parliamentary Papers, 16 Aug. 1832, appendix, p. 99. 3. For an estimate by the commander-in-chief at Bombay, see Stuart to Dundas, private, 24 July 1799, WO 1/357, p.311. 4. Memorandum by Dundas, 2 Oct. 1800, SRO GD 51/1/777. 5. See the terms of the Anglo-Persian treaty of 1801, in C. U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads relating to India and Neighbouring Countries (3rd ed., Calcutta, 1892), x. 37-45.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 6. Minute of Wellesley, 12 Aug. 1798, The Despatches, Minutes, and Correspon• dence of the Marquess Wellesley, K.G., during his Administration in India, ed. M. Martin (London, 1836-7), i. 159. 7. Both Dundas and Wellesley wanted the vizier to disband his army and rely solely upon British protection. The vizier's army, according to Wellesley, was 'rather a dangerous encumbrance than a security... against internal commotion or foreign invasion.' Ggic to sc, 3 Oct. 1799, IO L/PS/5/82, p. 79. But the principal advantage to the British would be reducing the cost of the Indian Army. 8. The British also employed in India the Swiss mercenaries of the comte de Meuron, whom they had hired to help them capture Ceylon.

63 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

9. The officers of the Bombay Marine fared worse: any officer in the Royal Navy, even one of the junior rank, took precedence over them. But, unlike the officers of the Indian Army, after twenty-five years they were retired on pension. 10. Arthur Wellesley's service in India was not an exception, because he needed to make money to pay off his debts. See E. Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword (New York, 1969), ch. 3. 11. The habit of judging an army officer by his birth continued after Cardwell had abolished purchase. England's only general, Lord Wolseley, was disliked not for his reforms, but for entertaining in too grand a style given his obscure Irish origin. 12. The most famous being the comte de Boigne. For details of their careers, see C. Grey, European Freebooters in Northern India (Lahore, 1929). 13. General Carnac took home approximately £30,000 after two years as commander-in-chief, Bengal, in the 1760s. Sir Mark Wood, chief engineer at Bengal under Cornwallis, took home £200,000. 14. T.S.P. Spear, The Nabobs (London, 1932), is a superb book written from this false assumption. A different picture is presented by H. H. Dodwell, The Nabobs of Madras (London, 1926). 15. For details of daily life in the Indian Army, see Soldiering in India, 1764-1787: Extracts from Journals and Letters left by Lt.-Col. Allan Macpherson and Lt.- Col. John Macpherson of the East India Company's Service, ed. C.W. Mac• pherson (London, 1928). 16. Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, pp. 70-2. 17. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 7 June 1799, Dundas, p. 161. 18. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 1 Nov. 1799, Dundas, pp.204-5. 19. To the great and legitimate annoyance of the commander-in-chief, India, Lt.- Gen. Sir Alured Clarke, whom Wellesley had persuaded to stay behind in Cal• cutta, while he went to Madras to superintend the war. 20. For a more detailed account, see R.A. Callahan, 'Cornwallis and the Indian Army, 1786-1797,' Military Affairs, xxxiv (1970), 93-7. 21. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 7 June 1799, Dundas, p. 162. 22. As in the engineers and artillery in the British Army, who were under the command of the master-general of the ordnance. Purchase has been defended against promotion by seniority for producing generals young enough and fit enough to command. See R. Glover, Peninsula Preparation: The Reform of the British Army, 1795-1809 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 146. 23. Postscript, 6 Sept. 1800, to Dundas to Wellesley, private, 4 Sept. 1800, Dundas* p.293. 24. Wellesley to Dundas, secret and confidential, 31 July 1799, Dundas, p. 170. 25. Precisely because of this, the demand for baronetcies was considerable and Dundas was determined to limit them. Dundas to Wellesley, secret and confiden• tial, 12 Oct. 1799, Dundas, p. 196. 26. Melville to Astell, private, 22 Aug. 1828, NLS MS 1060, fo. 202; cd to gicB, 10 May 1831, IO L/PS/6/172. The Company agreed that soldiers might continue to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 be preferred where there might be 'peculiar advantage' to their appointment. 27. The consistent employment of soldiers in the Middle East itself reveals that Britain's interest in the area was strategic not commercial. 28. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 23 Feb. 1798, Dundas, p. 16. 29. See Wellesley, i. 651, 685. 30. Malcolm to Elliot, private, 27 June 1807, Minto MSS M/182. 31. Hewitt to Minto, private and confidential, 29 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/173. 32. Edmonstone to Malcolm, 7 Nov. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC/210,7Nov. 1808,nos.6- 7. 33. Longford, Wellington, pp. 82-3.

64 THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN ARMY

34. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 16 June 1798, Dundas, p. 50. 35. As the nineteenth century progressed, this habit of campaigning laden with baggage permeated the entire British army. Sir Redvers Buller, chief of staff to the Gordon Relief Expedition, needed 40 camels for his personal baggage. See J. Symons, England's Pride: The Story of the Gordon Relief Expedition (London, 1965), p. 132. 36. A. Wellesley to H. Wellesley, 2 Jan. 1799, Supplementary Despatches, Corres• pondence and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington, K.G., ed. duke of Wellington (London, 1858-64), i. 152. 37. Harris to Wellesley, 6 July 1798, Wellesley, i. 72. 38. Wellesley to Harris, 18 July 1798, Wellesley, i. 141. 39. Dundas to Sydney, [2] Nov. 1784, PRO 30/11/112, fo. 60. 40. Ibid. 41. Dundas to Cornwallis, very private and confidential, 22 July 1787, PRO 30/11/ 112, fos. 51, 68. 42. Draft of instructions for Maitland, Dec. 1798, SRO GD 51/1/770/3. 43. Abstract of Dundas to Wellesley, private, 31 Oct. 1799, NLS MS 1062, fo. 53. 44. See Castlereagh to Hobart, secret, 30 March 1803, Hobart MSS War/B. 45. Memorandum by Dundas, 22 July 1787, IO H/824, fo. 473. The troops in India, stated George III, 'ought to be those of the nation but paid by the Company.' George III to Pitt, 3 July 1784, PRO 30/8/103, fo. 113. 46. Dundas to Sydney, [2] Nov. 1784, PRO 30/11/112, fos. 58-61. 47. For details, see 'Memorandum by Cornwallis on the Best Mode of Remodelling the Army in India,' 1794, NLS MS 1061. 48. For details of these activities, see Proceedings of the Agents appointed by the Officers of the East India Company's Armies ...for the Purpose of Obtaining a Redress of Grievances (London, 1795); and Proceedings of the Representative Committee Elected by the Officers of the Establishment of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, for the Purpose of Obtaining a Redress of Grievances (London, 1796), in IO L/MIL/125. 49. See J. Malcolm, Political History of India (India, 1826), i. 117-94, and J. Mill, History of British India (London, 1840-8), vi. 20-47. 50. Shore to Grant, 26 April 1796, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of John, Lord Teignmouth, ed. Lord Teignmouth (London, 1843), i. 370; Shore to Hobart, private, 15 Oct. 1796, Hobart MSS India/A. 51. Shore to Dundas, private, 31 Dec. 1794, The Private Record of an Indian Governor-Generalship: The Correspondence of Sir John Shore, Governor- General, with Henry Dundas President of the Board of Control: 1793-1798, ed. H. Furber (Cambridge, 1933), p. 60. It must also be remembered that in February 1794 Dundas diverted to the ordnance 5,000 stands of arms that were already loaded at the Downs on their way to Bengal. Glover, Peninsula Preparation, p.52. 52. This opinion was shared by Lord Hobart, who described the suggestion as 'a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 temporary expedient pregnant with mischief.' Hobart to Shore, 31 July 1797, Hobart MSS India/A. 53. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 23 Feb. 1798, Dundas, p.21. 54. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 13 July 1800, Dundas, p. 275. 55. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 30 Dec. 1800, Dundas, pp.316-18. 56. Wellesley to Dundas, secret and confidential, 7 Oct. 1800, Dundas, p. 306. 57. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 16 May 1799, Dundas, p. 150. 58. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 13 July 1800, Dundas, p.277. 59. Sending an Indian army to the Red Sea, Wellesley told the British ambassador at Constantinople, 'I know ... to be utterly impracticable.' Wellesley to Elgin, 65 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

private, 7 Oct. 1800, Add. MSS 38282, fo. 214. 60. The army commander, General Baird, was a king's officer, but the course he was to follow was decided for him before he reached the Red Sea by two company's officers. 61. See S. Ghorbal, The Beginning of the Egyptian'Question and the Rise ofMehemet AH (London 1928). 62. Scott to Wellesley, private, 9 Aug. 1801, Royal Historical Society: The Corres• pondence of David Scott... Relating to Indian Affairs, ed. C.H. Philips (London, 1951), ii. 334. 63. Encl. in Dundas to Wellesley, private, 15 July 1800, Add. MSS, 37275, fo. 111. 64. Wellesley to Dundas, secret and confidential, 1 Oct. 1798, Dundas, p.81. 65. 'Sir George Yonge's Observations on Mr. Dundas's Paper,' 21 Sept. 1785, PRO 30/8/360, fos. 31-2. 66. Chairmen of EIC to cd, 23 Jan. 1788, PRO 30/8/350, fos. 45-52. 67. C.H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784-1834 (revised edition: Manches• ter, 1961), p. 54. 68. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 10 Oct. 1799, Dundas, p. 190. 69. Grant to Cornwallis, 6 April 1788, Cornwallis, i. 362. 70. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 10 Oct. 1799, Dundas, p. 190. 71. Dundas to Shore, private and confidential, 13 Jan. 1796, NLS MS 3387, p.263. 72. Pitt to chairman of EIC, 26 Aug. 1798, PRO 30/8/195, fo. 193. 73. Board to court, 23 Feb. 1788, IO E/2/29, p.236. 74. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 15 July 1800, Dundas, p. 280. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

66 V

THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER IN THE WAR OF THE SECOND COALITION, 1798-1801

He that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will. Francis Bacon, Essays, xxix

When the British navy's battle fleet put to sea in the spring of 1982 for the first time since the Suez Crisis and steamed majestically, if deliberately slowly, towards the Falkland Islands, British politicians and the British press seemed overjoyed to have been given what they sensed would be their last opportunity to illustrate a principle most clearly enunciated by Captain Mahan: that Great Britain as great power was a naval and colonial power, whose far-flung empire and world-wide trade were securely guarded by powerful fleets and whose navy was equivalent to the armies of the less fortunate states on the Continent. The most recent proponents of this view are Paul M. Kennedy and Michael Howard; its most recent critics Northcote Parkinson and Richard Glover.1 For Kennedy, British trade and sea power marched hand in hand down the eighteenth century to a glorious apotheosis in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. The navy, by winning its battles, gave the British the lion's share of the booming overseas trade. The trade helped to stimulate the Indus• trial Revolution, which, in its turn, underpinned Great Britain's Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 naval supremacy. Wealth meant power.2 The connection between the two was illustrated for Howard by the treaty of Amiens in 1801, which demonstrated that, after eight years, a strategy of erosion and harassment from the sea had forced France to make a compromise peace.3 Wealth did not mean power, however, or not for the British. As Kennedy himself recognizes, as soon as the British tried to convert 67 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

their wealth into power in two world wars, they destroyed them• selves and knew they would do so.4 What had changed for the British between the late-eighteenth and the early-twentieth centuries was circumstances over which they had no control. The existence of necessary allies, who had interests in common with Great Britain and who would fight for and prove strong enough to defend them, was more important than sea power in accounting for Great Britain's survival during the Napoleonic Wars; just as the lack of such allies, as Howard recognizes, accounts for the self-sacrifice of the British when, in the autumn of 1915 after the failure of the Dardanelles Expedition, they decided to fight on the Western Front.5 How little could be done by the Royal Navy to influence the outcome of a European war was shown at the moment when Howard assumed that the navy was proving its effectiveness, and in the hollowness of victories in battles numbered among Kennedy's stepping stones to command of the sea: during the war of the Second Coalition. The war was preceded by three famous British victories at sea, at Cape St. Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile. It ended with a fourth at Copenhagen. Cape St. Vincent made John Jervis famous; the Nile and Copenhagen made Horatio Nelson famous. They had no effect on the outcome of the war. The columns towering over Trafalgar Square in London and over Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill indicate how securely Nelson is seated in the Pantheon of heroes, one in a line stretching from Francis Drake playing bowls as the Spanish Armada came into sight to David Beatty, squandering battle cruisers before Jutland with a stiff upper lip. Nelson's reputation is fraudulent. His three great victories, at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, bear the imprint of extraordinary boldness: none of them had much strategic signifi• cance. The reputation, like the reputation made by Field Marshal Montgomery in the same part of the world, was manufactured by a government whose need of a victory was acute. Just as the defeat of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Rommel at el-Alamein did nothing to turn the tide against Hitler's invasion of Russia, the defeat of Villeneuve at Trafalgar could not undo the damage done to the Third Coalition by Bonaparte's victories over the Austrians and the Russians at Ulm and Austerlitz. The fleet had not even protected the British Isles. This task, as Glover demonstrated, had been given to the army and to the Martello towers built beside every beach on which the French might try to land.6

68 THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

Nelson's two earlier victories were also as inconsequential as they were dramatic. The destruction of the French fleet at Aboukir Bay in August 1798 is usually compared favourably with, for example, Earl Howe's victory of the Glorious First of June 1794 because Nelson was so much more resolute than Howe in sinking the enemy's ships.7 The comparison is misleading. The enemy got away on both occasions. Howe failed to intercept and destroy the grain convoys being shielded by the French fleet; Nelson's daring could not com• pensate for the misfortune that the French army he had been sent to destroy had already landed in Egypt in July. Similarly, Nelson's equally daring attack on the Danish fleet in April 1801 could not destroy the Second League of Armed Neutrality. In 1801 the British had a stroke of luck as great as their misfortune in 1798. The league was destroyed when the tsar of Russia was assassinated.8 If the war of the Second Coalition illustrates the fallacy of Mahan's emphasis on fleet actions, it illustrates just as clearly the difficulty the British faced in meeting Sir Julian Corbett's definition of the proper goal of sea power: denying the enemy the use of the sea in order to set up an impenetrable barrier which may be used as a springboard at a moment of one's own choosing. One of the most cherished notions of believers in British sea power, which found its way even into Henry Kissinger's account of the reconstruction of Europe at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, is that Great Britain, as an island, could rely for safety upon the working of the European balance of power and needed to intervene in Continental affairs only when the balance of power was in danger of being destroyed by a successful imperialist: Napoleon, William II, or Hitler.9 Protected by geography and the fleet, Great Britain, as seemed to be proved by the events of 1914, had the enviable good fortune of being able to control the timing of her intervention and, in particular, the moment and the circumstances in which she would go to war. Such was not the case in 1798. The war of the Second Coalition was forced upon

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the British by the French occupation of Egypt. The British had spent the previous year trying to copy the Continental states by negotiating a separate peace with France. They had failed. They had then spent the spring of 1798 trying to organize a grand alliance capable of forcing France to agree to a general peace under the threat of general war. Again, they failed. When the French shifted their attention in the spring of 1798 from Boulogne to Toulon, thus sparing Ireland but endangering British India, the British had to redeploy their forces 69 D m >n m Z n tn H 33 Z D > IN 5 DEFENCE OFO >n BRITIS68 2 H INDIA of N ile . -for -Hiem. E q ijp t. look Buttle ’AUxandrlci. ires, takes < u rr Jum e-Nelson reaches AliJUUKtr'ia., -29 onapa*te 6 t Ai/Cj. - Nelson t Ai/Cj. returns - SJ find) no French, sails to ifc M EDITERRANEAN »r<* B^tbraJbkojr:

B^tbraJbkojr: M alta ana.pa.rte 6 follows. paWis at sea, Htiiondrivtn. stornti. Toulon, cross vessels. JUNE - English a«ul -25 ZZ FrrncH p-19 June - French take Malta. g JUNE - g JUNE Melton Soils from Toulon.. JOUtk bij 19-20 MAY- ' ' in darkness , at nlqht. Melscm, Melscm, u iw w a v s , is now a h e a d . Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 o o bacte to (jtb ra lfa r in, without scouting storm., Leaving Nelson, tj SO MAY - MAY SO British, -friqates ------B^tbraJbkojr: NELSON BONAPARTE FRIGATES THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

from the Channel to the Mediterranean in an attempt to keep up an effective blockade. In this, too, they failed. The events leading to the campaign in the Mediterranean in the summer of 1798 merit examination, because its significance has been slightly misplaced and because the French occupation of Egypt to which it led, determined both Great Britain's aims in the war of the Second Coalition and the manner in which she fought for them. When the British learned at the beginning of April that the French were collecting a large army and a powerful fleet at Toulon, they had no fleet of their own in the Mediterranean. It had been withdrawn in 1796 when Spain declared war as an ally of France. Whether the fleet should be sent back to the Mediterranean, and, if so, for what purpose, were questions that provoked heated argument among the British at regular intervals throughout the war. According to the admiralty, the most effective way to blockade Toulon was to station a powerful British fleet at the straits of Gibraltar, where it could also pin down a Spanish fleet at Cadiz. This pre-echo of Sir John Fisher shows that his determination in the early years of the twentieth century to collect Great Britain's fleet close to home need not be taken to mean that the British were becoming suspicious of the Germans. The admiralty had argued in the eighteenth century that positioning the bulk of the first class units of the British fleet between the North Sea and Gibraltar would safeguard both the British Isles and Great Britain's colonies and world-wide trade from all of her three traditional rivals: France, Spain, and the Dutch. The admiralty's assumptions that the Mediterranean was an area of no interest to Great Britain and, thus, could be ignored, and that the fleet ought to remain on the defensive, provoked loud protests from both the foreign office and the war office. The foreign office, planning to offer the fleet as Great Britain's contribution to a second coalition against France, had chosen an offensive role for it: a close blockade of Toulon would encourage Austria by standing between

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the French and Naples and encourage the tsar by standing between the French and Greece. Later, an expeditionary force sent to northern Italy might, if necessary, operate on the left flank of an allied invasion of France. In both cases the British would demon• strate the strategic mobility given to them by their command of the sea. The war office was just as determined as the foreign office to demonstrate Great Britain's strategic mobility; was just as deter• mined as the admiralty to use the fleet on the defensive - to seal off 71 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Great Britain from the Continent rather than to provide a spring• board for an invasion - but was critical of the admiralty's determina• tion to ignore the Mediterranean. What if the French from Toulon should sail to the East ? Throughout the war of the Second Coalition, the war office fought to keep a powerful fleet available for concen• tration in the eastern Mediterranean (to borrow a phrase from the Anglo-Japanese alliance) and able to set up a barrier between the imperialism of Revolutionary France and the stability and prosperity of the British territories in India. At the end of April 1798 the admiralty was over-ruled, and during May a fleet returned to the Mediterranean under Nelson's com• mand. The British had acted too late: Bonaparte left Toulon for Egypt before Nelson's fleet was fully organized and eluded his pursuit. Nelson's failure to catch the French was partly caused, however, by his perception of their goal. A French fleet in the eastern Mediterranean must be seeking a way around the British blockade in order to pursue one of France's traditional goals since the middle of the eighteenth century: the destruction of the British empire in India. Having overtaken the French east of Malta, and having reached Egypt ahead of them, Nelson therefore turned north to look for them in Syria. They had landed in Egypt before he got back. Sinking their fleet could not compensate for this British defeat, because a French army in Egypt was held to endanger British India merely by its presence. Rather like a magnet, it exercised a powerful attraction over the operations of the British fleet throughout the war. The French army in Egypt also determined British strategy. One eye, eventually both eyes, had to be kept on the Middle East. The French army in Egypt demonstrated that, contrary to the British assumption that they possessed the greater strategic mobility, an army can attack a fleet as easily as the reverse. The French army pulled the British fleet in Europe eastwards. In an attempt to set up a barrier between Egypt and France, the British were pulled towards Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Minorca, Malta, Sicily, the Ionian Islands, Acre, and eventually sent their only field force to attack Alexandria. Meeting such demands overtaxed their strength. In the spring of 1799, the French fleet broke through the British blockade of Brest, and, having drawn after it the British fleet blockading Cadiz, freed the Spanish fleet there to join up in the Mediterranean. The enemy then had the opportunity to pick off the small isolated British squadrons scattered across the Medi- 72 THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

terranean one at a time. Until the enemy inexplicably surrendered the initiative again by returning to their Atlantic ports, the admiralty had been given an excellent, if frightening, illustration of its claim that overall superiority at sea could not guarantee security worldwide. This point was made more clearly in the Indian Ocean. In response to reports of the French preparations at Toulon, the British fleet in the Indian Ocean had been drawn westwards into the Arabian Sea and away from its two most important tasks, the protection of trade between Bengal and China, and the protection of the East India Company's homebound convoys. As a result, the homebound London convoy was caught at Macao in January 1799 by an enemy squadron from Manila and Mauritius. It escaped destruction only because the enemy commander was a Spaniard and, like most Spaniards at the time, unwilling to fight. Later the same year the depredations of French privateers in the bay of Bengal provoked an uproar among British merchants at Calcutta, while, at the same moment, similar depredations in the Persian Gulf delayed the departure of the British envoy to Persia. Not only was British trade placed in jeopardy, however. Attacks on enemy bases the British had been planning to capture had to be postponed. The stationary French army in Egypt saved Mauritius, Batavia, and Manila. Part of Great Britain's difficulty was caused by the ineffectiveness of blockade, even as a defensive strategy, in the era of sailing ships. The enemy could not be cut off by the Royal Navy from the outside world. In Europe it could be cut off most of the time, because its escape from port would be noticed and a more powerful British fleet would be sent in pursuit. From the North Sea to Gibraltar, however, the British could either keep their line of battle ships at home in accordance with the principles of a 'distant' blockade or, alternative• ly, they could set up a 'close' blockade, knowing that they would be supplied from home ports and could quickly return there to refit.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Beyond Gibraltar, the British depended on their bases. Contrary to the opinion of Mahan, the chain of island bases eventually to stretch like a necklace all the way to China, did not usually permit the British to help regulate the political situation in a nearby state without being fettered by it. Minorca was so badly fortified it needed the support of the fleet instead of providing support; Gibraltar could provide neither water nor a safe anchorage; Malta offered a marvellous harbour but could not supply food, which had to be brought from 73 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Sicily. The three bases did not, therefore, provide satisfactory condi• tions for intervention in southern Europe whenever necessary. They depended on them. Malta would become in the late nineteenth century the most famous of Great Britain's four imperial fortresses. During the Napoleonic Wars it provided a satisfactory base neither for the blockade of Toulon nor for launching a British expeditionary force on its way to the Middle East. It lay too far east for the one and too far west for the other: in the winter of 1800-1801 the British troops en route to Egypt had to regroup at Marmoras Bay, on the coast of Anatolia north of Rhodes. Malta was attractive for its symbolic value. Its possession would represent Great Britain's determination to bar France from the Middle East, as the most effective and cheap• est way to separate the European and Indian political systems. The same could be said in relation to British attitudes towards Russia. The British occupation of Malta in September 1800 should therefore be treated as a prophecy of the Great Game in Asia. The British were no better off for naval bases in the Indian Ocean. Trincomalee, although well placed to windward of the bay of Bengal, was as short of food as Malta, and, unable to obtain from a distance what it could not itself supply, was less able to sustain a battle squadron for any length of time. Should the fleet based at Malta fail to prevent the French from repeating their successful landing in Egypt in 1798, to blockade them from the Red Sea would be difficult. The British based at the islands of Kamran or Perim, for example, would depend for supplies upon the rulers of local states whose economies were closely tied to the economy of Egypt. As long as the Arab states stayed neutral, the British would be unable to keep up a year-round blockade: force them to take sides and they would join the enemy. Such an emphasis on the limits of sea power may appear to ignore the contribution the Royal Navy made to Great Britain's military Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 power by sustaining her prosperity and will to fight. During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain's trade with the wider world sup• posedly expanded while the enemy's trade was disrupted. This did not happen during the war of the Second Coalition. The markets that mattered most to the British were the domestic market and the Continental market. The expansion of the domestic market, which was necessary for industrialization, could not be sustained without access to the Continent as soon as Great Britain became an importer 74 THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

of food. That the Royal Navy could not sustain the British economy during a period of prolonged war was shown in the rapid inflation between 1798 and 1801, caused mostly by a rapid rise in the price of cereals. The results of this were obvious by the summer of 1800. The introduction of an income tax to spend on Continental allies who had failed both to fight for British objects and, worse still, to win the war, had aroused a wave of protest among the propertied interests represented in parliament, aggravated by their fear of the mounting social unrest caused by the rising prices. Peace was forced upon the British in 1801 by their fear of the social and economic consequences of prolonging the war. To see how serious the situation had become by the autumn of 1800, one need only turn to the Second League of Armed Neutrality. Set up at the request of the Danes under the patronage of the tsar, it appeared to be a response to Great Britain's insistence on her right to restrict trade between neutrals and her enemies. The British could easily bottle up trade in the Baltic; after rather more of a struggle they could destroy the Danish fleet. By doing so, they were bound to harm themselves more than anybody else. An embargo on trade would hurt Great Britain more than Russia, owing to the navy's need of first class timber. Most threatening of all to Great Britain was the adherence of Prussia to the league. Prussia had no navy and little overseas trade. By joining the league she risked nothing. She might, however, close Great Britain's trade routes to the Continent. In the previous eight years Great Britain's exports to Germany had risen six-fold. Should the Prussians close the Vistula, the Oder, and the Ems, and should they also close Great Britain's only other routes, the Weser and the Elbe, by the occupation of Hanover, the British economy would be severely disrupted. 'Almost the only commerce of England with the continent of Europe,' remarked the United States envoy at Berlin, 'is at the mercy of this Government.'10 One can see why the British foreign secretary was arguing by 1804 that Great

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Britain ought to encourage Prussia to turn herself into a sea power by the annexation of Holland. Prussia might then develop overseas interests able to be held hostage by Great Britain in the event of a similar crisis.11 The League of Armed Neutrality was so menacing to Great Britain because it represented an economic blockade in reverse. It also represented a Continental league. Behind it stood France, owing to the tsar's willingness to settle his differences with Bonaparte in order 75 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

to stand firm against Great Britain, who seemed to be cheating him of Malta. The mobilization of Russian armies in Poland compelled Austria to agree to the harsh terms she accepted at Luneville; the fear of Russian armies in Turkey compelled Great Britain to risk an invasion of Egypt which its critics termed suicidal. By the autumn of 1800 the British were faced with the choice they always hoped to avoid and which faced them again in 1915 and in 1940. Their Continental allies had failed them. Should they commit themselves to a major European war in an attempt to re-establish the European balance of power? In 1800 such a task was beyond them. Great Britain's army was far too small. More important, in 1800, as also in 1941, the army might be needed to protect the British empire. This task could not be left to the navy. Even if the navy could keep the French bottled up in Egypt for the duration of the war, the French could not be permitted to remain there at the time the British were suing for peace. Nor could the British afford to buy the French out. They must be defeated, or at the least joined in Egypt by a British army, as the prelude to a joint evacuation. The British expedition to Egypt was the result of a decision taken at the end of a four-week cabinet crisis in September and October 1800 that the defence of the empire must take precedence over an attempt to re-establish the European balance of power. This was the opposite decision to the one taken in 1915 to fight on the Western Front and opposite to the decision taken in 1940 to fight for both Europe and the empire, which meant, in practice, destroying oneself while saving neither. The decision taken in October 1800 led to a remarkable success. The failures of British sea power in the war of the Second Coalition were numerous. The navy had not protected British trade; it had not protected the British empire; it had not protected Great Britain's allies; it had not protected British social stability; it had failed to protect Great Britain as great power. An army was needed to remove the French from Egypt. However, a fleet Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 was needed to get it there. The British landing at Aboukir Bay on the morning of 8 March 1801 must rank as one of the most successful combined operations in modern history in circumstances of the greatest difficulty. In addition to ferrying the army from an impro• vised base, the navy had organized the landing, provided water for the troops, ferried supplies along the shore, set up an impenetrable blockade of Alexandria, and — something it had steadfastly refused to do on previous occasions — held itself in readiness to evacuate the 76 THE FAILURE OF BRITISH SEA POWER

British army should it suffer the defeat there was no reason not to expect. Who was the hero of this demonstration of the power of the long arm of Great Britain ? An admiral of whom most people have never heard and whom Nelson bitterly resented for replacing St. Vincent as his commander-in-chief. His name was George Keith Elphinstone, Viscount Keith. As he led his fleet towards the coast of Egypt he knew he need not worry about danger to his ships. He did worry whether the 6,000 British troops - the most the British could land in one day - would be driven back into the sea by the 24,000 French• men who were believed to be in Egypt. What fate, one wondered, awaited Great Britain's last armada (rescued momentarily from the scrapyard and Australia) when it sailed for the Falkland Islands ? My colleague Ronald C. Newton, who is fond of the Argentines he knows so much about, was heard to toast the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

NOTES

1. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976); Michael Howard, War in European History (London, 1976), and The Medi• terranean Strategy in the Second World War (London, 1968); C.N. Parkinson, Britannia Rules: The Classic Age of Naval History, 1793-1815 (London, 1977); R. Glover, Britain at Bay: Defence against Bonaparte, 1803-14 (London, 1973). 2. Kennedy, Naval Mastery, chs. 4-5. 3. Michael Howard, 'The British Way in Warfare'. 4. Paul M. Kennedy, 'Strategy versus finance in Twentieth Century Great Britain,' International History Review, in (1981), pp. 44-61. 5. Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars (London, 1972), ch. 3. 6. Glover, Britain at Bay, pp. 83-5. 7. Parkinson, Britannia Rules, pp. 16-18. 8. See Hugh Ragsdale, Detente in the Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians (Lawrence, 1980), 101-2. 9. Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: The Politics of Conservatism in a Revolu• tionary Age (Universal Library Edition, New York, 1964), pp. 5-6. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 10. Adams to Marshall, 8 Dec. 1800, USNA M44/2. The rise in prices is shown most clearly in the reports of the United States consuls at Liverpool, Bristol, and the Isle of Wight, filed in USNA M141/1, T185/2, and T239/1. 11. See below, Chapter VII.

77 VI

TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA, 1799-1801

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make. David Wylie What Every Woman Knows Act II

Studies of Anglo-Persian relations often explain the role of Persia in the defence of British India. One of the best books on the subject, by Rose Louise Greaves, takes this theme for its title.1 The approach reflects the confusion and resentment caused in the nineteenth century by the Persian Connection, which had at first been expected to help less with the defence than with the expansion of British India. The value of the Persian Connection lay in a connection with Persia. Talk of French and Afghan plans to invade India provided the occasion: they were not the cause of the connection nor was resis• tance to them the purpose of it. The Persian Connection was meant to turn into a copy of an Indian subsidiary alliance; to give the British control over the Kajar dynasty and its foreign policy. The governor- general of India, the Marquis Wellesley, was counting upon the connection to help him to legitimize the Anglo-Indian empire he was determined to create. Not being certain how this could be arranged most effectively, in the autumn of 1799 John Malcolm was sent on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 his first and most famous mission to Persia to find out. The merits of Persia were regularly compared by the British in the nineteenth century with the merits of her rival as Great Britain's Asiatic ally, Afghanistan. The comparison had first been made by the British resident at Baghdad, Harford Jones, during the war of the Second Coalition; much to the annoyance of Wellesley. In choosing Afghanistan instead of Persia, Jones made the wrong choice, and the faults he attributed to Persia should have been counted among her 78 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

virtues.2 The insecurity of the Kajars, by which Jones assumed that Wellesley ought to be abashed, might make them more easily con• trolled, if the British should be interested in making Persia strong. Alternatively, it might make them more easily undermined, should the British decide to keep Persia weak and disordered, perhaps by supporting rebellions in Fars organized by claimants of the former Zand dynasty. The idea that Great Britain would be better served by trying to keep Persia weak and disordered, rather than by trying to make her organized and strong, has been questioned by historians as distinguished as R. K. Ramazani.3 At times in the early nineteenth century, however, preference for weakness to strength seemed to be the orthodox assumption. It was the ground on which Henry Ellis, who defined Great Britain's goals in the Middle East at the beginning of the Great Game in Asia, tried in 1833 to persuade Lord Palmer• ston to support Mahmud II against Mahomet Ali.4 Nobody spoke up for the idea more vigorously than John Malcolm throughout his career.5 To get ahead in late eighteenth-century India, particularly at Madras, one was wise to be Scotch and a soldier: 'A man to cherish any hopes of favour at that settlement must either wear a sword; or have ... a Mack in his name.'6 Although John Malcolm lacked the prefix, he did come from Scotland. One of the seventeen children of an Eskdale farmer, he had been born in 1769, the same year as Bonaparte and the duke of Wellington, and was commissioned into the Indian Army at the age of thirteen. Ten years of ripping larks in a hostile climate eventually undermined his health. After a winter's convalescence in Scotland, he returned to India in 1794, having learned or been taught the necessary lesson that the best way for an officer to get ahead, bypassing the seniority meant to determine all appointments in the Indian Army, was to catch the eye of the governor-general and wangle a political or diplomatic post.7 Oppor• tunity came Malcolm's way upon the arrival of Wellesley in India in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 April 1798. While everybody else at Madras was resisting Welles• ley's demands for war against Mysore, Malcolm happily supported them.8 By doing so, he became one of the charter members of the revolutionary cabal, who saw in Wellesley's vision of an Anglo- Indian empire the quickest route home in comfort. 'Boy' Malcolm, as he was known, was big, talkative, and good at games. Everybody who met him was struck by his energy: some thought he must also be talented: 'great worth, extremely good

IDBI-D 79 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

sense,' remarked Wellesley,.. diligent, active, zealous.'9 Watching him play the Great Game in Asia makes one wonder; not about the energy and diligence, energy he did have in abundance, but about his sense and worth. Malcolm may have had character rather than judgment and now it is almost impossible to tell, so effectively was he turned by his biographer, Sir John Kaye, into the model Anglo- Indian official. Mid-Victorians, frozen by their code of conduct in mock-heroic posture as a safeguard against Tennysonian doubt, were taught to look back to Malcolm, while looking up to Dr. Arnold, as a guide in whose footsteps they might follow safely. Malcolm made a great hero. Judging from his treatment of anybody who stood in his way, he was also the nastiest of Wellesley's associates; quite as nasty as Harry Flashman.

II

Wellesley's interest in Persia stemmed from the attempts he made in 1798 to take his first step towards the replacement of the balance of power in India by the empire of which he was dreaming. A grand alliance was to have been negotiated between all of the Indian states with the exception of Mysore. The amir of Afghanistan, Zeman Shah, had been selected as their common enemy; the British con• tribution to their grand strategy was to be an attempt to divert Zeman Shah from Hindustan, by persuading the amirs of Sind and the shah of Persia to threaten his flank and rear. The shah was to march eastwards towards Herat, the amirs north-westwards towards Kandahar. The success of the plan would have led to closer British control over the nizam of Hyderabad, the vizier of Oudh, the peshwa of Poona, and Daulat Rao Sindhia. Owing to Sindhia's refusal to return home to Hindustan from Poona, however, the plan had to be abandoned. Wellesley turned instead to the partition of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Mysore and its equivalent in northern India, the partition of Oudh. Both were planned as the prelude to an attempt to overpower the Maratha Confederacy.10 Because the placement of a British army along the north-west frontier of Oudh would threaten Sindhia, Wellesley needed the help of, even if he did not actually make up, the threat of an Afghan invasion. It might help him to convince the Marathas and, perhaps more important, the East India Company and the board of control, that forward policies were necessary for

80 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

safety. John Malcolm's mission to Tehran in 1799 was part of the deception; a connection with Persia one of the gains to be made by it. A second opportunity to disguise revolution as the preservation of the established political system had been given to Wellesley in the summer of 1799 by the French invasion of Syria. The meaning of Wellesley's letters in response to the invasion is, as always, hard to find, because hidden behind hyperbole and never what it seems: they were written to mislead, not to explain. Although Malcolm's instruc• tions were not drawn up until October 1799, after the government of India had heard of the retreat of the French from Syria, they had been drafted earlier in the summer and are one of the many examples of Wellesley's determination to take advantage of the fright the French invasion of Egypt had given the East India Company and the board of control. The instructions were apparently confined to the particu• lar cases of Anglo-Persian co-operation against a French or an Afghan invasion. Should the French ever march overland to India through Syria, Baghdad, and Luristan, the route Henry Dundas had expected them to follow, Wellesley offered both to send British warships to the Persian Gulf, to protect the left flank of the Persian army trying to block their way, and to equip the Persian troops with British guns and ammunition. If Malcolm should decide that the Persians could be expected to fight more effectively than the Turks, whom both Harford Jones at Baghdad and Sir Sidney Smith at Acre expected to do little and who had been defeated by Bonaparte in Syria, Wellesley also offered to copy one of Pitt's and Grenville's spendthrift habits. Persia would be paid a monthly subsidy during the campaign against the French or an agreed proportion of the cost of it.11 Asiatic states, like European states, were expected by the British to recognize the interest they shared with Great Britain in limiting the power of France. This claim was needed in Europe to preserve the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 balance of power. In India, it offered a route to empire. Although the coalition between the French, Zeman Shah, and Tipu Sultan, which had been fabricated by Wellesley in 1798, had been destroyed by the partition of Mysore, British India was to be portrayed by Wellesley as still in danger, until the partition of Oudh should make it safe from Zeman Shah. Supposedly, Malcolm was to buy time for this. The retreat of Zeman Shah from Lahore in January 1799 had been attributed by Wellesley to an attack on Herat, organized by two of 81 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Zeman's brothers who lived in exile in Persia, followed by a Persian invasion of Khorasan.12 Malcolm was to persuade the shah of Persia to persevere in his attempt to conquer Khorasan for three more years. The bribe was an offer to pay a third of the cost of the campaigns. Particular objectives, especially if they depended upon military co• operation, were never of much interest to Wellesley, who had usually made up the threats against which he pretended to be planning a defence. What did interest him was the general political objective of tying as many Indian states as possible as closely as possible to the British. In Wellesley's vision of India, Persia had been changed into one of them. Like the renegotiation in 1799-1800 of the British alliance with Hyderabad, Malcolm's mission to Persia was an attempt to derive every collateral advantage, as Wellesley would have put it,13 from a decisive shift in the Indian balance of power in favour of the British. The cause of this was the ease and decisiveness of the British victory over Tipu Sultan, and the 'consolidation of that great power which the [East India] Company had through t[his] means attained ... made it impossible that Persia should be over• looked.'14 This was how Malcolm explained his mission to the British resident at Basra, Samuel Manesty, to silence criticism that the simplest way to protect British India while Wellesley partitioned Oudh would have been a mission to Afghanistan instead of Persia. According to Manesty, had Wellesley really been worried about defending British India against the French, he should have tried to stabilize the Durrani empire in Afghanistan, instead of trying to destroy it in co-operation with the Kajars, who had yet to show any sign of being capable of taking its place.15 The real reason for Malcolm's mission was also explained to the Persians, who were told by Malcolm of Wellesley's 'wish to establish a political union between the two states that they would ... have common enemies

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 and common friends.'16 Only the British government and the East India Company were, for as long as possible, to be deceived. Owing to the decline during the eighteenth century of the power of Turkey and Persia, Wellesley's attempt to incorporate Middle Eastern states into the Anglo-Indian empire he was determined to create, was itself likely to provoke a response from the European states Wellesley was hoping to keep out of the area. This likelihood was first revealed at Muscat. If French frigates, usually based at 82 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

Mauritius, were permitted to use Muscat as a base, they might destroy the trade between the Middle East and the west coast of India which still made a profit for the employees of the East India Com• pany at Bombay. In the autumn of 1798, the governor of Bombay had sent the British resident at Bushire to persuade the ruler of Muscat, the imam of Oman, to stay neutral in the war of the Second Coalition, in return for greater opportunities to trade with British ports in India.17 A bargain was soon made. The resident persuaded the imam in November to dismiss the Frenchmen he employed; to close his ports in Arabia and Africa to French ships; and to let the British control access to the Persian Gulf, by rebuilding and fortify• ing the factory at Bandar Abbas they had evacuated in 1763.18 The agreement meant nothing, as the imam could not reasonably be expected to keep to it. Wellesley was determined to make him. Having accused the imam of helping Tipu Sultan,19 which was tanta• mount to acting as an agent of French imperialism, Wellesley there• fore sent Malcolm to Muscat in January 1800 on his way up the Persian Gulf to Bushire. The British had good reasons for trying to make sure that the imam kept his distance from the French. His fleet boasted five crusiers of twenty guns apiece; he owned twenty more ships rigged in the European style; and, as the leading merchant, as well as the ruler, of Muscat and Zanzibar, he had the wealth to keep his ships in commission.20 Combined with the French, he could have wreaked havoc with British trade in the Arabian Sea and the bay of Bengal. For Wellesley, anybody who was not to be treated as an enemy, had to prove himself a friend. Usually, this could not be done without making a British resident feel welcome by taking his advice. As a gesture of the government of India's interest in closer relations with Muscat, Malcolm therefore left behind his doctor to act as resident until Wellesley should replace him by a civil servant from Bombay.21 Doctors played a part second only to soldiers at the beginning of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the Great Game in Asia, but Dr. Bogle did not live to join the many who became famous. Muscat was one of the vilest spots in the Middle East to be posted at: in a year Bogle was dead. Although he was replaced, the attempt made by Malcolm and Wellesley to turn the imam into an ally of Great Britain was bound to fail and was recognized to have failed in 1806, when the resident was recalled.22 As the government of Bombay was to realize more quickly than Wellesley, who always treated his allies as clients, the British had the 83 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

same interest at Muscat as in Egypt. They had only to make sure that the French did not step in: they had no need to step in themselves. More serious than the possibility of a tussle with France for control over Muscat was the less immediate possibility of a tussle with Russia over Persia, owing to the annexation of Georgia by Russia during the year taken by Malcolm on his journey to Tehran. At first, this development did not seem likely to affect the diversion of Zeman Shah. Despite the alarm feigned by Wellesley,23 the invasion of Khorasan by Persia in the summer of 1799 had prevented Zeman Shah from trying to make another attempt to conquer the Punjab. Should the shah of Persia continue the campaign in Khora• san in the spring of 1800, Zeman Shah would be kept busy for another year. Wellesley would be given plenty of time to overawe the government of Oudh and to use both his demands on the nawab- vizier and Malcolm's mission to Persia to justify one another. Whether the Persian army was sent to attack Meshed or the attack on it was left to Zeman Shah's brothers, the amir would be forced to do all he could to defend Meshed in case its fall should be followed by a Persian attack on Herat. According to Malcolm, 'the reduction of Khorasan would hazard the very existence of the Afghan govern• ment.'24 Such a dramatic development would not have suited Wellesley's imperialist system of politics and was not his preferred goal. As Zeman Shah was only a pretended menace, not a real one, he did not have to be destroyed, merely diverted to an area where his efforts to preserve his empire might both help to stabilize the Anglo-Indian empire Wellesley was determined to create and help him to bring both Persia and Afghanistan within its boundaries. The British could not tell whether Afghanistan was a stronger state than Persia; did not much care; and did nothing to find out. Wellesley made one or the other the stronger as he needed it, either as an enemy or as an ally. One thing about them both was known, however: that neither of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 them was strong enough to threaten the British until backed up by a powerful European state. Malcolm's mission was meant to forestall such a development in Persia; a similar connection with Sind was to seal off Afghanistan. The balance of tension between Persia and Afghanistan would then be maintained by the preservation of a buffer state in Khorasan.25 Both Persia and Afghanistan would look to the British for support in their claims to Khorasan, while the British would carefully give support to neither of them. 84 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

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Basra. oYezd i» Kerman. i»i»i» i»i» V* 3 Shiraz i»i» §6uikire i»i» i»i»i» i»i» \i»i» < n w h i»*7 y ' OM.& i»i»i» i»i»i» tke' Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 CAUCASUS Muscat ? 6

85 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

The Kajars were strong enough to divert the attention of Zeman Shah from the Punjab to Khorasan. They were not necessarily strong enough to keep control over Persia. Towards the end of May 1800, Malcolm set out from Bushire to await the outcome of the summer's campaign at Shiraz. He did this at the insistence of the government of Fars and against his will. He would have preferred to wait at Bushire, because he had realized that the Kajars valued a British embassy only in so far as they could use it to heighten their prestige in the eyes of their subjects. Although their calculation suited Wellesley, who wanted to turn the Persian Connection into the buttress holding up the Kajar regime, it limited the chances of making British India safer, supposedly the other object of Malcolm's mission. If Persia could not make a dangerous enemy, she could not make a valuable friend. And if the Persian army could not be expected to defeat a European army marching eastwards unless heavily reinforced from India, Persia could do no better as Great Britain's necessary Asiatic ally than Turkey and Afghanistan, who were preferred by the board of control. Malcolm doubted whether much could be expected from any of them. 'Asiatic nations were but weak barriers against ... the approach of European[s].'26 Paradoxically, Malcolm would presently explain that in their very weakness lay their strength. The character of the Persian state resembled for Malcolm the character of its inhabitants, whom he disliked. As he later phrased it:27

View millions by a Despot kept in awe, His nod their mandate, and his will their law: Ne'er on that land has Freedom shed one ray, By Fate decreed to feel tyrannic sway.

Whether this tyranny of the rulers had caused the infamy of their subjects, or the reverse, was a choice the British need not make: they should keep their distance from both. Malcolm's attitude permeated Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the members of his staff. 'The moral character of the Persians ... is extremely abandoned and degraded,' said one of his aides. 'The generality of them are sunk in the lowest state of profligacy and infamy, and most shamefully addicted to vices, which are abhorred and detested in every civilized country in the world; but which ... they do not scruple alluding to, with the most shameless indiffer• ence.'28 One is not certain whether their acts or their admission of

86 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

them gave the greater offence. One does see the start of a habit which would soon turn into a national characteristic: 'The disposition of our countrymen to do all things in their own way and not to adapt themselves to ... the country they are in.'29 In itself, this was a good habit. It ought not to have led to silly complaints about other people. Malcolm's dislike of both the Persians and their rulers accounts for the recommendations he made for the next thirty years about the way in which the government of India should treat the shah. Although Malcolm's influence would be at its greatest in 1808, when he persuaded the governor-general to threaten the use of force against Persia, and against the repercussions expected from the treaty of Adrianople, he first made his views known in February 1800, almost as soon as he had landed at Bushire. Malcolm's pre• scription for controlling events in Persia without being contaminated by close contact with Persians was contained in a report to Wellesley upon the best way to revive Great Britain's trade. The East India Company's trade with the Persian Gulf had been declining since plague had swept the province of Baghdad and decimated the population of Basra in 1773. The decline of trade with Persia was attributed by Malcolm to the political disorder which followed the death of Karim Khan Zand in 1779 and which the Kajars had shown no sign of bringing to an end. Instructions from weak imperial governments had never protected merchants from the rapacity of provincial governors, nor could more effective protection be expected from a new commerical treaty. Only Persians could trade in Persia, 'who are alone qualified to combat the infamy of each other, and elude by strategems the chicanery and oppression of this government.'30 The situation was regrettable because, despite the decline of trade, it remained highly profitable for the British. Malcolm estimated the value of trade between India and the Persian Gulf in 1800 to be £1,600,000. Of this sum, £80,000 was cash

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 paid by the Persians to cover the difference in price between the goods they bought and the goods they sold. A similar difference at Basra earned the British £100,000.31 The figures undoubtedly over• estimated the value of the trade, however, and underestimated its decline. Malcolm also overestimated the chances of reviving the trade; to be done, as it had been done so successfully by the Portu• guese 300 years earlier, from a fortress in the Persian Gulf. In the opinion of his great rival, Harford Jones, Malcolm 'had a 87 IDBI-D* IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

furious passion for the possession of an island in the gulf.'32 Actually, Malcolm wanted two islands: from Kishm in the strait of Hormuz, the British could monitor arrivals by sea from the Indian Ocean; they were to monitor trade between the Middle Eastern states and help to stabilize the balance of power in the region from Kharg, a little further up the gulf than Bushire. Malcolm's island fortress was not the only one being proposed. The commander of a British expedition to Perim was simultaneously trying to persuade Wellesley that Aden would be just as valuable to the British, giving them control over access to the Red Sea and the trade between India and south Arabia.33 In the best eighteenth-century tradition, each man was hoping to serve himself as well as the state. Whenever Malcolm made his proposal, he offered to take command of the garrison, and, as he rose in rank, the size of the garrison grew: each time, its size would justify his promotion. The one time Malcolm had his way, in 1808, he was also promoted to brigadier-general, at the insistence of the governor- general and to the annoyance of the commander-in-chief. Careful cultivation of governors-general, not victory in battle, was to be the secret of Malcolm's success. 'Preferring diplomacy to fighting' was fair enough.34 When playing the Great Game in Asia, one was sup• posed to persuade other people to do any fighting. The fortress in the Persian Gulf was to act partly as a bazaar. Goods were to be attracted from the whole of the Middle East, to be sold on terms controlled by the British. Merchants would be protected against the exactions of local potentates; their goods pro• tected against European competition. The idea was dismissed by Malcolm's critics as nonsensical. Owing to the wretched poverty of the Persians, who also had nothing to sell, they could not be expected to buy more British goods: the Arabs now preferred to buy the goods they had once bought from the British from the French. The staple British export to the Persian Gulf in the eighteenth century had been

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 woollen goods. The Arabs preferred French designs; the northern part of Persia was supplied from Russia, with whom Great Britain could not hope to compete.35 The shift of the Persian silk industry to Russia in the eighteenth century had been one of the causes of Persia's economic stagnation. Profits from the sale of silk had been used to make up the deficit on trade with India. The only other way to make up the deficit was debasement of the coinage. Therefore, even if sales in Persia could be made to show a profit on paper, the 88 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

profit would disappear as soon as the Persian coin was converted into rupees.36 If the hope of reviving British trade had been intended to convince the East India Company of the commercial value of an island base in the Persian Gulf, its strategic value was meant to impress the board of control. Malcolm portrayed it in a manner similar to Disraeli's portrayal of Cyprus as 'a material guarantee': as 'an obstacle of magnitude to the nearer approach to India of any power whatever.'37 Although, as long as the French army remained in Egypt, Great Britain's likely enemy in the Middle East would be France, Malcolm hoped that he had also found a way to protect British interests in the area without entanglement with Russia. Oddly enough, his Scottish relatives, to whom he had said nothing, assumed that he had been sent to Persia to hold back Russia as much as France.38 The only imminent danger from Russia to British India foreseen by Malcolm was the possibility of another Russo-Persian war over Georgia, per• haps caused by the preference of the inhabitants of the Mahometan Khanates, lying between Georgia and Azerbaijan, for stable Russian rule in preference to the upheaval and extortion promised by the Kajars. The British would have to hope that the shah would give up Georgia as lost. They must also make certain that their connection with Persia did not lead him to expect their help in reconquering it.39 Here, Malcolm had glimpsed the reason why the Great Game in Asia would have to be played differently against Russia than France. To endanger British India, France had to threaten an invasion or create a new empire in the Middle East. Russia merely had to expand. For this reason, a fortress in the Persian Gulf would have been a less effective defence against the Russians than the French. A French army marching eastwards might be defeated by a British flank attack. British troops at Kharg could do nothing to stop the Russians from annexing the Mahometan Khanates nor, later in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 century, from marching eastwards from Astarabad towards Herat. Neither of these contingencies would matter much to Wellesley. Although the fortress was to appear a defence against invasion, it was in fact meant to help the British take control of Persia's foreign policy. An attempt to reconquer Georgia and an attempt to push beyond Khorasan into Afghanistan were both to be prevented by a threat to undermine the tenuous grip of the Kajars on southern Persia.40 89 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

An island fortress in the Persian Gulf was therefore meant to help the British both maintain their local command of the sea and extend the range of sea power far inland. Self sufficient or, when necessary, supplied from the sea; able to control developments in the surround• ing states while remaining unaffected by them: the base was to exemplify sea power as described by Mahan. The British were to possess at Kharg the base they were always trying to find in the Mediterranean: somewhere from which they could help to regulate the balance of power while remaining unaffected by fluctuations in it. Unfortunately, the only time the British tried to set up an island base in the Persian Gulf, at Kishm in 1821, they found the island short of water.41 The same discovery had been made at Perim in 1799, and the same criticism was levelled against the proposal for an island base in southern Arabia as was levelled against Malcolm's proposal for a base in the Persian Gulf. Harford Jones, for one, believed that an island base could do nothing to help revive British trade with the Middle East, defend British India against overland invasion, or help to turn the Kajars into British dependants. Troops at Kharg could do nothing to hold back the Russians: they would not be needed to hold back the French. If the government of India planned to defend itself against a French invasion from Baghdad by a flank attack on the French army in Persia, the expedition might as well start from Bombay. The garrison at Kharg was bound to need reinforcement. As long, there• fore, as the British were in command of the Arabian Sea, they did not need a base in the Middle East: if they were to lose their command of the sea, they could not protect it. What troops at Kharg could not do by themselves they would be just as unable to persuade the Persians or the Arabs to do on their behalf. The fortress would give the British no leverage over the shah and the governor of Baghdad. The Persians and the Arabs could not be forced to help the British by the threat of an attack on Bushire or Basra, which would merely drive Great

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Britain's necessary allies into the arms of her enemy. The blockade of local trade would do no damage. 'The ruin of a few merchants by the confiscation of their property would neither induce the Persians nor Turks to take up arms ... relieve the country from its invaders, nor cause those invaders to abandon their designs.'42 Wellesley's vision of an Anglo-Indian empire, not the designs of the French in Egypt, was the origin of Malcolm's plan for a British base at Kharg. Anybody playing the Great Game in Asia in the 90 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

nineteenth century had to decide whether, at any moment, frontier policy mattered more than imperial defence. Thirty years later, Sir Charles Metcalfe and Lord William Bentinck were determined to avoid grand strategies in Central Asia likely to cause upheaval along the British North-West Frontier. Henry Dundas during the war of the Second Coalition, like Lord Ellenborough after the treaty of Turkmanchay, had made the opposite choice. Forward policies beyond the frontier could be justified by their contribution to imperial defence. Wellesley, who knew this, made sure to wear the appropriate disguise. But he saw no need to make the choice Harford Jones had made on behalf of Henry Dundas. The Persian Connection was to appear to be, and may be to provide, a defence against European invasion. At the same time, it was also to push the political frontier of the empire Wellesley was trying to create as far to the north-west as the frontier between Persia and Russia in the Caucasus.

Ill Malcolm's visit to Tehran was a short one. Between November 1800 and February 1801, he had come and gone, trailing his bills behind him. 'I fear my bills, if not my letters,' he admitted, 'will ensure me a place in your memory.'43 So they did. His extravagance and show, reminiscent of Gina Lollabrigida's progress from King Vidor's Sheba to meet Yul Brynner at Jerusalem, made travelling in Persia pro• hibitively costly for Englishmen.44 The government of India was left thinking that subsidies were the way to make the most of the Persian Connection: the shah was left happy to make them the object of it. Malcolm was accompanied in Persia by six Indian Army officers including his cousin, Charles Pasley, two English servants, two surveying boys, an escort of 42 troopers from Madras, 49 grenadiers from Bombay, 68 Indian servants, 236 camp followers, 137 horses,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 27 camels, and 346 mules. The mission was to cost £100,000, nearly half the annual cost of the Mediterranean fleet and a sum on which David Cecil's Whig noble family could jog along nicely for five years. In September 1800, as Malcolm was preparing to leave Shiraz, he explained why a British connection with Persia would have no choice but to exploit the weakness of the Kajars. The campaign in Khorasan in 1800 had been a failure. Meshed had withstood a siege, and although the diversion of Zeman Shah had suited the British, the 91 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

defeat of the Persian army expected by Malcolm would not have suited them. In an attempt to recover the prestige lost in Khorasan, the Kajars might then invade Baghdad.45 This had often happened in the eighteenth century; had been predicted by Harford Jones;46 and was often to alarm the British in the future. The dynastic needs of the Kajars could not be permitted to lead to exchanges of territory in areas where instability was likely to endanger British India. If Welles• ley's connection with Persia should seem to be leading to the attack on the sultan that Jones had warned the board of control to expect, the shah could not be portrayed as Great Britain's necessary Asiatic ally and the expansion of British India would be criticized for under• mining the Second Coalition. In December 1800, Malcolm was told to make certain that Persia and Turkey remained at peace.47 Baghdad was to be treated during the nineteenth century, together with Herat, as one of the two keys to British India.48 Long before utilitarians dreamt of steamers sailing up the Indus and the Tigris- Euphrates, Baghdad was reckoned to be one of the best places at which the British could defend British India cheaply and far away. Dundas had hoped to set up a barrier at Baghdad between British India and the French army in Egypt and Syria. Baghdad was expected to play just as important a part in the defence of British India against Russia. According to Malcolm, the Kajars were unlikely to put an end to the thirty years of disorder in Persia. Their failure would not necessarily endanger the British, as long as the tribes who disobeyed the central government also held back the Russians. If guerilla war could pin down the Russians to the western shore of the Caspian Sea, they might abandon Catherine II's forward policy in Azerbaijan for alternate attacks on Turkey's European and Asiatic provinces, so successful in the past. An apparent victory in Persia might, therefore, quickly turn into a defeat in Turkey. Unless prevented, Russian control of Baghdad might threaten the British in India as effectively as had the French army in Egypt, or as effectively as Russian control

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 of the Straits would threaten to destroy the European balance of power.49 The Russians, who might turn into a serious threat, were also a distant one; the threat from the Kajars was closer but easily dealt with. A Persian attack on Turkey could always be prevented as long as the British possessed a lever to use against the government of Fars.50 Although the need of such a lever led Malcolm straight back to his island fortress at Kishm or Kharg, the strategy was not to 92 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

depend on it. Later variations were the support of Zand pretenders; the gift by Salisbury of a Star of India to the governor of Isfahan; and the partition of Persia into spheres of influence in 1907. By then the strategy had become defensive. It had started life as an effective offensive in a country where the habitual violence among a predomi• nantly nomadic population would make the help of the imperial government, whom the British would have difficulty controlling, not worth the purchase. The alternative connection with the government of Fars, although likely to prove more effective against France than against Russia, might have been cemented by the profits on trade. In the late eighteenth century, Fars and the neighbouring provinces of Yezd and Kerman were more prosperous, when compared with the regions north of Isfahan, than they later became. Malcolm's opinion that they might have remained the more prosperous, had the trade between India and Persia been developed to its fullest potential, has recently been echoed by Gavin Hambly.51 Wellesley was not to set his stamp on the Persian Connection until 1810 when he had become foreign secretary and sent Sir Gore Ousely to negotiate the definitive terms of the treaty of Tehran. In 1800, he may not yet have decided how Persia and Great Britain ought to be connected. He had, however, decided to make the connection, which in itself ruled out certain choices and compelled him to make others. Unless these choices are understood, no sense can be made of Malcolm's negotiations at Tehran. Wellesley wanted a general not a particular connection. Harping on the particular threats from the French army in Egypt or Zeman Shah was Welles• ley's way of trying to calm the board of control and the East India Company; to persuade them that in the future the Persian Connec• tion would protect British India against similar threats. It was to meet Dundas's demand for a strategy capable of defending British India both cheaply and far away. Wellesley also realized that British policy in Persia must take

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 account of the wars between Persia and Russia for control over the eastern half of the Caucasus, which partly explains why he ignored the advice given to him by Malcolm. The Persian Connection could not rest, as Malcolm had suggested, upon the traditional disorder in Persia, in case disorder should turn into instability. Although the Kajars could not be expected to govern Persia, merely to rule it, they must be made effective enough not to need foreign adventures to heighten their prestige. Attempts by the Kajars to reconquer Georgia 93 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

or Baghdad were bound to embarrass the British, by entangling the creation and preservation of Wellesley's Anglo-Indian empire with the preservation of the European balance of power. Disorder in Persia and an alliance with a Zand pretender or the government of Fars might protect British India against overland invasion. In order to replace the balance of power in India by an empire, however, Wellesley needed a hold over the imperial government at Tehran. Whereas Malcolm's arguments and his preference for an island fortress in the Persian Gulf would lead to the treatment of Persia as a buffer state, Wellesley wanted a connection that would help him to turn Persia into a protectorate. He could have managed this most easily, if the Russians would have agreed to treat Persia as the frontier province of British India, having the same status as they had recently given to Georgia. The shah was to copy the ruler of Georgia: to play simultaneously the parts of viceroy and king.52 That the shah would have become the viceroy of a vicery would not in the least have embarrassed Wellesley, who, to the great annoyance of George III, had kingly ideas of his position.53 Wellesley's goal explains his lack of interest in the bases offered him by Malcolm. Malcolm was told to acquire Kishm, as long as he was not asked to pay for it, but not for the reasons he wanted it.54 A base in the Persian Gulf would merely help to speed up the overland post. Island fortresses in the Middle East would become the out-posts of a seaborne empire whose trade was protected by its navy, a role they had played for the Portuguese. Wellesley had little time for sailors, partly owing to the admiralty's refusal to put him in charge of them in the way he had been put in charge of the army. In 1800 Dundas had had him made captain-general.55 Wellesley also dreamt of land power not sea power; of a continental empire stretching as far as the north-west frontiers of its Middle Eastern protectorates. Finally, island fortresses and combined operations of the sort Malcolm recommended and Harford Jones disparaged, were defensive. They Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 might be needed in time to come, as they were again thought to be necessary in the 1820s and 1830s, to help defend the empire Welles• ley was planning to conquer. Set up too soon, the fortresses might not help Wellesley. They might stand in his way. John Malcolm arrived at Tehran on 12 November 1800, highly enjoying the pomp and ceremony with which he was welcomed and for which the government of India had paid so dearly. Everybody attached to the embassy had gone off to Persia high with excitement

94 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

and had obviously enjoyed himself. While waiting at Bushire, Richard Strachey gave as much time to riding and dancing as to study. Charles Pasley's brother was warned that a letter from a member of the diplomatic corps had to be treated with suitable respect, 'placing it on your head while you read it ... if on the contrary you wipe your — with it, as I have a shrewd suspicion you have done before this with some of my former favours, I shall certainly treat you for the future with silent contempt.'56 There was good reason for all the high spirits. Malcolm's first mission to Persia was the start of a distinguished career for everybody connected with it. The high cost of the mission was easily justified. As long as Welles• ley was planning to connect Persia to his Anglo-Indian empire, the British had to show off their wealth to the Kajars as the only avail• able symbol of their power. The rich and powerful ought to spend; their consumption ought to be conspicious. Or so it was assumed in the eighteenth century, in contrast to these bedraggled times, when the poor spend while the rich, tax-havening abroad, sell one by one, like asset strippers, the paintings the public have paid to see. Show was particularly necessary in Persia, if Malcolm was to persuade 'an unsteady and avaricious prince' to treat the governor-general as his equal and pay no attention to the blandishments of France and Russia.57 Despite this, the British, being as good as, if not better than, other people at self-deception, did not wish to attribute their success to their extravagance. The value of the Persian Connection was lowered from the start by Malcolm's wish to believe that the shah was 'very partial to the English.'58 The need to be loved, or to seem to be loved by Persians and Arabs, would not endanger the British, only as long as they saw themselves reflected in whoever they met. By the twentieth century, their will sapped by their recognition of the existence of other people, they were left unprotected against the whims of Sheikh Faisal.59

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 In obedience to Wellesley's instructions to treat the general as more important than the particular, Malcolm had decided to avoid, if possible, a treaty with specific terms and 'to form some of a general nature.'60 He also hoped to do this quickly, usually a forlorn hope in Kajar Persia. The shah's advisers were not united in supporting a British connection. The negotiations might, therefore, have been dragged out for a long time, had not the grand vizier thought that a treaty with the British would provide a means of recovering the 95 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

influence he had recently lost.61 Malcolm was also helped by events in Khorasan. Despite the failure in the summer of the Persian army, Zeman's brothers had been so successful that Malcolm told Welles• ley not to worry about an Afghan invasion of Hindustan in 1801 and to 'do what you like in Oudh.'62 The balance of political power at Tehran and the events in Khora• san enabled Malcolm to hide Wellesley's interest in turning Persia into a protectorate behind his supposed interest in reviving Anglo- Persian trade. Trade was also used to disguise the British interest in Kishm and Kharg. Malcolm's eagerness to take over the islands nearly, however, led the negotiations to break down. The shah would not agree to give the islands away. Fortunately for Malcolm, the shah did agree to allow the envoy he was planning to send to India to discuss their future with the governor of Bombay. Knowing how slight an interest Wellesley had taken in the islands, Malcolm claimed that his own eagerness had been used to hide from the Persians the significance of the proposed Anglo-Persian alliance: 'It has been, in consequence, easily concluded, which the avarice of the court would have prevented had they ever dreamed it was the principal object of the embassy.'63 Instead of impressing the Kajars, Malcolm's extravagance and show had apparently whetted their appetite. Captain Malcolm's treaties, as the British always referred to them, were ready for signature on 28 January 1801. Given Malcolm's opinions about Persia and its system of government, the terms of the commercial treaty, which obliged the two states to protect one another's merchants, recover goods stolen from them, and make certain money owed to them was paid, were not likely to do much to revive Anglo-Persian trade. The more important terms gave English• men the right to live in Persia without paying taxes, and levied a duty of only one per cent, to be paid by the purchaser, on goods formerly sold in Persia by the East India Company. Outstanding questions, by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 which the shah meant his determination to hold on to Kishm and Kharg, were to be dealt with in India by the Persian ambassador. Malcolm, who described the terms of the commercial treaty as 'calculated to give ... [it] an equitable appearance [rather] than to burden the English government with any serious engagements,' might have said the same of the Anglo-Persian alliance.64 Its terms were to cause great bitterness, however, between Great Britain and Persia, being carelessly worded and easily misunderstood. The first 96 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

article stated that 'conditions of mutual aid and assistance shall be instituted, and all causes of hatred and hostility shall be banished.'65 Although the British treated the article as a formality, it was shortly to be used by the shah in support of a demand for British help against Russia. The other articles dealt with the French and the Afghans. If the Afghans should 'ever show a resolution to invade India, which is subject to the government of the king of England,' Persia was to invade Afghanistan. Persia was also to insist upon the abandonment of plans to invade India as a condition of any treaty made with Afghanistan in the future. In return, if the Afghans or the French should invade Persia, the British were to send guns and a military mission to help the shah to defend himself. Finally, if the French should send an expedition by sea to the Persian coast of the Persian Gulf or to one of the islands belonging to the shah, a joint Anglo- Persian expedition was to be sent to drive them out. The French must forever be denied what had so far been refused to the British. As soon as the treaties had been signed, Malcolm left Tehran, accompanied as far as Baghdad by the Persian ambassador to India. By the middle of May 1801 Malcolm was back at Bombay, confident that he and his cousin had 'succeeded to their most sanguine hopes.'66 The real purpose of the treaties had been carefully disguised. The shah was not forbidden by treaty to make friends with France or to receive a French ambassador at Tehran, even one accompanied by a military mission. Such a development did not worry Wellesley, who knew that it could not be prevented. As long as the French could be prevented from setting up the base in the Persian Gulf they had often talked about, the government of India could defeat a French or Franco-Persian army marching eastwards, either by a flank attack or by supporting a Zand pretender in Fars. The clauses of the alliance dealing with the French therefore reflected both Wellesley's own scepticism about the danger to British India from a French army of occupation in Egypt or Syria, which he knew he could depend on the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 war office to pin down, and his need to convince the board of control and the East India Company of the opposite. The most important subject discussed at Tehran had been left out of the treaty, although revealing most about it. Malcolm had promised the shah some artillery. The artillery was intended to tilt the balance of power in Khorasan in the shah's favour; help him to strengthen the grasp on Persia of the Kajar dynasty; and teach him the habit of dependence on the British, his source of supplies. The 97 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

British expectations of the artillery also explain the peculiar descrip• tion of India in the treaty. If the 'India, which is subject to the king of England,' meant British India, the treaty would not have provided help against Zeman Shah in 1798 and was the unnecessary defence against an imaginary danger Sir Henry Rawlinson called it.67 If one were to overlook the changes in punctuation since the eighteenth century, the meaning would be given away by the position of the comma. The territory defended by the treaty was not British India as it existed in 1801, but the Anglo-Indian empire dreamt of by Welles• ley and all of his disciples.68 The shah of Persia was not asked to defend British India against the French, nor even against the Afghans. He was to help the British to control political change in Afghanistan. In case changes in the government of Afghanistan should lead to changes in its foreign policy, the Persian Connection should be used to maintain the balance of tension in Khorasan and, with it, help to prevent shifts in the Indian balance of power. At the end of September 1801, after Wellesley had at last per• suaded the nawab-vizier to agree to the partition of Oudh, he at last sent to England copies of Malcolm's correspondence and explained to the East India Company the value of a connection with Persia. This had to be done with care. Although the board of control had been willing to go along with Wellesley's plan to overhaul the nawab-vizier's army, it had criticized Malcolm's mission. By en• tangling the British in Persia's long-standing disputes with Turkey and Russia, such a strategy for the defence of British India might increase the difficulty of propping up the Second Coalition.69 To forestall further criticism, Wellesley's instructions to Malcolm to treat the general as more important than the particular were now turned about. The Persian Connection, explained Wellesley, had relieved him 'from the necessity of making expensive military preparations on the frontier of Oudh.'70 It had defended British India against Zeman Shah and the French at the same time as proving the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 danger from them. If the Persian Connection was supposed to help the British to separate the European and Indian political systems, it was also supposed to help them to transform the Indian political system by helping Wellesley to legitimize his Anglo-Indian empire. In March 1801, Zeman Shah had lost his throne and had fled into exile. The cause of his defeat was a tribal war in Afghanistan, which Zeman's brothers had been able to turn to their advantage.71 Despite this, 98 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

his overthrow was always attributed by Wellesley to the Persian invasions of Khorasan. The shah of Persia was to play in the future the part he had failed to play so far. The overthrow of Zeman Shah had been followed by 'a state of confusion in the country of the Afghans, highly favourable to our security,' to be kept going by Persian intervention whenever necessary.72 One of the functions of the Persian Connection was to prevent the reunification of Afghani• stan as the most easily disguised way to stablize the north-west frontier of the Anglo-Indian empire of which only the British govern• ment and the Maratha Confederacy now stood in the way. The terms of the Anglo-Persian treaty would have been a novelty in Europe. They were standard practice in India. European alliances were always directed against a specified enemy for a specified term. The Anglo-Persian connection was to be permanent and the two enemies it was ostensibly directed against had been destroyed almost before it was signed. This did not diminish its value. The enemy subsidiary alliances in India worked to destroy was the independence of Great Britain's own allies. The same was true of the Persian Connection. Wellesley was hoping to turn the Kajars into British dependants. They would not be asked to defend British India against France or Russia: the British might even do what they could to intercede with Russia on Persia's behalf.73 Instead, British control over the Kajars and the creation of Wellesley's Anglo-Indian empire would forestall the further expansion of Russia in the Caucasus by transforming the Mahometan Khanates into a buffer between a Russian protectorate over Georgia and a British protectorate over Persia. The object as well as the result of the Persian Connection was to entangle the British in the local politics of the Middle Eastern states.

NOTES Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 1. R.L. Greaves, Persia and the Defence of India, 1884-1892 (London, 1959). 2. See E. Ingram, Commitment to Empire: Prophecies of the Great Game in Asia, 1797-1800 (Oxford, 1981) pp.257-61, 282-3. 3. R. K. Ramazani, The Foreign Policy of Iran, 1500-1914 (Charlottesville, 1966), pp.36-7, 43. 4. E. Ingram, The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia, 1828-1834 (Oxford, 1979), pp.238-40. 5. For a good later example see 'Notes [by Sir J. Malcolm] on the Invasion of India by Russia,' in Malcolm to Ellenborough, private, 1 July 1830, PRO 30/9/4, pt. 5/7. 99 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

6. Jones to Kerig, 27 April 1787, Kentchurch Court MSS 9210, p. 72. 7. Clive to Strachey, 1 Feb. 1800, Strachey MSS DD/SH/B.6. 8. Memorandum by Malcolm, 15 Sept. 1798, Clive MSS 1821. 9. Wellesley to Clive, private and confidential, 29 July 1798, Powis MSS 552/7/146; C. Pasley to C.W. Pasley, 14 April 1800, Add. MSS 41961, fo. 97; Clive to Strachey, 19 Oct. 1799, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/6. 10. Wellesley to Clarke, private and secret, 8 March 1799, Add. MSS 13724, fo. 139. 11. Kirkpatrick to Malcolm, 10 Oct. 1799, Wellesley, v. 82; postscript, 5 Sept., to ggic to sc, 3 Sept. 1799, IO L/PS/5/3, p.265. 12. Wellesley to Bosanquet, 12 Feb. 1799, IO L/PS/5/3, p. 189. 13. Wellesley to Dundas, private, 6 July 1798, Dundas, p.52. 14. Malcolm to Manesty, private and confidential, 28 March 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 223; Wellesley to Elgin, 13 July 1800, Add. MSS 13792, fo. 105. Despite the superscription, Malcolm immediately sent copies of his correspon• dence with the resident at Basra to Wellesley. 15. For a discussion see E. Ingram, 'From Trade to Empire in the Near East - III: The Uses of the Residency at Baghdad, 1794-1804,' Middle Eastern Studies, xiv (1978), 285-6. 16. Malcolm to Wellesley, 16 Sept. 1800, IO G/29/22, p.399. 17. GicB to Mehdi Ali Khan, 3 Sept. 1798, IO Bombay/SPP/380/71, p.2542. For the French see C.N. Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 1793-1815 (London, 1954), pp. 121-31. 18. Mehdi Ali Khan to Duncan, 8 Oct. 1798, with ends., IO Bombay/SPP/380/72, p. 3708. The agreement is printed in J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record (Princeton, 1956), i. 64. 19. Edmonstone to Malcolm, 1 Aug. 1799, Add. MSS 13706, fo. 73. 20. Malcolm to Dundas, 21 Feb. 1800, RGS Melville MSS; W. Hollingberry, A Journal of Observations Made during the British Embassy to the Court of Persia, in the Years 1799, 1800, and 1801 (Calcutta, 1805), p. 6. 21. Malcolm to Wellesley, 1 Feb. 1800, with end., IO G/29/22, p. 13; same to Bogle, 8 Jan. 1800, IO Bombay/SPP/381/9, p.276. 22. For details of relations with Muscat see Ch. VII. 23. Wellesley to Duncan, 5 Aug. 1799, Wellesley, ii. 110. 24. Malcolm to Wellesley, 22 April, 14 May 1800, IO G/29/22, pp. 131,249; same to Dundas, 16 June 1800, RGS Melville MSS. 25. Campbell to Scott, 28 Nov. 1800, RGS Melville MSS. 26. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 5,17 and 22 May 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fos. 244, 265, 273; same to Jones, private, 18 April 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 5993. 27. J. Malcolm, Persia: A Poem (London, 1814). 28. Hollingberry, Journal, p.46. 29. Holland to Vaughan, 6 Nov. 1808, Vaughan MSS C55/4.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 30. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 25 and 26 Feb. 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fos. 184, 186. 31. 'Report [by J. Malcolm] on the State of Trade between Persia and India, and Suggestions as to the Means of Improving it,' [1800], IO G/29/21. 32. Sir H. Jones Brydges, An Account of the Transactions of His Majesty's Mission to the Court of Persia in the Years 1807-1811 (London, 1834), i. 138. 33. See Ingram, Commitment to Empire, pp.311, 318-19. 34. Concise Dictionary of National Biography. 35. Campbell to Scott, 28 Nov. 1800, RGS Melville MSS. 36. End. in Jones to Malcolm, 18 Oct. 1800, IO G/29/27, fo. 585. 37. Malcolm to Wellesley, 26 Feb. 1800, IO G/29/22, p.53.

100 TOWARDS ENTANGLEMENT WITH PERSIA

38. C. W. Pasley to J. Pasley, 22 March 1801, Add. MSS 41961, fo. 133. 39. Malcolm to Wellesley, 5 May 1800, IO G/29/22, p. 211; same to Kirkpatrick, private, 1 Sept., 27 Oct. 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fos. 378, 414. 40. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 4 June 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 281. 41. J.B. Kelly, Britain and Persian Gulf, 1795-1880 (Oxford, 1968), Ch. V. 42. End. in Jones to Malcolm, 18 Oct. 1800, IO G/29/27, fo. 585; Jones to Willis, 29 Nov. 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 9213. 43. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 3 and 17 June 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fos. 277, 289. 44. E. Scott Waring, A Tour ofShiraz (London, 1807),p. 12; G. Drouville, Voyageen Perse, pendant les annees 1812 et 1813 (St. Petersburg, 1819), ii. 119. 45. Malcolm to Jones, 7 Sept. 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 6414; same to Kirk• patrick, private, 12 Sept. 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 405. 46. Jones to Willis, 18 April 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 9212; same to Elgin, 20 April 1800, IO G/29/23, app. 109. 47. Kirkpatrick to Malcolm, 28 Dec. 1800, IO Bengal/SPC/79, 30 Dec. 1800, no. 113. 48. For Herat see G.J. Alder, 'The Key to India? - Britain and the Herat Problem, 1838-63,' Middle Eastern Studies, x (1974-5), 186-209, 287-311. 49. 'Memorandum [by John Malcolm] Respecting the Present State of Persia, Political and Commercial,' 10 April 1801, RGS Melville MSS. 50. Malcolm to Wellesley, 16 Sept. 1800, same to Dundas, 26 Sept. 1800, IO G/29/22, pp.413, 337. 51. G. R. G. Hambly, 'An Introduction to the Economic Organization of Early Kajar Iran,' Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, ii (1964), 79. 52. D.M. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658-1832 (New York, 1957), pp.238-43. 53. George III refused to give Wellesley a Garter. Pitt to Wellesley, 21 Dec. 1804, PRO 30/58/5, no. 125. 54. Kirkpatrick to Malcolm, 13 July 1800, Add. MSS 13706, fo. 77. 55. Postscript, 6 Sept., to Dundas to Wellesley, 4 Sept. 1800, Dundas, p. 284. 56. Pasley to C. W. Pasley, 15 Dec. 1799, Add. MSS 41961, fo. 72; Malcolm to H. Strachey, 19 Dec. 1799, Strachey MSS DD/SH/B.6; Clive to H. Strachey, 5 Aug. 1801, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/6. 57. Malcolm to Wellesley, 31 July 1801, IO G/29/22, p.575; memorandum by Malcolm, 10 Apr. 1801, RGS Melville MSS. 58. S. Malcolm to C.W. Pasley, 18 April 1801, Add. MSS 41961, fo. 140. 59. E. Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies (London, Frank Cass, 1974), Ch. IX. 60. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 14 Oct. 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 393; same to Jones, 28 Oct. 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 6421. 61. Sir J. Malcolm, Sketches of Persia (London, 1828), ii. 109.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 62. Malcolm to Wellesley, 16 Dec. 1800, IO G/29/22, p. 463; same to Kirkpatrick, private, 8 and 13 Jan. 1801, Add. MSS 13797, fos. 442, 455. 63. Sir J. W. Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Major General Sir John Malcolm (London, 1856), i. 141 fn. 64. Malcolm to Wellesley, 20 Jan. 1801, IO G/29/22, p.471. 65. For the treaties see Consolidated Treaty Series, ed. C. Parry (New York, 1969-), iv. 447, 455. 66. S. Malcolm to C.W. Pasley, 18 Apr. 1801, Add. MSS 41961, fo. 140; Bentinck to de Hoghton, 9 Oct. 1801, De Hoghton MSS DDHO/428. 67. Sir H.C. Rawlinson, England and Russia in the East (London, 1875), pp. 8-10; Kelly, Persian Gulf, pp. 73-4. 101 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

68. Malcolm to Dundas, 21 Jan. 1801, RGS Melville MSS, where an invasion of India, not British India, is to activate the alliance. 69. Sc to ggic, 4 Dec. 1800, IO L/PS/5/538; H. Wellesley to Malcolm, 28 Mar. 1801, Kaye, Malcolm, i. 150. 70. Ggic to sc, 28 Sept. 1801, IO L/PS/5/4, p. 83. 71. Encl. no. 1 in Malcolm to Wellesley, 20 April 1800, IO G/29/22, p. 189; same to same, 16 June, 27 July 1800, ibid., pp.323, 377. 72. Ggic to sc, 28 Sept. 1801, IO L/PS/5/4, p. 83. 73. Wellesley to Duncan, 8 Oct. 1798, Wellesley, i. 286. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

102 VII

LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE IN 1804

In its present crisis Europe can be saved only by a union of the Great Powers which would have for its purpose the establishment of general peace, and thereupon the maintenance of the common tran• quillity, and the guarantee of possessions by the respective governments. Lord Grenville1

One of the best-known documents in the history of British foreign policy is the dispatch written by William Pitt the Younger to the Russian ambassador, Count Simon Vorontsov, on 19 January 1805, stating Great Britain's view of the goals of a third coalition.2 Included in all but one of the principal selections of documents, in Webster, Temperley and Penson, Joll, Bourne, but inexplicably not in Wiedener and Plumb,3 this dispatch is regarded both as the origin of Viscount Castlereagh's proposals for the Congress System,4 and as the beginning of a tradition in British foreign policy. Whether the tradition was a policy, or a series of beliefs about policy,5 it had been started by Pitt. The reputation of Pitt the Younger as a statesman is, however, inexplicable. Certainly it has never been explained. He Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 made excellent speeches in the House of Commons, and was a sound minister of finance, but he was not a statesman. To credit him with beginning a foreign policy is to misunderstand both the complexity of late-eighteenth-century politics, and Great Britain's role in the eighteenth-century balance of power. The dispatch to Vorontsov was signed, of course, by the foreign secretary, the earl of Mulgrave,6 but nobody believes that he wrote

103 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

it. Pitt's second administration was weaker at the start even than his first. Henry Addington and the earl of Buckinghamshire were excluded; Lord Grenville would not join without Charles James Fox: there remained the duke of Portland without the Portland Whigs and Pitt's 'be-ribboned lumber.'7 Of the cabinet only Pitt and Castlereagh were in the House of Commons: Viscount Melville went to the admiralty, Earl Camden to the war office, the earl of Harrowby to the foreign office, and Mulgrave to the duchy of Lancaster. For the virulence of his attacks upon Addington, high office was denied to George Canning. Unfortunately Harrowby, who was epileptic, and sick of melancholy for most of the year, disappeared at crucial moments to Bath, leaving decisions to be taken by Pitt. A rumour circulated in November that Canning might assist him. Grenville doubted it, thinking Canning might prefer Harrowby to continue, 'on the same principle on which an old Pope is elected.'8 This was unusually prescient. On 5 December 1804 Harrowby fell down a flight of stairs, 'by which he sustained so violent a concussion of the brain that he lay insensible for some hours.'9 He felt obliged to resign, to be succeeded not by Canning but by Mulgrave. The appointment of someone so apparently undistinguished as Mulgrave to an important office at a crucial moment appears odd and appeared so to contemporaries. Canning, who was bitterly offended, remained in office only because Pitt threatened total separation.10 Had Pitt appointed Canning to the foreign office, how• ever, Addington would have refused to join the administration.11 Instead, the resignation of Harrowby and Portland provided places for both Addington and Buckinghamshire, whose accession was indispensable if the ministry were to take any initiative in the House of Commons.12 Harrowby, despite sickness, had made a good im• pression as foreign secretary. There were rumours of a temporary appointment, until he could return. Camden suggested the earl of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Malmesbury.13 There were also rumours that Mulgrave was 'only put in ad interim, till Lord Wellesley's arrival [from India], who is expected in June.'14 Pitt offered Wellesley high office to sweeten his recall, but could not offer the Garter he would have preferred, because George III would not hear of it.15 He might well have refused to accept Wellesley, whose grandeur he abhorred, as foreign secre• tary; and in another shuffle Buckinghamshire would have claimed precedence.16 Canning believed Mulgrave to be the choice of the 104 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

marquis of Abercorn, who had brought about the reconciliation between Addington and Pitt.17 Resistance to the appointment might have been expected from the king, who had earlier opposed Mul- grave's appointment to the cabinet.18 Perhaps he was placated by the return of Addington; perhaps he imagined that it was by royal command.19 The choice of Mulgrave was a sign that the flaws in Pitt's character were increasingly jeopardizing his prospects as prime minister. He had negotiated with Addington without consulting or informing his colleagues, or the magnates who had to be humoured if the shuffle were not to lose as many votes as it gained.20 Pitt had always relied upon others to manage his supporters. Fortunately for him, during his first administration Dundas's management of India and Scotland had been brilliant. Of the leaders of that administration, Dundas had faded, Portland, the only magnate holding high office, was resigning, and Grenville was in opposition. Pitt preferred Mulgrave for the reason he disliked Grenville, because of 'the trouble I had to make him give up any opinion he had conceived.'21 Mulgrave, in contrast, even when uninformed, admitted that he always found Pitt's motives 'judicious and discreet;' and added, 'of my concurrence in your motives you will entertain no doubt because you are already aware that I do justice to the principles which uniformly guide your public conduct.'23 Mulgrave, however, was not a placeman. Whatever his reputa• tion, he had accomplished more than his contemporaries knew, or historians have claimed on his behalf. He had made his mark as a soldier at the siege of Toulon; during the war of the Second Coalition he was British observer at Austrian headquarters; and he was one of Pitt's foremost military advisers. Pitt, who preferred like Grenville to rely upon unofficial advice, paid more attention to Mulgrave than to Great Britain's most eminent soldier-statesman, the Marquis Corn• wallis.24 Mulgrave had no outstanding gifts; in a foreign secretary

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 brilliance was unnecessary: Grenville, however brilliant, had been a failure. While the British had few troops and were sparing in their subsidies, there were limits to what talent might achieve. What is clear is that, despite the testimony of Holland Rose, Webster,25 and, following after them, Sherwig,26 all of whom doubt whether Harrowby or Mulgrave played any part in negotiating the Third Coalition, interesting evidence exists for the part played by Mul• grave. His appointment to the foreign office was partly due to his 105 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

acute perception both of the balance of power, and of the needs of Indian defence, recently demonstrated in his proposals for the recon• struction of Europe. Anglo-Russian negotiations for an alliance had been proceeding without success since before Pitt returned to office. In June 1804 he indicated that Great Britain expected Russia to take the initiative in negotiating a coalition, but promised £5 million in subsidies should she succeed.27 Three months later the tsar, who had meanwhile negotiated an alliance with Austria, sent Count Novosiltsov to London, to invite Pitt to suggest how the coalition should be organized and financed.28 Novosiltsov arrived at London in Novem• ber, while Harrowby was away at Bath. Pitt, who was acting for Harrowby, eventually asked his colleagues on 14 December for their suggestions about the objects for which a new coalition should fight. Mulgrave replied the following day.29 With one modification, his views were the origin of Pitt's plans for the territorial reconstruction of Europe. The similarity is sufficient to warrant printing the letter, as a counterpart to its more celebrated offspring. There have always been questions about whom Pitt consulted. Canning admitted that he was not: 'I have read ... the instructions sent to you ... as his,' he told the British ambassador at St. Petersburg. 'He is very proud of them, I think - and I think, very justly.'30 Castlereagh, who laid the dispatch before parliament in 1815 to justify his own proceedings, remembered 'having more than one conversation with Mr Pitt, before he wrote it.'31 Probably Castlereagh had: he was exactly the sort of quiet undistinguished colleague Pitt preferred.32 While Mul• grave and Pitt discussed allied strategy and the territorial reconstruc• tion that might re-establish the balance of power, perhaps Castle• reagh and Pitt considered how it might subsequently be maintained. Mulgrave's dispatch to Vorontsov considered three questions: how much territory ought to be recovered from France to re•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 establish the balance of power; how to reconstruct the states of Europe in an effort to maintain this balance; and how to devise a system of security against aggression. Mulgrave's letter was the origin of Great Britain's proposals for the first two. The third Mul• grave had ignored. Aggression to Mulgrave meant French aggres• sion: the only security against it was the power of Austria and Prussia. Conspicuously absent from Mulgrave's proposals for recon• struction was any role in the balance of power for Russia. 106 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

Mulgrave's preferred method of re-establishing the balance of power owed much to Hapsburg policy during the wars of the First and Second Coalitions. Whereas Pitt and Grenville had been exasperated by the Austrians' refusal to fight for their Netherlands, Mulgrave shared the Austrian preference for compensation in Italy and Germany. Austria and Prussia were to expand westwards until they had common frontiers with France. Ideally the frontier should be drawn along the French frontier before 1789, but Mulgrave doubted whether this was attainable. Although the coalition might drive the French out of Italy, it might not be able to drive them out of Germany, an estimate perhaps partly based upon the unwillingness of Prussia to fight. As a result the allies might have to permit France to keep possession of the Austrian Netherlands and territory in Germany along the left bank of the Rhine. Here, in Mulgrave's opinion, was the permanent threat to the security of Europe against which the allies must be prepared to defend themselves. In Mul• grave's proposals for the reconstruction of Europe, the fulcrum of the balance of power was located in the former Burgundian Circle. The Burgundian Circle had barred France from Germany and Italy: its annexation had been the foundation of Louis XIV's empire. To restrain France in the nineteenth century an equally decisive rearrangement of territory would be needed. Mulgrave had no con• fidence in buffer states: they were merely an invitation to the stronger of their neighbours. If the allies were obliged to accept them, as part of a negotiated peace, care must be taken to differentiate the value of territories from their potential as forward bases for strategic offensives. Sardinia, backed by Austria, might survive in Savoy, owing to the strong natural frontier provided by the Alps. No equi• valent frontier existed, however, in Holland. Instead of being en• larged to form a buffer state between France, Germany, and Great Britain, Holland - and Luxemburg - should therefore be handed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 over to Prussia. Pitt agreed to hand over Luxemburg to Prussia, because he knew that the allies would have to match the French offer to Prussia of Hanover, but he refused to hand over Holland. His reason was his fear that Prussia, as a maritime power, would be an even more menacing member of a league of armed neutrality than she had been in 1801. Mulgrave answered that such maritime interests as Prussia developed would strengthen her connection with Great Britain. While she remained primarily a military power, she 107 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

would depend upon the British navy for their protection. In return, the Prussian army would defend Hanover. Here, in reverse, was the reasoning behind Admiral Tirpitz's navy bills. Rarely in the history of British foreign policy are general principles enunciated. Mulgrave, however, put forward interesting ideas about the way in which the value of exchanged territories ought to be assessed. His methods of assessment were traditional: population, revenue, strategic position. The most interesting territory mentioned was Malta. Owing to its importance for the security of British India, Malta fell into Mulgrave's first category: a territory offensive if French but defensive if British. If anyone claimed that Malta was the base from which a British Mediterranean fleet could attack France, Mulgrave answered that it merely defended what France might otherwise attack, Egypt and India. The British interest in Malta is frequently misunderstood. So perceptive an historian as Piers Mackesy agreed with Mulgrave that the British held Malta to frustrate Napoleon's eastern schemes and their potentially disas• trous effect in India; then added that Malta was the only base the British possessed from which to blockade Toulon.33 The second is true, if it means only that they held on to Malta, as they did, but the blockade of Toulon depended upon the use of Sicily. To blockade properly, the British also needed to control Minorca or Sardinia.34 In the spring of 1805, when the prospects of an Anglo-Russian alliance were suddenly diminished owing to a Russian demand for Malta, Mulgrave objected that Malta was 'the object for which the war had commenced, and on which our consequence in Turkey, our influence in the Mediterranean and the security of our Indian Empire so obviously depend.'35 Mulgrave was following Dundas, with whom his father had worked closely at the board of control:36 Pitt followed Grenville and looked forward to Castlereagh. When Mul• grave told the Russians that a demand for Malta would cause the negotiations to be broken off,37 Pitt later reassured them that the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 British would be satisfied with the possession of Minorca and satis• factory arrangements for the defence of Italy and Holland.38 Gren• ville, for example, had always thought the French expedition to Egypt a mistake they would never repeat.39 The British needed a base in the Mediterranean suited to offensive operations in Europe, not one from which they might, if necessary, defend British India. As soon as France had been defeated by the Third Coalition, the British would need a method of preserving peace. 108 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

At this point Mulgrave diverged most sharply from Pitt and Gren• ville, the latter being the true originator of Castlereagh's proposals at the congress of Vienna. At the start of the negotiations for a second coalition in 1798, Grenville had proposed a four-power alliance, which should offer France a comprehensive rearrangment of terri• tory designed to restore the equilibrium of Europe, establish a central council of ministers to co-ordinate allied policy should war prove necessary, and collectively resist subsequent French attempts to alter the balance of power by aggression or by interference in the internal affairs of other states.40 Grenville's method of re-establishing a terri• torial balance of power was less radical than Mulgrave's: Holland and the Austrian Netherlands were to be united and Austria offered compensation in Italy. Buffer states along the French frontier were to be backed up by Prussia and Austria, who were in turn to be persuaded not to quarrel by joint and continuous Anglo-Russian pressure. Mulgrave, who shared late-eighteenth-century assumptions that colonies, trade, and sea power, were important elements in the balance of power,41 represented the alternative conception of Great Britain's most vital interests. The rewards of sound policy were to be found not on the Continent but overseas, primarily in India. In Europe, therefore, Great Britain should not try to act as a balancer, but should establish a balance between Austria allied to Prussia and France. Then Great Britain might remain secure without having to intervene. Mulgrave admitted that many small states would have to be destroyed if Austria and Prussia were to be made strong enough, but, in his opinion, Grenville's solution of four-power co-operation would create the dangers it was supposed to anticipate: Russia would become as overweening as France and, instead of providing security, constant intervention would be needed. Of all Mulgrave's suggestions, this one turned out to be the most influential. Castle- reagh, who shared his suspicions of Russia, took care, when applying Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Grenville's ideas, to ask for Russian co-operation in principle but not in fact. The proposals of both Grenville and Mulgrave were rooted firmly in eighteenth-century practice, in the quarrels between supporters of continental and colonial warfare.42 Eighteenth-century Europeans understood two concepts of international relations, empire and balance of power: they also understood that the two were mutually exclusive and that the second had only recently superseded the 109 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

first. The British were the slowest to learn, because in both cases their enemy was France: Louis XIV had demanded imperial pre• eminence, his successors had threatened the balance of power as perceived by the British.43 Englishmen expected all states to agree that curtailing the power of France was the paramount European interest. By the beginning of the war of the Third Coalition the British were correct: it was. That is why the war was an anachro• nism. Napoleon's was a last bid for imperial pre-eminence, Pitt's a last call for a grand alliance. When read together, Mulgrave's letter to Pitt and the celebrated dispatch to Vorontsov are less the begin• ning of a tradition than the end of one, which is what one might reasonably expect.

Lord Mulgrave to the Rt Hon William Pitt44

15 December 1804, Fulham Dear Pitt

The extensive and important subjects which were opened yesterday have engaged my attention so much, that I feel strongly disposed to communicate to you my first ideas as they arise, without waiting to correct them by further consideration, or to work them out into detail; if they are just there will be time enough to pursue them, if they are erroneous this morning is enough to bestow upon them. In making a redivision of Territory in Europe, it appears to me, that the Principles to be kept in View are, 1st To render Austria and Prussia (as far as possible) each of them capable of checking France on their respective Frontiers, which should be made contiguous to hers. This can only be done by assigning to them an acquisition of populous and productive territory covered by the arrangement of a strong and defensible Frontier. 2nd In providing Territories for states of the second order, or of still inferior Force, to place them under cover of the Line of defence of the great leading Powers, so that they may enjoy their dominions in Security, without the apprehension of their being made perpetually the object of contest, the scene of military operations, and their handicapped subjects the alternate victims of the contending Powers, (as were almost without exception, in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 last war, the petty states of Flanders, Germany, and Italy) [.] placed under the cover of a powerful Frontier, they may without apprehension contribute a contingent of Men and Money, and supply additional vigour to the exertions of protecting State. In looking forward to the redivision of Europe, it must be recollected, that the gigantick Power of France, the growing ambition and increasing con• fidence which results from great success, and the restless Regret which must agitate such a Power under the circumstance of reduced Dominions and circumscribed Authority, cannot be kept down and controlled by limited Measures, or by arrangements calculated on a very nice balance of the

110 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

compensations which are to be made to Minor States, for changes from their former Possessions. Uninterrupted and uniform experience has proved that the old proportions of Power and Territory were insufficient both in their degree and position to oppose any barrier against the encroachments of France; those encroachments have so progressively encreased during the last two centuries that it would be difficult to fix any ancient Limits within that Period, which would give security to Europe under the ancient proportion and position of States. It would perhaps not be a very reasonable speculation to suppose the success of a War in the present Situation of Europe to be so great within the Territories of France as they Existed at the Period of the French Revolution, as to enable the combined Powers of Europe at once to confine France, at a Peace, absolutely within those limits; and to dictate and distribute a new apportionment of territory in Europe which should give increased Resources and a formidable Frontier to the neighbours of France, at the same time counteracting the present Policy of that Government (which is to have weak states between itself and the leading Powers of Europe) by fixing the power• ful Monarchies everywhere in contact with its frontiers; it may therefore probably, in point of Practice, be necessary at the conclusion even of a most successful War, to leave with France some extension of Wealth and Popula• tion, but not of aggressive Acquisition; by this expression I mean any unproductive territory, which may be valuable as an advantageous Point in the commencement of attack. It has often occured [sic] to me that in the discussion of cessions of territory in negotiations, the nature of them has not been sufficiently marked and urged; perhaps I am about to state acknowledged opinions, which from their being such are therefore not discussed; but as I have not read, or heard, these Principles defined, and as they seem important in the consideration of the Projet mentioned at the Cabinet, I will state what I mean. Possessions as an object of negotiation may be considered and classed under some one of the following definitions^] 1st. What is merely offensive in the Hands of one Party and merely defensive in the Hands of the other, attended with expence, or at least producing no profit. 2nd. What partakes in some degree of either or both qualities in the hands of one, or both Parties; still producing no advantage except in contemplation of aggressive War. 3rd. Possessions valuable in themselves and affording at the same time

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 advantages either of offence or defence. 4th. Possessions merely profitable and producing no further military advantages than belong necessarily to every acquisition of population and Revenue - of the first description the Cape of Good Hope may be deemed, being defensive in the Hands of England and offensive in the Hands of France. Perhaps Malta might by some be brought under the second Head, as facilitating the offensive operations of a British Fleet in the Mediterranean. I am disposed rather to think it essentially, only defensive with us, as covering Egypt and through Egypt the East Indies; held by France it is in every point of View an offensive Post.

IDBI-E 111 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Of the 3rd description are St Lucia and Trinidad in the Hands of the English - and of the 4th the Austrian Netherlands without a Strong Barrier whether possessed by France or by any other Power to whom it could be given; of this description also is the Venetian state as assigned to Austria by France with a frontier Line which cuts Verona in two, and affords no one defensible Point between that and the ancient limit of Austria behind it. - The Frontier Towns of Holland are merely defensive to that Country but would be merely offensive held by France. All these descriptions may be a subject of Balance against each other, in settling terms of negotiation, except the first; but whenever a Point is insisted upon, which in the possession of the requiring can only be means of annoyance and attack, I should consider such a provision for future aggression, as a decided Symptom of hostility even in the moment of negotiation; and such a Point, I think, should never be conceded, but under the absolute inability of further resistance: upon these Grounds I always thought that the Cape and Malta should have been insisted upon in negotiating the last Peace. Upon these general Principles if they are justly, and accurately conceived, I should propose to regulate the future distribution of Power and Territory in Europe, without, of course, intending to restore the lesser Powers locally to the same situation, or even relatively in point of consequence, to their former state; I here especially allude to the King of Sardinia and to the Prince of Orange: I have not Maps or Books before me, which I might ascertain the nature and extent of Territories, or estimate the degree and amount of population, and Revenue, with accuracy. I wish in the first instance to submit to you a very rough sketch as a general Ground whereon to build a more detailed arrangement. Suppose for instance, that Austria should be charged with the frontier which is to keep the French out of Italy; that Switzerland should be the boundary to the North, the Po to the South carrying the Western frontier from Savoy along the Summit of the Alps, (including the Strong Passes by Demont, Coni, the Col de Tende etc) down to the Sea; behind this strong Line of Protection, the King of Sardinia might have a rich and safe establishment in Montferrat, the Genoese Country, Parma and Piacentia, or as much of them as should be deemed necessary: If the King of Etruria should be removed to part of his ancient possessions the Grand Duke of Tuscany might might [sic] be restored to his former Situa• tion, and the Prince of Orange be placed in safety in Saltzbourg. The proposed Provision for the Stadholder naturally leads to the question which it would open, of adding Holland to the dominions of the King of Prussia; I

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 have thought seriously of the hint you threw out, respecting the possible contingency of adding the Weight of Prussia as a Maritime Power to the System of Armed Neutralities, and I feel the weight of the objection as a possible Evil; but I am far from being convinced that it is necessary, or even the most probable consequence of Prussia becoming a Maritime Power; it appears to me very probable that all the commercial interests which had so long, so obviously, and so strongly united the Views of Holland and Great Britain, will revive to their full extent in Principle and Practice if Prussia should be in Possession of Holland; with these additional confirmations and advantages - 1st that the great Military Power of Prussia, strengthened by 112 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

the revenue Resources of the Commerce of Holland, would preserve that Mutual Interest from being exposed to any fluctuation or interruption of its exercise, by the apprehension of an overpowerful neighbour - that Prussia becoming connected with us in Commerce, would be in some degree dependent upon us, as a Naval Power of the second order, so as probably in a great Measure to secure to us the cooperation of her great land Force in future Wars. 2nd that the Jealously inseperable [sic] from the near neigh• bourhood of great Powers, would prevent any union of Interests or Mutual Cooperation between Prussia (so strengthened and enriched) and France. 3rd that the natural Channel and superior advantages of intercourse between Great Britain and Holland would be a sufficient security against a separation of Interests, more especially as Alliance and Cooperation could then go Hand in hand between Prussia and this Country; which they cannot do with us and any other State of Europe. 4th that what could be added of the Duchy of Burgundy to the States of Holland, would not, united, be of sufficient Force either in Military or pecuniary Resources; Strength of Frontier; or Population; to resist the Power of France, it would be like the King of Sardinia between Austria and France, without the protection of the Alps, and must therefore necessarily rest either upon the latter Power or Prussia for support; and would consequently, take the part either of armed neutrality, or more open Hostility, as the supporting Power should dictate; that as no Power can contend with France upon its Frontier without being nearly equal to it in resources, no Power in the Quarter of Europe can be rendered equal to that Task but Prussia. 5th that by giving the strong frontier of the Rhine and the Meuse, and the dutch frontier Towns to the King of Prussia, and at the same time reestablishing the Fortresses on the right Bank of the Rhine; the lesser states, (placed either behind the Prussian Frontier, or so as to be flanked by that Power and Austria,) would have little to fear from France, which (under such an arrangement) might be put immediately on the defensive, even though she should remain in possession of Austrian Flanders, and of a proportion of Country on the left Bank of the Rhine. -1 forbear going into particulars which would require much more investigation and an accurate knowledge of details of which I do not pretend to be in possession, or able to acquire without much labour; which, though I should not decline, I do not wish to encounter without being sure that you enter into the general Principles which I have suggested, or (if you do not) without Knowing what other views of the subject you entertain, and above all whether any such labour on my part can be of service[.] the Sum of what I have here stated amounts to this - that it is obvious upon every ground of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Reason and experience that no Power which can be established in Italy, (except Austria) will be able to confine France within her limits to the south, nor any Power which can be formed in Flanders or the north of Germany be able to repress her in the north, except Prussia; and that the erection of petty or secondary Powers in her vicinity is only laying the Foundation of fresh temptations to her Ambition, of future Wars and future Victories. This hurried Statement is intended solely for your own consideration, the magnitude and importance of the communications which I heard for the first time yesterday at the cabinet, struck me so forcibly, that I have been induced 113 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

to submit this crude and superficial sketch of my Ideas (though much longer than I intended or counted to make it) to you, previous to my departure for Bath, that we may talk upon the subject there, if these Ideas should be deemed by us, worth pursuing any further.

Ever yours sincerely MULGRAVE

NOTES

1. End. in Grenville to de Luc, 14 Jan. 1798, Dropmore, iv. 58. 2. Mulgrave to Vorontosov, 19 Jan. 1805, FO 65/60. 3. British Diplomacy, 1813-1815: Select Documents dealing with the Reconstruc• tion of Europe, ed. C.K. Webster (London, 1921), pp. 389-94; Foundations of British Foreign Policy from Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902), ed. Harold Temper- ley and Lillian M. Penson (London, 1938), pp. 10-21; Britain and Europe: Pitt to Churchill, 1793-1940, ed. James Joll (London, 1950), pp.48-50; Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830-1902 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 197-8; Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, 1689-1971, ed. Joel H. Wiener with J.H. Plumb (New York, 1971). 4. Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1812-1815: Britain and the Reconstruction of Europe (London, 1931), pp. 53-63. 5. Joll, Britain and Europe, pp. 3-4. 6. Sir Henry Phipps, first earl of Mulgrave, first Viscount Normanby, and third Baron Mulgrave (1755-1831); general, 1809; subsequently first lord of the admiralty, 1807-10, master-general of the ordnance, 1810-19, minister without office, 1819-20. 7. Denis Gray, Spencer Perceval: The Evangelical Prime Minister, 1762-1812 (Manchester, 1962), p. 54. 8. Grenville to T. Grenville, 14 Nov. 1804, Add. MSS 41852, fo. 207. 9. Ward to Lowther, 6 Dec. 1804, The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. A. Aspinall (Cambridge, 1961-70), iv. 266, f. 1. 10. Canning to Leveson-Gower, 6 and 11 Jan. 1805, PRO 30/29/8(4). How isolated Canning was is shown by Lady Bessborough's comment that 'he assured me I have twice been the first to inform him of what happened in the Cabinet and what appeared next day in the newspapers, tho' both times he had been walking with Mr Pitt a few hours before we met.' Lady Bessborough to Leveson-Gower, 6 May 1804, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower: Private Correspondence, 1781-1821, ed. Castalia, Countess Granville (London, 1861), ii. 69. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 11. Addington had told Pitt that he would never again meet Canning. The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, ed. Lord Colchester (London, 1861), i. 540. 12. See Long to Pitt, 6 Dec. 1804, PRO 30/58/5, no. 118. 13. Camden to Pitt, 28 Dec. 1804, George III, iv. 267, f.2. Malmesbury, however, was deaf. 14. Duke of Buckingham, Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George III (London, 1852-5), iii. 404. 15. Pitt to Wellesley, 21 Dec. 1804, PRO 30/58/5, no. 125. 16. Presumably why he doubted the report. Buckinghamshire to Auckland, 11 Jan.

114 LORD MULGRAVE'S PROPOSALS

1805, Add. MSS 34456, no. 187. 17. Canning to Leveson-Gower, 11 Jan. 1805, PRO 30/29/98(4). 18. The Diaries and Correspondence of the Rt Hon George Rose, ed. L. V. Harcourt (London, 1860), ii. 174. 19. Pitt's friends believed that the union signified the revival of royal power. Harrowby to Bathurst, 31 Jan. 1805, Historical Manuscripts Commission: The Manuscripts of the Seventh Earl Bathurst (London, 1923), p. 44. 20. Two who were offended were Lord Lowther and the marquis of Stafford. 21. T. Grenville to Grenville, 7 Oct. 1805, Dropmore, vii. 307. 22. Cornwallis to Ross, 11 Sept., 24 Oct., 6 Dec. 1804, Cornwallis, iii. 518,521,522. Partly because he 'felt... rather awkwardly circumstanced at being totally laid aside,' he offered to return to India, where he was expected to die and did so. 23. Mulgrave to Pitt, 27 Dec. 1804, PRO 30/58/5, no. 128. 24. After his return from India in 1793 Cornwallis entered the cabinet as master- general of the ordnance. 25. J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), p.523; Webster, Castlereagh, p. 57. 26. John M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France, 1793-1815 (Cambridge MA, 1969), pp.148, 151. 27. Harrowby to Vorontsov, 26 June 1804, FO 60/55. 28. For Novosiltsov's instructions, see Memoires du Prince Adam Czartoryski et Correspondance avec I'Empereur Alexandre ler (Paris, 1887), ii. 27. 29. Mulgrave to Pitt, 15 Dec. 1804. PRO 30/58/5, no. 122. The minute of the cabinet sent by Camden to the king referred only to the decision to blockade Spain. George 111, iv. 257. 30. Leveson-Gower, ii. 30. 'Your first despatches from my successor,' added Harrowby, still ailing at Bath, 'will have borne pretty decisively the stamp of Pitt.' Harrowby to Leveson-Gower, 28 Mar. 1805, PRO 30/29/384. A. 31. The Memoranda and Correspondence of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, ed. marquis of Londonderry (London, 1848-54), viii. 356. 32. Castlereagh, who had shown little of his later ability, was not a success at the Board of Control, although one must sympathize with anyone who had to control Wellesley. East India Company p. 143. 33. Piers Mackesy, The War in the Mediterranean, 1803-1810 (London, 1957), pp. 13-14, 391-2. 34. Nelson to Addington, 27 Sept. 1803, Add. MSS 34953, p. 147; Nelson to Hobart, 31 May 1804, Add. MSS 34956, p.38. 35. Mulgrave to Pitt, 26 Apr. 1805, PRO 30/58/6, no. 57. 36. See the speeches of Dundas and his associate, Sir Mark Wood, on the pre• liminaries of peace in 1801. Parliamentary History of England, ed. W. Cobbett (London, 1820), xxxvi. 154, 776. 37. The negotiations can be followed in Royal Historical Society: Select Despatches relating to the Formation of the Third Coalition against France, 1804-1805, ed. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 j. Holland Rose (London, 1904). 38. Pitt to Novosiltsov, private and confidential, 7 June 1805, PRO 30/58/6, no. 79. 39. See E. Ingram, 'A Preview of the Great Game in Asia - III: The Origins of the British Expedition to Egypt in 1801,' Middle Eastern Studies, ix (1973), 296-314. 40. John M. Sherwig, 'Lord Grenville's Plan for a Concert of Europe, 1797-1799,' Journal of Modern History, xxxiv (1962), 284-93. 41. See M.S. Anderson, 'Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Balance of Power,' Studies in Diplomatic History: Essays in Memory of David Bayne Horn, ed. R. Hatton and M.S. Anderson (London, 1970), pp. 192-4. 42. For the debate, see Richard Pares, 'American versus Continental Warfare,' 115 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

English Historical Review, li (1936), 429-65. 43. For eighteenth-century theories of international relations and the contemporary conception of empire and balance of power, see F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States (Cambridge, 1963), ch. 8. 44. Except as indicated, spelling and punctuation are unaltered. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

116 VIII

THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ, 1807-1808

This is is a pretty flim-flam. The Knight of the Burning Pestle

The conquest of an empire in India in the late eighteenth century caused serious strategic problems for a state which had traditionally relied for safety upon sea power: the creation of a French or Russian protectorate in the Middle East might offset the advantage seemingly given to the British by their control of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope. During the Napoleonic Wars, the penetra• tion of the Middle East by the French would pull the British into the eastern Mediterranean, into the Red Sea, and, lastly, into the Persian Gulf upon the collapse of the Third Coalition in 1807. Partly owing to the technical limitations of sailing ships, the Royal Navy was fighting each time on the defensive, trying to pin down an enemy who was able to keep out of its reach.1 Despite the decisive victory won by the Royal Navy over the French and Spanish fleets at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the defeat of the Austrian and Russian armies by Napoleon com• pounded rather than solved the British problem of finding a way to make sure that fluctuations in the European balance of power would

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 not endanger Great Britain's overseas empire nor disrupt her over• seas trade. While the Royal Navy hovered ineffectively on the side• lines, Napoleon pushed the eastern frontier of his empire forward to the gateways of India. Sending the Mediterranean fleet to bar his way had led to an embarrassing failure at the Dardanelles and in the sea of Marmora in March 1807.2 By the autumn of that year, the British authorities in India were wondering whether a second attempt to stop Napoleon would not have to be made in the strait of Hormuz. 117 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

I

In June 1807 the government of Bombay was warned by the British political agent at Bushire that the French were trying to persuade the shah of Persia, in return for the offer of an alliance against Russia, to turn over to France the port of Bandar Abbas, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf on the north shore of the strait of Hormuz.3 In giving control of the strait to the French, Bandar Abbas might have proved a better forward base than Mauritius for an attack on the British in India. This could have been prevented only with difficulty. The government of India expected the French to send troops and supplies by way of Mauritius, collecting them at Bandar Abbas a few at a time. If the Royal Navy were to concentrate on intercepting such shipments, British interests might be jeopardized further east. The primary responsibility of the flag officer in command, East Indies, was the protection of British trade between India, China, and the British Isles. Setting up an effective blockade of the strait of Hormuz might leave homebound convoys and the coastal trade of India open to attack by enemy frigates or privateers based at Mauri• tius, Batavia, and Manila. This had happened before, in similar circumstances in 1798, when the East Indiamen collecting at Macao were caught without adequate protection by a more powerful enemy force.4 The British need to prevent the French from creating a new base in the Middle East would therefore permit the French to wage a more vigorous guerre de course, upsetting the routine of the East Indies fleet. Because the harbours on the west coast of India were unsafe during the south-west monsoon, in the summer the British fleet was usually stationed to the east of Cape Comorin. By pulling the flag officer in command, East Indies, westwards when he ought to have been looking to the east, French attempts to establish a base at Bandar Abbas might force him to make a difficult

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 choice, whether or not this was the object of French policy. The flag officer in command in 1807, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, hoped that such a choice could be avoided. When Bombay, in response to the reports from Bushire, asked Pellew to send a squadron to patrol the strait of Hormuz, on 4 July, he refused.5 In the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Royal Navy would have to act on the defensive, with little chance of a spectacular victory. Pellew's reputation had been made as the commander of detached cruiser squadrons, when 118 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

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si <5r si dsi f si *-> \ ( i .'✓iJsi O si a si «* \ | y 2 5si <*, p- ssi < si f JZsi n si \ Isi \ ( i N b Zi <* % b s. u->u-> £ < P> u

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 P> P> **> u-> P> u-> Ui u-> s

IDBI-E* 119 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

he had picked up a fortune in prizes. The great prize awaiting the British in the eastern seas was Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, and its capture might be worth promotion, a grant from parliament, and a peerage. Pellew need not be accused of excessive self-interest, however. At the end of the eighteenth century one was meant to use the state to get ahead. Pellew, in particular, was in need of a victory, to wipe out the memory of his support in the House of Commons for Addington and the offence it had given to the Pittites.6 To Pellew's annoyance, the governor-general of Bengal, Lord Minto, would not help him to capture Batavia. Although Pellew expected to take command of the expedition, the East India Com• pany would have to pay for it. Unfortunately for Minto, who had only just arrived in India, he was in a situation resembling Pellew's. The friends to whom he owed his appointment had fallen from power just after he set sail from England, which left him at the mercy of an East India Company determined, above everything, to reduce its debt. Minto seemed to need tranquillity for reasons similar to Pellew's need for action. Both his own plans for retrenchment and the reports of French plans for a base in the Persian Gulf made it 'desirable,' explained Minto, 'that they should not find us much engaged to the eastward of India.'7 Minto would have preferred to anticipate the choice between east and west by the capture of Mauritius rather than Batavia, but knew that this, too, could not be done without orders from England. Unlike the capture of Batavia, the capture of Mauritius would both deprive the French of their base best situated for preying on British trade in the Indian Ocean and would also help to destroy the value to France of a connection with Persia. If the French were deprived of their only staging post on the way to the strait of Hormuz, they would have difficulty in making much use of Bandar Abbas. If the French were permitted to turn the port into a base, however, the British would have equal difficulty in destroying what they had failed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 to forestall. One of the most obvious reasons for this was political. In control of the strait of Hormuz, the French would make the main• tenance of friendly relations with the local states much more difficult for the British. II Since 1784, the British had tried to keep out of the Middle East and had relied on the Royal Navy to keep out everybody else. If the

120 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

French should start to develop Bandar Abbas with the permission of the shah, an attempt to drive them out would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Persia. A demonstration of sea power, therefore, even if successful, would drive the Persians even closer to the French and thus compound the problem it had been intended to solve. Such a demonstration might also lead to a misunderstanding with the other local ruler with interests in the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz, the imam of Oman. The British could neither deny Bandar Abbas to the French, nor try to evict them, without solving the difficult problem of finding a local source of water and supplies. Although Bandar Abbas belonged, in theory, to Persia, it had been treated for a long time as if the imam of Oman were its ruler.8 Denied access to Bandar Abbas, the traditional port of call for warships on their way to the Persian Gulf and in need of water, the British would turn to the imam for help. And they would expect to be helped the more readily, as they would claim to be acting on his behalf as well as their own. This claim might have turned the imam into an enemy instead of a friend, as likely to refuse the British access to Muscat and Kishm as to help them blockade Bandar Abbas. A ruler whose power rested on a profitable carrying trade between Arabia, India, and Zanzibar, and whose authority was already being undermined by the Wahabi, could not afford to take sides in a war between the British and the French. He would have been left at the mercy of French privateers. Benevolent neutral• ity was all that the British had hitherto needed of him and all they might reasonably ask.9 The technical barriers to a successful attack on a French garrison at Bandar Abbas would have been as formidable as the adverse political consequences of making the attempt. The first was the local geography. The coast of the strait of Hormuz is dotted with reefs, while the climate is extreme and notorious for calms. Even if the Royal Navy successfully navigated the reefs, the British commander

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 would still have to take the risk his compatriot had shied away from at Constantinople in the spring. Sailors are often reluctant, and naturally enough, to pit their ships against shore batteries. If the British took the risk of coming close enough inshore to bombard Bandar Abbas, they would be within range of any shore batteries the French had set up and, should the wind fail, they would be unable to break off the engagement at will. The risk would not be as great at Bandar Abbas, however, as it had been at Constantinople. The 121 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Persians, having no artillery of their own, would have to rely for the defence of Bandar Abbas on artillery the French had brought out with them by way of Mauritius. More important than the difficulties of mounting an effective attack was the improbability of winning a decisive victory. As soon as French troops had been landed at Bandar Abbas, they would merely have to retreat inland to be out of reach of the Royal Navy. The British would be placed as they had been placed in relation to the French army in Egypt after the battle of the Nile. In that conflict, despite capturing the French siege train, which had rashly been sent forward by sea, Sir Sidney Smith had not been able in 1799 to prevent Bonaparte from advancing into Syria. Sir Edward Pellew would be similarly unable to prevent the French at Bandar Abbas from advancing into Sind or from hiring as many Arab boats as might be needed to ship an expeditionary force eastwards to Cutch. As the route along the coast of Makran towards Sind was thought to lead to the best point of contact with the last powerful independent Indian state, the Maratha Confederacy, the board of control for India had always been as anxious as the government of India to keep the French away from the Persian Gulf.10 Such an invasion was not thought to require a large French force; nor need it look for a decisive victory in battle. It 'would create a struggle which ... must however be attended with great present calamity and followed by signal and unavoidable distress in our affairs.'11 According to the government of India, in September 1807 a possi• bility seemed to turn into a certainty and a crisis become imminent when the political agent at Bushire confirmed what had previously been only suspected: the shah of Persia

had absolutely entered into a treaty of alliance with the French, one article of which was that the king had ceded to them the islands of Kharg and Hormuz [Kishm] and the port of Gombroon [Bandar Abbas]... and in return for this the French had agreed to supply the king of Persia with a train of artillery...

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 to be brought from the Isle of France [and] landed at Gombroon.12 The need to keep the French out of Persia in order to avoid both a confrontation with the imam and the shah and the possiblity of war with the Marathas had now turned a blockade of the strait of Hormuz into 'an object of paramount importance.'13 Sir Edward Pellew disagreed. He refused to believe that Napoleon had made plans to turn Bandar Abbas into a French base in the Middle East. Any reports of such a plan 'I cannot but suppose ... the

122 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

mere fabrication of an artful person for the sole purpose of obtaining a reward for his discoveries.'14 This statement reveals as much about Pellew as about anybody else. Although he, like everybody in India, had gone out to make money, for two years the more profitable eastern half of his command had been taken away from him. He had been left to police the bay of Bengal against privateers and to calm the groundless fears of the government of Bombay. Having regained control over the whole of his command, he was determined not to be fettered any longer. If Minto would not provide troops for an attack on Batavia, Pellew could still seek success and prize money from the capture of the Dutch warships stationed at Griessie and, with luck, the Dutch Indiamen homebound from China.15 At the end of Octo• ber 1807, Pellew therefore sailed from Madras for the East Indies.

Ill Despite such pronounced scepticism and Pellew's refusal to visit Bombay himself, he made the arrangements Minto had requested for a blockade of the strait of Hormuz. HMS Fox (32) was already in the Persian Gulf, taking home a Persian ambassador to India. The Fox was to be joined, ironically perhaps, by HMS Pitt (36). Three more frigates were either under repair at Bombay or going there to refit, and Pellew promised as soon as he reached Prince Edward Island to send one of his senior captains, Captain John Ferrier, in HMS Albion (74), to take command at Bombay and keep watch for the French.16 Ferrier was to make sure that a French expedition from Mauritius could not slip by the British in India with troops and artillery bound for Bandar Abbas. By the time Pellew returned to Madras on 10 February 1808, the crisis expected the following autumn had begun — or remained imaginary, depending on the view one took of the most recent information. Early in January, both Bombay and Minto were

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 warned by the captain of an American merchantman, who had been given the information by the captain of a French privateer, later captured, that a French squadron of two ships of the line and up to six frigates had broken out of Rochefort the previous June. If the information were true, the enemy might shortly be expected in the Persian Gulf, either at Bandar Abbas or at a port higher up, like Bushire. That the Persian Gulf might be the destination of the French seemed to be corroborated by a report from the officer in command 123 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

of the British blockade of Egypt, who warned the government of Bombay that a French army had begun the march overland to India from Poland. However vague the reports and however unreliable the sources, Minto thought that he could not afford to disregard the information. 'We are not prepared to state our sentiments regarding the intelligence of the supposed project on the part of the French against India by way of Persia or the practicability of that measure.' Despite this, 'it is certainly not to be entirely neglected.'17 Minto, in fact, expected the Royal Navy to act as if the information were true and the French had made plans to rendezvous in the Persian Gulf in preparation for an invasion of India. Without waiting for new instructions from the governor-general or Pellew, Captain Ferrier, who had reached Bombay on 20 Decem• ber 1807, had already taken steps to blockade the strait of Hormuz. He was urged on by the governor of Bombay, whom the news from the Middle East had thrown into a panic. The governor's 'confounded long minutes frighten Ferrier out of his senses,' said Pellew.18 At Bombay, Ferrier could make up a squadron of the Albion, HCS Royal George (36), which was an armed Indiaman, four frigates - Fox, Pitt, Phaeton (38), and Dedaigneuse (36) - and two Bombay Marine cruisers, Mornington and Ternate, which mounted 14 guns apiece. He also summoned HMS Russell (74) and the frigate San Fiorenzo (36) from the bay of Bengal. Then, on 4 February 1808, Ferrier sailed for Bandar Abbas. 'Ferrier is confident that he shall do very well with this force, or at worst not be liable to discomfiture... but I,' said the governor of Bombay, 'am not quite so confident on that head.'19 In fact, if HMS Russell had arrived within three weeks as expected, the squadron would have been strong enough to take on any ships the French were likely to have sent. A French force as strong as the one reported was bound to have been followed, and the British reinforcements might even arrive first. Although Minto assumed that, upon Pellew's return from the east, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 he 'would agree ... in thinking the western side of India the most important and immediate object of vigilance,'20 Pellew still believed that the scare of invasion was groundless and the reports which had led to it obviously false. Even if a French squadron had broken out from Rochefort the summer before, it could not have been bound for the Persian Gulf, or it would have arrived already. Ships were not therefore needed in the Persian Gulf with Ferrier: they were merely being taken away from more important duties in more politically 124 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

sensitive areas. While Pellew had been away in the East Indies and Ferrier worrying about the Persian Gulf, French privateers had been preying on merchantmen in the bay of Bengal so effectively that the Calcutta merchants had made a formal protest to the governor- general about their lack of protection. In an attempt to calm every• one down, Pellew cancelled Ferrier's orders to Russell and San Fiorenzo, summoned Royal George back to the east coast of India, and went round to Bombay himself to find out what was happening. The admiral seems nettled at our having sent off this fleet,' commented the governor of Bombay on learning of these orders.21 Although Royal Navy ships could be ordered about by the govern• ment of India only in cases of emergency, Pellew had no reason to complain about Ferrier's willingness to co-operate with the govern• ment of Bombay. He had been sent to Bombay with that in mind. Still seeing 'little reason to apprehend any immediate danger by sea,' however, Pellew was more reasonably annoyed by the government of India's attempt to make use of his ships for political purposes.22 Minto had decided that a British mission ought to be sent to Persia to convince the shah that the promises being made to him by the French would soon turn out to be false. Instead of receiving the help of France against Russia, the shah would be expected to help the French invade India. Pellew had expected that this transformation of the fear of a seaborne invasion into the fear that a Franco-Persian alliance would lead to an invasion overland would shift the focus of British attention from the strait of Hormuz to Tehran. Trying to be helpful, he had even offered to transport Colonel John Malcolm, the British envoy to Persia, as far as Bombay. They arrived there during the first week in April. Pellew's annoyance was caused by his discovery that Ferrier's squadron had been assigned the task of backing up Malcolm's mission with a show of force. As the governor of Bombay expressed the idea: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 We are still satisfied that whether the expected French armament arrive or not at ... [Bandar Abbas, and the governor did not hesitate to contradict Pellew about the chances of this], the impression from the appearance of a British maritime force in the [Persian] Gulf cannot be otherwise than salutary.23 The demonstration was not to be directed against Great Britain's traditional opponent in the Persian Gulf, the pirates who preyed on the private and country trade from India. Minto had hoped to send

125 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Malcolm to the gulf with 4,000 troops. They were to drive out any Frenchmen he found setting up a forward base for a French invasion of India, then to set up a British base on the island of Kishm. Being placed in command of a British fortress in the strait of Hormuz had been one of Malcolm's dreams since his first mission to Persia in 1800-1801, and he expected Ferrier to convoy the expedition and to place himself at his disposal.24 Pellew promptly refused his per• mission. More annoying to Pellew was the conduct of the British resident at Muscat. Ferrier had reached Muscat on 10 February and had patrolled for a month between Muscat and Bandar Abbas. Finding no sign of the French, he had returned to Bombay at the beginning of April, just before Pellew arrived there from Madras. The resident at Muscat, who had accompanied Ferrier on his cruise, had tried to take advantage of the navy's backing to compel the imam to declare himself a British ally. When the imam refused to give to the resident the land he demanded for a house, he declared that the imam's friendship 'was but outward show ... He is afraid his showing attention ... may embroil him with the French, and quietly to suffer this is surrendering the superiority we possess over our rivals in these seas.'25 Unfortunately, as the imam was aware, although the British were superior to the French in the eastern seas, they could not protect trade everywhere at the same moment. Such conduct by East India Company officials would drag the Royal Navy westwards, entangling it in disputes with Middle Eastern states. The fleet, however, was not suited to an offensive role in the Middle East, which was contrary both to established policy and to the admiral's instructions to defer to the government of India only in a crisis. Although Oman could be coerced by the disruption of its seaborne trade, a fleet in the Persian Gulf could have no effect on the shah, whose support came from the northern provinces of Persia along the coast of the Caspian Sea. Minto was quick to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 denounce the resident at Muscat for 'a protest nearly amounting to a declaration of hostility.'26 Unfortunately Malcolm would take the same sort of stand on his arrival at Bushire. The shah of Persia was offered no reason for breaking off his French alliance and renewing his connection with Great Britain. He was merely threatened with a rebellion in the southern provinces of his empire in the event of a refusal.27 Malcolm's mission to Persia was to be backed up by a diplomatic 126 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

offensive in Sind, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, designed to block all of the overland routes to a French army. The Royal Navy could therefore go back to its most important duty, the protection of British trade. The line of battle ships,' admitted Minto early in May 'are not necessary for any purpose connected with the designs or operation of the enemy by land.'2* Despite Pellew's annoyance with the government of Bombay, he had offered to leave three ships of the line on the west coast of India as long as Minto and the governor remained afraid that a seaborne invasion might lead to an attack on Bombay itself. Pellew even offered to pay a visit to the strait of Hormuz. He saw no reason for one, however, as he did not believe in the danger of an overland invasion: 'There exist obstacles insuper• able to the eventual progress of a French army to India by that route, which will effectually secure the British possessions in this quarter of the world from invasion.'29 The safety of British India could be left to the extremes of climate and terrain in the Middle East, to the political disorder within all of the states along the route, and to the enmity between them. At the end of May 1808, Pellew moved eastwards to his summer quarters at Madras, leaving Ferrier behind at Bombay with a force strong enough to cope with any emergency short of the arrival of a battle squadron from France. Two frigates, HMS Doris (36) and HMS Psyche (32), a captured French privateer, were in the Persian Gulf with Malcolm. They could be reinforced, if necessary, by Albion and by HMS Powerful (74). In case of emergency, however, the squadron was to take up a position on the west coast of India in preference to the strait of Hormuz. Underlying the disagreement between Pellew and the government of Bombay was the admiral's natural resentment at being told how and where to fight by a civil servant. Since the French invasion of Egypt ten years earlier, the flag officer in command, East Indies, had planned to defend British India against a seaborne invasion from the Middle East by gathering his

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 battle squadron off the Malabar Coast. This, not the strait of Hormuz, was perceived strategically as the most vital point where a British fleet could plan the most flexible response.30

IV By the summer of 1808, the scare of invasion was over. However imaginary the danger, the scare had illustrated the limits to Great

127 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Britain's mastery of the Indian Ocean. Owing to the breadth of the East Indies command, stretching from Macao to Basra, two officers with flag rank were needed in the eastern seas. While one was protecting the China trade and planning the capture of Manila and Batavia, the other could guard against seaborne invasion and try to limit the damage done by enemy privateers to local trade in the bay of Bengal. The events of 1807-1808 and the government of India's demand for a blockade of the strait of Hormuz show that in the Indian Ocean the Royal Navy had to solve an unusually acute example of its usual problem of being the strongest navy but not necessarily the stronger at any particular place. The enemy could, in fact, cause widespread disruption among the British by doing nothing at all. In Asia, rumours made effective threats. They would not have done so in Europe, where geography and wealth combined to make the British usually feel safe. In India, the British usually felt threatened. They feared overland invasion, hostile coalitions, rebellion, and bankruptcy. Their fear forced them to try to forestall events to which in Europe they could have waited to respond. The British did not have to prevent Napoleon from amassing an army at Boulogne. The Royal Navy would pin it down and might destroy it, should it try to break out into the Channel. Even if it should succeed in making a landing on the south coast, the army would drive it back into the sea. This confidence may or may not have been misplaced, as the alarm felt in India also may or may not have been. The British in India, however, acted as if the French could not be pinned down at Bandar Abbas: its occupation had to be forestalled. This assumption explains why even Sir Edward Pellew, despite his refusal to believe any of the reports that had caused the scare of invasion, took steps to mollify the government of India. Of course the reports of a seaborne invasion might all have been made up, but that, as the governor-general explained, was beside the point: the reports must be treated as if they were true. 'Our measures

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 must be calculated to meet such an emergency because, if we should be wrong in disbelieving the accounts which have reached us, and they should in the event prove true, the error would be irreparable.'31

128 THE ROYAL NAVY AT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

NOTES

1. For the naval background see G. S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, 1810-1850 (Oxford, 1967), chs. v-vi. 2. See Piers Mackesy, The War in the Mediterranean, 1803-1810 (London, 1957), ch. 6. 3. GicB to ggic, 18 July 1807, IO Bengal/SPC, 18 Aug. 1807, no. 1. 4. Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, 156-8. 5. Locker to Warden, 4 July 1807, IO Bengal/SPC, 18 Aug. 1807, no. 20. 6. See C.N. Parkinson, Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, Admiral of the Red (London, 1934), chs. 9-10. 7. Minto to Pellew, 6 Oct. 1807, Minto MSS M/159. 8. Kelly, Persian Gulf, pp.13, 44-5, 88, 184-5. 9. Ingram, 'Incident at Nakhilu,' pp. 193-8. 10. Dundas to Minto, private and secret, 2 May 1808, NLS MS 1063, fo. 31. See also Ingram, Commitment to Empire, pp.42-57. 11. Minto to Dundas, secret, 1 Nov. 1807, Minto MSS M/159; Seton to Duncan, 25 Sept. 1807, IO Bengal/SPC, 26 Oct. 1807, no. 2. 12. Smith to Edmonstone, 16 July 1807, IO Bengal/SPC, 28 Sept. 1807, no. 1. 13. Minto to Pellew, 28 Sept. 1807, ibid., no. 2. 14. Pellew to Minto, 15 Oct. 1807, IO Bengal/SPC, 9 Nov. 1807, no. 1. 15. Pellew to Marsden, 18 Oct. 1807, Adm. 1/179; Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, pp. 300-8. No mention of the subject treated here is to be found in the Exmouth Papers at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. 16. Kelly, Persian Gulf, p. 84. 17. Ggic to Pellew, most secret, 29 Jan. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC, 29 Jan. 1808, no. 8; Minto to Maitland, secret, 6 Jan. 1808, Minto MSS M/159. 18. Pellew to Minto, private, 25 May 1808, Minto MSS M/180. 19. Duncan to Minto, 30 Jan. 1808, Minto MSS M/337. On board Ferrier took 60 artillery men and 200 infantry of HM 56th Regiment. 20. Minto to Pellew, 2 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/159. 21. Duncan to Minto, 1 March 1808, Minto MSS M/337. 22. Pellew to Wellesley Pole, 22 Feb. 1808, Adm. 1/180. 23. GicB to Pellew, 25 Feb. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC, 21 March 1808, no. 21. 24. Malcolm to Wellesley, 26 Feb. 1800, IO G/29/22, p.53. For details of his missions see M.E. Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghani• stan, 1798-1850 (Oxford, 1980), ch. 1. 25. Seton to Duncan, 30 March 1808, IO Bengal/SPC, 25 April 1808, no. 5. 26. Ggic to Duncan, 21 April 1808, ibid., no. 14. For details of the diplomatic offensive see S.R. Bakshi, Diplomacy and Administration in India, 1807-1813 (New Delhi, 1971), ch. 2. 27. Yapp, Strategies of British India, pp. 55-6. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 28. Minto to Pellew, 4 May 1808, Minto MSS M/160. 29. Pellew to Wellesley Pole, 20 May 1808, Adm. 1/180. 30. Ingram, Commitment to Empire, pp. 158-9, 298-302, 316; Parkinson, War in the Eastern Seas, pp. 146-8. 31. Minto to Barlow, private and secret, 1 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/159.

129 IX

AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL, 1807-1809

It is very much to be wished that it were practicable for us to intervene more directly to prevent that country [Afghanistan] falling into the hands of the French, for if they were once in possession of it, their invasion of our territories would no longer be a great and desperate enterprize, but an attempt which they might make without risk when they pleased and repeat whenever the state of our affairs gave a prospect of success. Mountstuart Elphinstone1

Of all the British activities in Asia, their excursions in Afghanistan have been the most spectacular and most humiliating. Twice in the nineteenth century they marched in triumph to Kabul; twice they were shortly afterwards compelled to evacuate. The British reason for these excursions was excellent: Afghanistan commanded the invasion routes to India. To prevent the prospect of an invasion from encouraging their Indian subjects to revolt, the British attempted to counter it as far from India as possible. This required them to co• operate with Afghanistan and Persia. Usually, as the two states were enemies, the British had to choose between them. There were advan• tages either way. Whereas Persia had the advantage to the govern• ment of India of being as far away as possible, Afghanistan had the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 advantage to the British government of being outside the European political system. When Bonaparte invaded Egypt he provoked an argument between the two: Wellesley wished to ally with Persia, Dundas with Afghanistan. In 1808, adventurously, the government of India decided to ally with both at the same time. The outcome was one of the oddest of British initiatives, the mission of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone to Kabul.

130 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

In an interesting account of the negotiations between Elphinstone and Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, the titular king of Kabul, that took place in the spring of 1809 at Peshawar, S.R. Bakshi explained both the nature of the civil war being fought in Afghanistan at the time and the difficulties it created for Elphinstone.2 However, he virtually disregarded the most intriguing aspect of the mission, why Elphin• stone was sent to Kabul at all. This question is best answered by relating the mission to the simultaneous missions to Persia, the Punjab, and Sind; all of them the result of a scare of invasion unequalled in the nineteenth century. There was no reason for this exceptional alarm. It was caused by persistent lobbying from men who stood to gain, being mostly a tribute to the perseverance of one of Mountstuart Elphinstone's foremost rivals, the legendary John Malcolm. The scare of invasion was a result of the Franco-Persian alliance concluded at Finkenstein in Poland in the spring of 1807. The Persians had been seeking help against Russia since the Russians had gone on the offensive in the Caucasus three years previously; would have preferred the help of Great Britain; but, after fruitless applica• tions to both London and Calcutta, eventually made an alliance with France instead.3 Unfortunately for Persia, the treaty of Finkenstein was followed shortly afterwards by the treaty of Tilsit: instead of France helping Persia to invade Russia, Persia would have to help France to invade India. The French ambassador, General Gardane, and his military mission spent most of their time surveying the routes to the east.4 Ironically, in the spring of 1807 the British had decided just too late to intervene in the Russo-Persian war. Their purpose, however, was to strengthen Russia rather than Persia. The campaigns in the Principalities and the Caucasus were diverting the attention of Russia from the fight against the French in Poland. By persuading Persia to give way to Russia in the Caucasus, the British hoped to

5 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 strengthen the remnants of the Third Coalition against France. Unfortunately, before the British had intervened, Russia made peace with France. After the treaty of Tilsit intervening in Persia would do nothing to strengthen the coalition: no coalition was left to be strengthened. After the treaty of Finkenstein the British had to decide whether they ought to intervene in Persia in an attempt to strengthen the defences of India. Whether or not India was endangered by a Franco-Persian alliance, and whether a French army could invade

131 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

overland, were subjects of acrimonious debate in Great Britain. The foreign secretary, George Canning, thought that both subjects could safely be ignored. He was relying upon the advice of Lord Wellesley, who had never feared an overland invasion while Bonaparte was in Egypt6 and who suggested that the Franco-Persian alliance could have no practical effect.7 Wellesley, however, was not the only former Indian statesman with influence in London. His views were vigorously opposed by Viscount Melville, formerly Henry Dundas, who was represented in the government by his son Robert, the president of the board of control. If anybody in London was responsible for Elphinstone's mission to Kabul, the Dundases were. Despite the collapse of the Third Coalition, Dundas wanted to intervene in Persia, in order 'to exclude the French from all such connections and possessions in Asia ... as might facilitate to them the means ... of directing the efforts of any considerable body of troops against our Indian territories.'8 During August 1807, therefore, Dundas decided to send a British mission to Persia to challenge the influence of General Gardane. By the end of the year the situation on the Continent appeared more threatening. The reports were vague, some of them mere rumours, but the French were supposed to be moving troops to the East; leaving Dundas wondering whether Russia might be willing to join them in an attack on British India. 'The recent proceedings of Russia,' he warned the governor-general, 'will leave you no longer in doubt of the absolute necessity of being on your guard against an attack on your north western frontier ... It is known that French officers have proceeded towards Persia, and there are many rumours in circulation as to a large force having been detached from Poland and which is asserted to have the same destination.'9 These rumours were never sub• stantiated, but as they continued to circulate, in March 1808 the secret committee finally authorized the governor-general to prepare to disrupt the enemy's lines of communication and supply. The

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 method recommended was comprehensive. The government of India was to cultivate the goodwill of 'all the states and countries to the eastward of the Indus, but also of the Afghan government, and even of the Tartar tribes to the eastward of the Caspian.'10 Here, in Melville's fear that it was possible for a European army to invade India overland,11 was one of the origins of Mountstuart Elphin• stone's mission to Kabul. Whether or not Melville's fear was justified was argued at length

132 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

among the directors of the East India Company. Not that this was the only cause of, or occasion for, argument among them. They could also not decide whether to permit missionaries to go out to India, and on both issues the same men were on the same sides. The issues were not unconnected. Anybody who feared invasion usually feared that the prospect would incite Great Britain's subjects in India to revolt; so would interference with their religion. Sending mission• aries out to India would therefore undermine the British position.12 To evangelicals, like the deputy chairman, Charles Grant, on the other hand, anglicizing India was to be both the atonement for the sin of its conquest and to consolidate British rule. Christianity would reduce the danger from invasion.13 Such disagreements about the connection between reform and stability paralysed the East India Company for most of 1807, partly because the group which feared invasion was just as afraid of the likely results of doing anything to prevent it. They are 'timid men,' sneered Arthur Wellesley, 'who fear something, they know not what, and are more afraid of the remedy than they are of the danger to which they are exposed.'14 Anybody who had experience of Wellesley's brother's habits while in India might reasonably fear that authorizing any steps to counter a threat of invasion would merely be inviting the government of India to wage further wars of conquest.15 While the board of control and the secret committee were para• lysed by the disagreements between the Dundases and Canning on the one hand and the Dundases and Grant on the other, the new governor-general of India, Lord Minto, was having to decide between the alternative policies of Sir George Barlow and John Malcolm. On his arrival in India, Minto relied heavily upon the advice of Barlow, who had been acting as governor-general since the death of Cornwallis in the autumn of 1805. Barlow, like Wellesley, had had no doubt that the danger of an overland invasion was a chimera. 'We consider a project of the nature,' he told the East India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Company, 'to be attended with such peculiar difficulties, and to be opposed by such extraordinary obstacles, as to justify us in consider• ing it altogether impracticable.'16 After Barlow had taken up his new appointment as governor of Madras, Minto for a while went on following his advice. Until the end of 1807, Minto could 'see no prospect of any material interruption to the tranquillity now established in India, unless it should result from very extraordinary and not yet, I think, to be apprehended events in Europe.'17 'Find 133 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

employment for Bonaparte in Europe,' he told one of the leading directors of the East India Company in December, 'and you shall have a surplus revenue within a year.'18 This, unfortunately, was just what the British government could not do. Within two months, Minto was following in the footsteps of Wellesley by applying to the East India Company's agents at Canton for silver.19 The great scare of invasion in India in the spring of 1808 was the culmination of six months of speculation. It began in July 1807, when the resident at Bushire reported that, in return for a French alliance, the Persians had agreed to cede the port of Bandar Abbas to France.20 This news at first caused some alarm that the French might be planning to invade India by the traditional route around the Cape of Good Hope. As a result, French influence in Persia seemed less threatening to the British in India than French possession of Mauri• tius. This estimate determined Minto's military priorities in the autumn of 1807. Decisive intervention against the French in Persia or Baghdad was not to be considered. To send an army to the Middle East would be impossible and, if possible, unwise; but 'the capture of Mauritius is the most pressing as well as the most important object in this part of the globe.'21 Driving the French from Persia would not drive them from Mauritius: driving them from Mauritius would prevent the Franco-Persian alliance from having any practical effect. By the new year, as Sir George Barlow's influence at Fort William was replaced by John Malcolm's, these priorities were turned around. Decisive intervention in the Middle East became much more urgent than the capture of Mauritius, an invasion overland much more likely than one by sea. Minto, who was acutely short of precise and detailed information during the winter of 1807, was reacting to the same sequence of rumours as had alarmed the board of control. Two pieces of news mattered most. On 19 December the resident at Bushire reported the arrival at Tabriz of 24 French officers and 300 troops, the full complement of General Gardane's military mission.22 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 At the same time a report from the British blockading squadron off Egypt claimed that a French army from Poland had 'marched through Persia to India.'23 Although this claim was flatly contra• dicted by the resident at Baghdad - 'we have not heard of any such expedition as that alluded to'24 his report was ignored. On 30 January 1808 Minto decided that 'the intelligence lately received leaves no room to doubt, either that the French actually meditate the project of invading India through Persia, or that they are supported 134 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

... by the Turkish and Persian powers.'25 Minto seemed also to have decided what should be done to bar the way of the French: 'We ought to meet the expected contest in Persia or in the adjacent countries.'26 Ideally the French should be stopped in Persia. The task of stopping them was to be given to John Malcolm, who was to go to Persia to persuade the shah to disavow his French alliance. In case the British should fail to stop the French in Persia, however, they might need an alliance with Afghanistan. This decision to send missions to both Persia and Afghanistan would cause confusion between the British and the Middle Eastern states; also among the British themselves. Developments in Persia had already caused a disagreement at Bombay between the governor and the flag officer in command, East Indies. The governor, always worried about the weakness of Bombay's defences, decided in January in response to the reports of French activity in Persia and at Mauritius to send ships to patrol the strait of Hormuz.27 The admiral, who thought the reports unreliable, was naturally annoyed to see his ships wasting their time.28 Minto, oddly enough, claimed that he thought the same. The report of a French plan to invade India was not 'to be accounted certain and much less can it be considered as correct ... nevertheless our measures should be framed on a supposition that a French army is actually on its march to Persia.'29 Like Dundas in London, Minto was willing to treat rumours as certainties. The result, both the Harfordian Controversy and Mountstuart Elphinstone's mission to Kabul, was a great deal of fuss. Minto's new assessment of the likelihood of an overland invasion and his decision to intervene in Persia and Afghanistan, first by sending an envoy to insist that the Persians renounce their alliance with France, and second by reversing in February 1808 his original refusal to contemplate sending an army to the Middle East,30 are to be attributed to the ascendancy of Malcolm. And Minto was aware

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 that he was abandoning Barlow's policy for Malcolm's. Malcolm had bombarded Fort William throughout 1807 with papers advocat• ing decisive intervention in either Persia or Baghdad, both to destroy the increasing French influence and as a contribution to the war against Turkey. Barlow had refused to pay any attention to Mal• colm, but Minto proved more susceptible, partly because Malcolm was able to approach him through his son, whom Malcolm already knew.31 135 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Malcolm's greatest interest in the Middle East was his own personal gain. Ever since he had been sent on his first mission to Persia by Wellesley in 1800, Malcolm had treated Anglo-Persian relations as his private concern. He was enraged when he learnt that in the summer of 1807 the British government had chosen his great rival, Sir Harford Jones, formerly the resident at Baghdad, to be the British envoy to Persia. By insisting upon the need for a threat of force to drive the French from the Persian Gulf and on the need for a British outpost there instead,32 Malcolm hoped to anticipate Jones. The utility of a British outpost in the gulf was one of Malcolm's lifelong themes, first stated in 1800 when he urged Wellesley to acquire the island of Kishm. Anglo-Persian relations might then be taken out of the hands of diplomatists and Malcolm might obtain an interesting and independent command likely to bring him rapid promotion. It is curious that each time Malcolm rose in rank, the number of British troops needed in the Middle East to defend British India rose accordingly. The prospect of a victorious war in the Middle East - for they were always to be short, victorious, and glamorous - beguiled British governors-general and viceroys throughout the British Raj, tempting first the earl of Auckland and later Lord Lytton down the road to disaster. They ought to have been warned by Minto's experience, although, as he did not actually send an army to the Middle East, his disasters were diplomatic. 'Suppose the glory of defeating the conqueror of Europe,' he wrote wistfully to his wife, 'should be reserved for me in Asia.'33 What happened in the spring of 1808 was that, for the first time when planning to defend India against a threat from beyond the North-West Frontier, the government of India lost its head. Where Wellesley had pretended to be alarmed in 1798, Minto took real fright. Perhaps this is not surprising. Minto had previously been the president of the board of control in the ministry of 'All the Talents'. He had been chosen for the post of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 governor-general only to break a deadlock between the government and the East India Company over the Whigs' demand to appoint the earl of Lauderdale, and he was not highly thought of, either by his colleagues in the government or by the East India Company.34 'From what I have experienced of his Lordship,' said Charles Grant, 'I should be inclined to apprehend, that his facility and impressibleness of temper may lead him into an entanglement, from which he may not have the happiest method of extricating himself.'35 The

136 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

impressibleness was played upon by Malcolm: the entanglements were the missions to Persia, the Punjab, and Kabul. While Minto undoubtedly panicked in the spring of 1808, he had an excellent reason for paying more attention to the reports from the Middle East of French plans for an overland invasion than they seemed to deserve. If the reports were ignored and should then prove to be true, the British would have no time to defend themselves and might suffer a catastrophic defeat.36 The gravest danger was not, however, of a defeat in battle by the French. The prospect of invasion would encourage Great Britain's Indian subjects to revolt; suppres• sing the revolt while trying to defeat the French army might prove to be ruinously expensive. Minto calculated that the government of India would then need to be sent at least £2,000,000 and substantial reinforcements from England.37 This assessment of the danger determined the strategy proposed in 1808 for India's defence. 'Should a French army ever arrive in India,' argued the commander-in-chief, 'it must be of extreme importance to put an immediate and decisive end to the contest by a complete defeat of the enemy for, it is impossible to calculate the effects which a reverse might produce on the minds and conduct of the natives ... or of the jealous powers by which we are surrounded.'38 Far prefer• able would be the defeat of the French 'as far beyond our own frontiers as possible. We ought,' said Minto, 'to contest Persia itself with them and to dispute every step of their progress.'39 He meant by this not merely diplomatic co-operation but joint military planning with all of the Middle Eastern states. In the event of a setback in Persia, the government of India hoped to defeat a French army marching towards India in Afghanistan. Minto was sensible to wish to dispute every step of a French advance; foolish not to appreciate how difficult it would be. To invade British India overland would have been a great challenge, not militarily but politically: obtaining the co-operation of one state

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 along the route guaranteed one the enmity of the next. Defending British India posed an identical problem. In order to defeat a French invasion as far from India as possible, the British had to choose an ally from a group of mutually hostile Asiatic states. Minto refused to choose. He decided, as the board of control would have wished, to offer an alliance to all of them. On 10 February 1808 he informed the board that he was about to send 'regular and avowed embassies' to Persia, Sind, Lahore, and Kabul.40 137 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

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138 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

This decision was based on the necessary illusion that the states beyond the British North-West Frontier would permit the British to select their most vital interests on their behalf. The British in India always preferred not to take sides in quarrels between Indian states. They did not intervene unless, like Wellesley, they intended to impose their will on everybody. In the Middle East, the British had no local interests that might warrant intervention, only imperial interests which the Middle Eastern states might help to sustain. Minto was acting in accordance with both of these assumptions, and both of them proved to be false. In order to be able to contest a French advance at any chosen point, the British had to convince Persia, Kabul, Sind, and the Sikhs, that resistance to the French was as vital to each of them as it was to the British. If they would not admit this, they would make demands in return for their help, entangling the British in their quarrels with one another. But oppos• ing the French did not matter to them. Each of them was much more interested in obtaining British support against the others. One of the obstacles in the way of close Anglo-Persian relations throughout the nineteenth century, for example, was the British refusal to permit Persia to attack Afghanistan or Turkey. This restriction was peculi• arly galling to the Persians, because the terms of the Anglo-Persian treaty of 1801 had stipulated that Persia must be willing to attack Afghanistan at the request of Great Britain.41 A similar obstacle stood in the way of close relations with the Sikhs, who cast covetous glances on the Afghan province of Peshawar.42 The difficulties of fitting an alliance with Afghanistan into any scheme for the defence of British India would therefore be acute. Minto confirmed his decision to send an embassy to Kabul at the end of March 1808. Nevertheless, not until 20 June was Elphinstone notified of his appointment and not until 19 August did the govern• ment give him his instructions. The delay annoyed Elphinstone, who complained that all his suggestions about the mission were treated

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 with 'silent contempt.' According to Elphinstone, Minto was in• capable of acting resolutely because he was incapable of making up his mind. His train of thought was brilliantly, if maliciously, portrayed in one of Elphinstone's letters to Edward Strachey: 'It is well to send an army to Persia — but then the risk — The Indus is a fine defensive [frontier] but then the Sikhs — we must raise an army — but what an expense! Mr. A says very true; but then Mr. B's plan of campaign; Mr. C's of an embassy; Mr. D's of forts and magazines; 139 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Mr. E's of a military desert. After all the only wisdom is to see what the enemy do and then suit our conduct to theirs.'43 Minto was worried that the civil war in Afghanistan might make an alliance with Shah Shuja impossible to negotiate: 'Kabul is un• fortunately still distracted,' he told Dundas, '... and the moment is not yet arrived when we can prudently address ourselves to either of the contending parties.'44 While Afghanistan was in such disorder, she was likely to be useless as an ally: if any of the contending princes won a decisive victory, however, he might be a troublesome one. He might seek to take advantage of the change in British policy by playing upon the government of India's previous hostility;45 the British might have to offer too many concessions to prove their new• found goodwill. To guard against either of these developments, Minto thought of trying to find out beforehand whether Shah Shuja would welcome a British mission. By making such enquiries, how• ever, the British envoy to Sind succeeded only in offending the amirs.46 Minto eventually decided that he need not bother: surely 'the pride of the king of Kabul would be highly gratified by an embassy on the part of a power so high in the scale of ascendancy and so celebrated as that of the British government in India.' It was inconceivable that the amir would be so unfriendly as to refuse to receive a British envoy.47 How fortunate that the amir did not refuse, for Minto had argued himself into the trap in which Lytton would be caught in 1878.48 By demanding that the Middle Eastern states should admit to needing an alliance with the British against the French, Minto would be obliged, should they refuse, to treat them as enemies. When Ranjit Singh did refuse, Minto nearly went to war with him.49 Elphinstone was to have four duties in Kabul. First and most important, he was to encourage the Afghans to obstruct a French advance from Persia towards India by negotiating a defensive and, if necessary, offensive alliance against France. The alliance was to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 express the common interests of the two states according to Minto's curious definition: 'the sense which the court of Kabul entertains of the dangers to which that country will be exposed by the advance of a French or Russian army towards India, is obviously the only basis on which we can expect to find or to excite a disposition on the part of Kabul, to resist the progress of our enemy.'50 By restricting the alliance to France, and by excluding co-operation against Persia, the common interest became an exclusively British interest. A French 140 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

invasion would threaten British India whether or not Persia co• operated: a Persian invasion, without French co-operation, would threaten Afghanistan alone. Precisely because of this fact, the likely behaviour of Persia, rather than of France and Russia, might per• suade the king of Kabul that a British alliance against Persia would be worth his while. The British, however, trying simultaneously to make an alliance with Persia, had to try to make use of their ally's army without promising to protect his interests. Instead of troops, Elphinstone was to offer the king of Kabul arms and equipment. To have sent an army beyond the Khyber Pass might have appeared rash. To negotiate an alliance with Kabul without being willing to send one was fanciful. Elphinstone's other duties were no less fanciful. Minto hoped that both Ranjit Singh and Shah Shuja would permit the British 'in the interest of the common cause' to make military surveys of their territory.51 Both of them refused, and the Afghans 'frankly owned [to Elphinstone] that we had the character of being very designing, and most people thought it necessary to be very vigilant in all trans• actions with us.'52 British ignorance of the geography of the Punjab and Afghanistan was the Sikhs' and Afghans' best defence against a future British attack. Second, Minto hoped that Elphinstone would be permitted to organize an Afghan link in an overland post to run between Calcutta and Tehran. Last, he wanted all the information Elphinstone could find about the territories west of the Indus. How• ever innocent this request may have seemed to the British, they failed to understand that to an Indian prince any British enquiries, however merely curious, were offensive and appeared threatening. By 1808 nobody in India had yet forgotten Wellesley. Elphinstone's mission was to be rather grand, grander than Charles Metcalfe's mission to Lahore, in deference to the supposedly greater dignity of the king of Kabul. In addition to an assistant, Richard Strachey, Elphinstone was accompanied by thirteen

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Englishmen and an escort of 200 infantry and 200 horse. Elphin• stone, who had volunteered for the mission, had not expected to be appointed, thinking Minto to 'have the worst possible opinion of me.'53 He was an excellent choice, however, one of the company's brightest employees who had the additional advantage, unlike Mal• colm, of not being overawed by rank. He had no reverence for Gibby, as he called Lord Minto, whose Christian name was Gilbert and whom he had met the previous year during leave at Calcutta ;54 141 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

and had had equally little reverence for Wellesley, whom he called Old Villainy. The younger son of an old Scotch noble family could afford to smile at the pretensions of Anglo-Irish pomp.55 Long before Elphinstone reached Afghanistan, he realized that the alliance he was being sent to negotiate would be of very limited, if any, value. The French would be a menace if they occupied Kabul and Kandahar; it would be splendid to prevent them; the difficulty was to decide how. From Moultan in the middle of December 1808, Elphinstone sent Minto a long memorandum listing these difficul• ties. First, Elphinstone stressed that the king of Kabul would probably show no interest in resisting the French. He was just as likely to agree to a French alliance, because the French, unlike the British, would promise to re-establish his suzerainty over Sind. All the British could offer instead was subsidies.56 This pessimistic appraisal was reinforced by the reports reaching Elphinstone of the slow progress in the autumn of 1808 of the missions to Persia, Lahore, and Sind, all of which had run into difficulties. The insuper• able obstacle to an alliance with the king of Kabul, as Elphinstone understood, was not only the greater British interest in Persia, but the power of Ranjit Singh, whose alliance was potentially far more valuable than Shah Shuja's. If Ranjit Singh proved to be friendly to the British, the government of India ought to beware of a close connection with Kabul, lest it antagonize him. If Ranjit were un• friendly, the British would be unable to implement an alliance with Shuja. With Ranjit Singh barring the route, an attempt to send an army forward to Afghanistan would be foolhardy. The king of Kabul, therefore, could not in either case be supported except with subsidies, unless the government of Bombay should go to war with Sind in order to open up a route to Afghanistan by way of the Bolan Pass.57 Far from uniting the frontier states in a defensive coalition, Minto's missions would tend to increase the chances of a frontier war.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 At the same moment as Elphinstone was ruminating in Moultan, Minto at Calcutta was reconsidering his instructions. The govern• ment of India's missions to both Persia and Lahore had been failures, convincing Minto that Persia would have to be treated as an ally of France and Ranjit Singh as an enemy. Kharg would be occupied to chastize the shah; an expeditionary force sent forward to the Sut- ledge to chastize the maharajah.58 Of Minto's projected coalition, Kabul alone was left to act as the bulwark of India's defence and was 142 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

now to be offered an offensive and defensive alliance against Persia as well as France, provided that they, too, were acting in alliance. 'If in the progress of the present events the court of Persia should be found decidedly confederate with the French in their projected expedition to India, we should not hesitate to engage in any plan of hostility against Persia which might suit the king of Kabul.'59 Similarly, Minto was prepared to encourage Afghan attacks on the Sikhs. This revised policy was undoubtedly more realistic, if Minto wanted an alliance with Kabul; but to think of one at all was no less fanciful than it had previously been. For Minto now completely ignored the civil war being fought in Afghanistan. He was still not willing, as the French might be, to help Shah Shuja reassert his claims to suzerainty over Sind, because the amirs, although suspicious of the British, had not been hostile to them. Help against Shah Shuja's rebel subjects in Kandahar and Kashmir - and they had to be treated as his subjects, if he were to become a worthwhile ally - was the only return the British could make for his alliance. If they should admit this, however, they could expect no help from him against the French. As a result, the only undertaking that might have made an Anglo- Afghan alliance of any value to Shah Shuja would have made it worthless to the government of India. That the reports of a French invasion were of no interest to Shah Shuja was evident as soon as Elphinstone reached Peshawar in the spring of 1809. The king demanded subsidies, to pay the troops he needed to defeat his rivals. Elphinstone had to reply that Minto would refuse to pay them, unless the rivals 'could be proved to be connected with France and Persia.'60 The issues on which the negoti• ations were to turn were clear from the start: whether the British were eager enough for an alliance to be willing to subsidize Shah Shuja; whether they would admit that, before he could help them to repulse an overland invasion, they must help him to overpower his

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 rivals. Elphinstone advised Minto to offer a subsidy; explaining that two lakhs of rupees would purchase Shah Shuja's consent to an alliance, fifteen ensure him a victory. Elphinstone admitted that it would have been preferable to keep clear of Afghan feuds, but, as Minto had admitted by postponing the mission, until somebody won the civil war in Afghanistan, there was no hope of a worthwhile connection. Both the geographical position of Afghanistan and the political chaos there would otherwise make it a very uncertain ally.

IDBI-F 143 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Throughout Elphinstone's stay at Peshawar, the negotiations for an alliance proved as difficult as he had predicted. To the British insistence that the alliance should operate only against a Franco- Persian alliance, the Afghans replied that 'all the advantage was on our side and all the danger on the king's.'61 They supported this claim by asking whether, if the French should advance towards India without an alliance with Persia, the British would expect the Afghans to attack them. Elphinstone replied that the British would not: they would meet new circumstances with new alliances.62 In his pre• occupation with the Franco-Persian alliance, Elphinstone seemed to forget that his principal task was the erection of a barrier against France. The behaviour of Persia did not matter. Minto criticized Elphinstone for this: The principle of co-operation which precluded the king of Kabul from promoting the invasion of India by the united forces of France, and Persia, seems equally applicable to the single efforts of France.'63 Elphinstone, however, was being shrewd. If the British wished to avoid having to support the Afghans against Persia, they could not expect the Afghans to support them against France. To the Afghans a French invasion was a remote speculation, a Persian invasion a likely event: the British turned the two around. The only way, therefore, to establish Minto's common interest was to link them together. Such a link would not endanger the British. Unless the Persians had stood by their alliance with France, they would have made a new alliance with the British. As soon as they had, an alliance with Kabul would be unnecessary or, if not unnecessary, impracticable. Minto's attempt to combine all of the states beyond the North-West Frontier into a coalition against France was bound to be a failure. Yet if the British must choose between them, either the shah of Persia or Ranjit Singh would make a better choice than Shah Shuja. If, however, the shah and Ranjit Singh should spurn the British offer of an alliance, Elphinstone had thought of a way to make the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 best use of an alliance with Shah Shuja. Given the implications of the suggestions he had made from Moultan, this not surprisingly turned out to be nothing less than the annexation of Sind. An alliance with Kabul, argued Elphinstone, would be of no value until Shah Shuja had re-established his rule throughout Afghanistan. For this he would need lavish British subsidies, a price worth paying because it would ensure the government of India of a permanent influence at Kabul: 'It seems possible to restore the vigour of this government by

144 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

supplying it with money, and if those means are supplied by the British, that nation could not fail to acquire a decided ascendancy in the king's councils.' To Elphinstone, the strategic gains to be made from this liberality were equally obvious: 'we should command the northern route from Persia to India and a great extent of the naviga• tion of the Indus, and we should influence the chiefs of Seistan and Makran and of the hills between those countries and the Indus, all of them being in different degrees subject to the king of Kabul.'64 Afghanistan, as revitalized by Elphinstone, might have become a large and powerful state, too powerful to be a comfortable neigh• bour. Elphinstone, accordingly, proposed to weaken her while he strengthened her, and to do both at no cost to the East India Com• pany. The subsidy paid to Shah Shuja was to equal his revenue from Sind. In exchange for it he should transfer to the British his claims to suzerainty. This exchange would satisfy all of the British needs. An alliance with Shah Shuja would enable the government of India to close the Khyber Pass; control of Sind would enable it to close the Bolan Pass; control of the amir's income would give it control over the amir. And control of the Indus should enable it to recover all of its expenses by developing new avenues of trade. British officials usually assumed that taking over new territory was bound to be profitable. As the peasants would flourish in their new-found security, the land revenue was bound to increase. The scheme had only a single flaw, but it was crucial: Elphinstone was working for Minto not Ellenborough, and Minto, in the usual style of politicians trying to sound principled, criticized the scheme for being both immoral and impractical.65

Considerations intimately connected with those fundamental principles of political discretion, as well as political morality, by which alone the true honour and prosperity of the British empire can be maintained, would under any circumstances oppose the adoption of the project, even if it were un• opposed by dictates of prudent policy and the obligations of public justice.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 To Minto, who always remembered just in time that he was in India to make a fortune for his family and must not offend the East India Company by squandering its money, the immorality of Elphin• stone's scheme was evidently augmented by its imprudence. Minto's actual reasons for refusing were more mundane. News of the rebellion against the French in Spain had put an end to the scare of an overland invasion and had, in consequence, also put an end to Minto's interest in an Afghan alliance. He was still willing to allow 145 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Elphinstone to conclude an alliance, if Shah Shuja seemed anxious for one, but it must not entangle the British in quarrels between Afghanistan and Persia.66 Minto's interest in an alliance had had particular and temporary causes, making him anxious to avoid general and permanent commitments. That Shah Shuja would remain interested in the sort of alliance the British now offered him appeared unlikely. Not only would Minto refuse to support Afghani• stan against Persia, he would also not support Shuja against his rivals. Elphinstone might as a token promise him three lakhs of rupees, 'if morally assured of corresponding benefits to the British interests,'67 but might not offer a regular subsidy. Minto had excel• lent reasons for his distrust of subsidies. The subsidies to Shah Shuja could not be paid out of the revenues of Sind, because the amirs had paid tribute to Kabul only when threatened with an invasion if they refused. The British would have to make an identical threat. Second, Minto, who had had the bitter experience of working with the Austrians while British ambassador at Vienna during the war of the Second Coalition, had learned that subsidies did not buy help: 'nothing ... could be more calamitous in our affairs than that our European reputation should follow us in the East, and that the Asiatic states should learn to attach the condition of pecuniary aid to every effort their own interest may require them to make in concert with us.'68 The government of India should avoid the mistakes made by Grenville and Pitt. Having spotted the flaws in Elphinstone's scheme for turning Kabul into a worthwhile ally, Minto was equally blind to the flaws in his own scheme. Although subsidies would not take the place of common interests, the states beyond the North-West Frontier had no interest in co-operating with the British. A French invasion was not seen to be a threat, nor resistance to it a common interest. As long as the British would not purchase the aid of any one of them with subsidies, they would have instead to choose which to support Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 against the others. Minto almost admitted as much to the secret committee. While the common interest in resisting the French was to form the principal reason for any alliance, 'a rigid exclusion on our part of all concession and of all assistance to the views of the other party, though not directly tending to the main purpose of the alliance, is adverse to the successful cultivation of mutual harmony and goodwill.'69 In dealing with Shah Shuja, the British would have to recognize that he was less interested in standing up to the French

146 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

than in winning the civil war in Afghanistan. As his power waned, his demands for subsidies became more moderate. But however small, the subsidies were less likely, in the same ratio, to ensure his success. Shah Shuja's power was waning fast all the time Elphinstone was at Peshawar: 'He is incredibly poor and altogether very weak.'70 Shuja was embarrassed that Elphinstone should witness this: Elphin• stone was embarrassed to have to. On 13 April, however, a treaty was concluded, which, at Shah Shuja's insistence, was to be signed by George III on behalf of the British. The terms were satisfactory but anachronistic. Shuja agreed to block the route of a Franco-Persian army advancing across Afghanistan towards India. In return, the British promised to help him, even if Afghanistan were invaded by Persia alone, as long as Persia was in alliance with France.71 By this time, partly owing to the efforts of Malcolm's replacement in Persia, Sir Harford Jones, the shah had exchanged his alliance with France for one with Great Britain. The terms of the Anglo-Afghan alliance therefore had no meaning. By this time, too, Shah Shuja was power• less to implement it. His army had been defeated in Kashmir and his rivals had occupied Kabul. Elphinstone decided to leave Peshawar to await the final outcome of the war at Attock. Minto was anxious that he should. 'In the present situation of affairs, which precludes the possibility of an early renewal of the projects of France, the continuance of a British representative at the court of Kabul appears unnecessary.'72 Elphin- stone's presence could cause only embarrassment. If Shah Shuja's rivals were to offer better terms for an alliance, in return for recogni• tion of their claims to the throne., the British might become entangled in the local politics of Afghanistan. When Elphinstone suggested that before he left Afghanistan he should try to build up an anglophil party amongst the principal ministers at Shah Shuja's court,73 Minto replied that it would hardly be worthwhile: they would not for long have any power.74

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Despite Minto's scepticism about Shah Shuja's chances of keeping the throne, on 17 June he ratified the Anglo-Afghan treaty, having first struck out the name of George III. The government of India was always sensitive about its claims to act as a soverign power when dealing with Asiatics. It was not to be considered a 'subordinate agency' of the British government.75 One week earlier Elphinstone had left Peshawar for Attock: ten days later Shah Shuja was decisive• ly defeated by his rivals. The futility of Elphinstone's accomplish- 147 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

ment depressed him. 'I look with horror,' he recorded in his diary, 'to the unprofitable languour of my life in India, and with some gloom to the menial character which I now see I must ever retain.'76 His mission to Afghanistan, he always claimed, cured him ever after of ambition.77 The mission though a parade was a costly one. Elphinstone had given away presents worth nearly £29,000, and the total cost exceeded three lakhs of rupees.78 The government of India censured both Elphinstone and John Malcolm in Persia for their extrava• gance,79 but Minto, in his alarm in the spring of 1808, was respon• sible for it. Malcolm's schemes were by their nature extravagant. Unfortunately, the effect of the extravagance was exactly as Minto had predicted. The shah of Persia surpassed even the Hapsburgs at milking the British of subsidies and for doing even less. Thirty years later, when Alexander Burnes arrived at Kabul, Dost Mahomet Khan was surprised at his meagre gifts and concluded that the British did not much value his alliance. The eventual harm done was not compensated for by any immedi• ate benefit. Of the four states beyond the British North-West Frontier, Kabul was the least valuable and least practicable ally. Later in the nineteenth century two rival schools developed about how British India could be defended most effectively. The Bombay School wanted to fight an enemy as far away as possible, somewhere in the Middle East: the Punjab School wanted to fight him on the Indus, while he was exhausted from crossing the desert and the mountains. Both hoped to avoid fighting in Afghanistan. The reasons were not solely geographical, the difficulty of getting there and the fanaticism of the tribes. They were also political. An alliance with Afghanistan would complicate Great Britain's relations with Persia and the Sikhs. To defend British India in the Middle East could be done best in alliance with Turkey or with Persia: fighting on the Indus would depend on the co-operation of the Sikhs. As Elphin•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 stone had suggested, only if they refused to co-operate should the British turn for help to the king of Kabul. Then the Sikhs might make co-operation impracticable by standing in the way. An alliance with Afghanistan might depend upon the conquest of the Punjab. Minto was a forerunner of the Bombay School. Fearing a rebellion if the French approached India, he would have preferred to hold them up as far away as possible. The Dundases would have preferred to do the same. If a Middle Eastern coalition should turn out to be

148 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

impossible to form, the British must turn for help to Persia rather than to Ranjit Singh. 'The great hinge upon which the whole system turns ... is Persia,' argued Dundas, 'and no plan can be formed which has not for its basis, a knowledge of the part which that power is likely to take.'80 Elphinstone was not needed at Peshawar as long as Harford Jones was made welcome at Tehran. Elphinstone's one great accomplishment should not, however, be overlooked. The government of India had asked for information: 'the acquisition of authentic information and intelligence ... relative to the states west of the Indus ... is of itself an object of sufficient importance to warrant the present mission. If no other object, there• fore, shall be obtained by your mission, it will not be considered to have been unprofitable.'81 This being the case, Elphinstone's mission was not without profit: its outcome was his justly famous Account of the Kingdom ofCabaul. Perhaps it was unfortunate that Elphinstone had seen so little of this kingdom, but then there was not much left of it to see. Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk did little to earn his immortality.

NOTES

1. Elphinstone to Minto, private, 14 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/341. 2. S.R. Bakshi, 'Elphinstone's Mission to Kabul,' Journal of Indian History, xlv (1967), 605-13. 3. The negotiations between France and Persia which culminated in the treaty of Finkenstein are described in V. Puryear, Napoleon and the Dardanelles (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1951), chs. 3, 5, and 8. 4. The mission of Gardane to Persia was the result of and not, as Dr. Bakshi suggests, the preliminary to the treaty of Finkenstein. See Bakshi, 'Elphinstone,' p. 605. 5. Howick to Douglas, 29 Feb. 1807, FO 181/6. 6. For Wellesley's reaction to the invasion of Egypt, see E. Ingram, 'The Defence of British India — I: The Invasion Scare of 1798,' Journal of Indian History, xlviii (1970), 565-83. 7. Wellesley to Canning, 10 June 1807, Harewood MSS 34. 8. Dundas to Canning, 6 June 1807, Harewood MSS 99/A. 9. Dundas to Minto, private, 9 Dec. 1807, NLS MS 1063. fo. 11. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 10. Sc to ggic, 2 March 1808, IO L/PS/5/539. 11. See Ingram, 'Invasion Scare of 1798,' p. 568. 12. Toone to Warren Hastings, 28 and 30 Jan. 1808, Add. MSS 29183. fos. 153,158. Apart from Toone, the principal opponents of the missionaries and supporters of planning against invasion were Sir Francis Baring, Sir Hugh Inglis, and Thomas Metcalfe. The leader of the missionary party was, of course, Charles Grant. 13. F.G. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Rule in India (Princeton, 1967), ch. 1. 14. A. Wellesley to Malcolm, 25 Feb. 1808, Kaye, Malcolm, i. 430. 15. For the attempts to prevent this, see sc to ggic, 14 Sept., 24 Sept. 1807, 14 Sept.

149 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

1808, IO L/PS/5/539. 16. Ggic to cd, 31 July 1807, IO L/PS/6/17. 17. Minto to Duncan, private, 20 Dec. 1807, Minto MSS M/159, p. 113. 18. Minto to W.F. Elphinstone, 3 Dec. 1807, Minto MSS M/159, p.93. 19. Minto to Roberts, 6 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/160, p.l. 20. Ggic to sc, 26 Sept. 1807, IO L/PS/5/10. 21. Minto to Dundas, secret, 1 Nov. 1807, Minto MSS M/159, p. 181. 22. Smith to Edmonstone, 19 Dec. 1807, IO Bengal/SPC/205, 27 Jan. 1808, no. 2. 23. Hollowell to Barker, 22 Sept. 1807, IO Bengal/SPC/205, 27 Jan. 1808, no. 4. 24. Hine to Warden, 11 Nov. 1807, IO Bengal/SPC/205, 30 Jan. 1808, no. 5. 25. Minute of Minto, 30 Jan. 1808, ibid. no. 1. 26. Minto to Duncan, secret and confidential, 10 March 1808, Minto MSS M/160, p. 37. 27. GicB to ggic, 24(?) Jan. 1801, IO Bengal/SPC/205, 29 Feb. 1808, no. 9. 28. Pellew to Minto, private, 15 Oct. 1807, 12 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/180. 29. Minto to Barlow, 3 March 1808, Minto MSS M/160, p. 9. 30. Minto to Dundas, secret, 10 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/159, p.259. 31. See Malcolm to Elliot, private, 27 June 1807, Minto MSS M/182. 32. See, for example, Malcolm to Elliot, 26 June 1807, Minto MSS M/l 82; Malcolm to Edmonstone, 12 Aug. 1807, Minto MSS M/l 81; Malcolm to Minto, private, 23 Nov. 1807, Kaye, Malcolm, i. 395. 33. Minto to Lady Minto, 25 Jan. 1808, Minto MSS M/36. 34. For the Grenville view see T. Grenville to Grenville, 10 June 1799, Dropmore, v. 85. 35. Grant to Barlow, 26 July 1806, H. Morris, The Life of Charles Grant: Sometime Member of Parliament for Inverness-shire and director of the East India Com• pany (London, 1904). 36. Minto to Barlow, private and secret, 1 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/159, p.200. 37. Minto to Castlereagh, secret, 3 Nov. 1807, Minto MSS M/159, p. 179; Minto to Dundas, secret, 10 Feb. 1808, ibid., p.259. 38. Minute of the commander-in-chief, 15 Feb. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC/205, 15 Feb. 1808, no. 1. 39. Minto to Pellew, 9 March 1808, Minto MSS M/160, p.259. 40. Minto to Dundas, secret, 10 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/160, p.259. 41. For the terms of the treaty, see Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record, ed. J.C. Hurewitz (Princeton, 1956), i. 68. 42. For the most recent account of Metcalfe's mission to Lahore see B.K. Hasrat, Anglo-Sikh Relations, 1799-1849: A Reappraisal of the Rise and Fall of the Sikhs (Hoshiapur, 1968), chs. 5-6. 43. Elphinstone to Strachey, confidential, 5 July, 5 Sept. 1808, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/7. 44. Minto to Dundas, 15 May 1808, Minto MSS M/159.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 45. Ggic to sc, 15 Sept. 1808, IO L/PS/5/10. 46. For the missions to Sind see R.A. Huttenback, British Relations with Sind, 1799-1843 (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1962), ch. 1. 47. Minute of Minto, 17 June 1808, IO Bengal/SPC/207, 20 June 1808, no. 2. 48. See D.P. Singhal, India and Afghanistan, 1876-1907 (St. Lucia, 1963), pp. 16- 19. 49. Edmonstone to Metcalfe, 21 Oct. 1808,IOBengal/SPC/210,31 Oct. 1808,no.3. 50. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 19 Aug. 1808, IO H/657 p.l. 51. Ibid. 52. Elphinstone to Minto, no. 9, 19 March 1809, IO H/657 p. 255; Elphinstone to Strachey, 17 April 1809, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/7.

150 AN EXCURSION TO THE KINGDOM OF KABUL

53. Elphinstone to Strachey, 23 April 1808, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/7; Sir T.E. Cole- brooke, The Life of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone (London, 1884), i. 185-6. 54. The Countess of Minto, Lord Minto in India (London, 1880), p. 159, is incorrect in stating that they had not met. 55. Woodruff, Men Who Ruled India i. pp.214-15. 56. Elphinstone to Minto, private, 14 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/341. 57. Memorandum by Elphinstone upon the probable demands of the king of Kabul, 14 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/341. 58. Edmonstone to Metcalfe, 31 Oct. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC/210,31 Oct. 1808, no. 3. 59. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 5 Dec. 1808, IO H/657, p. 85. 60. Elphinstone's Journal, p.227, IOL MSS Eur. F/88, box 13. F, vol. h. 61. Elphinstone to Minto, no. 10, 22 March 1809, IO H/657, p.221. 62. Elphinstone to Minto, no. 11, 23 March 1809, IO H/657, p.283. 63. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 29 April 1809, IO H/657, p. 357. 64. Elphinstone to Minto, nos. 11 and 12, 23 and 28 March 1809, IO H/657, pp.283, 367. 65. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 14 May 1809, IO H/657, p.395. 66. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 6 March 1809, IO H/657, p. 189; ggic to sc, 20 April 1809, IO L/PS/5/11. 67. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 15 April 1809, IO H/657, p.231. 68. Edmonstone to Minto, 13 May 1809, IO H/657, p.395. 69. Ggic to sc, 20 April 1809, IO L/PS/5/11. 70. Elphinstone to Strachey, 17 April 1809, IOL MSS Eur. F/128/7. 71. Elphinstone to Minto, no. 14, with encl., 26 April 1809, IO H/657, p.425. 72. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 29 April 1809, IO H/657, p. 357. 73. Elphinstone to Edmonstone, 7 June 1809, IO H/657, p.477. 74. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 24 July 1809, IO H/657, p. 487. 75. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 17 June 1809, IO H/657, p.445. The treaty is printed in A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads, relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, comp. C.U. Aitchison (5th edit., London, 1933), xiii. 233. 76. Elphinstone's Journal, 3 Aug. 1809, IOL MSS Eur. F/88, box 13. F. vol. h. 77. Woodruff, Men Who Ruled India, i. 215. 78. Elphinstone to Edmonstone, 3 Aug. 1809, IO H/517. 79. Notes relative to the mission to Kabul, IO H/512, p.111. 80. Sc to ggic, 2 Oct. 1809, IO L/PS/5/539. 81. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 19 Aug. 1808, IO H/657, p.l. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

IDBI-F* 151 X

RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA, 1798-1829

Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb. John Milton Lycidas

The Great Game was a British invention, played in Asia with Turks, Persians, Afghans, and Sikhs, against the Russians. The game was played only once, because the British needed 120 years to lose. At times they played superbly and they lost, as they were bound to do, though as the British often do, with grace. Unfortunately for them, they had practised for the game against the French. The rules they had chosen to play by guaranteed their defeat. The most influential statement ever made about British foreign policy was Jonathan Swift's pamphlet, Upon the Conduct of the Allies.1 Written towards the end of the war of the Spanish Succes• sion, it continued to determine British strategy over 200 years later, during the Second World War. Swift appealed to an Englishman's most primitive political instinct: that foreigners exist to do as the English ask. Chatham and those who succeeded him merely practised what Swift had preached. They assumed that in questions of interest to Great Britain, a continental state could always be found, more interested and on the same side. This assumption sur• vived countless disappointments during the Napoleonic Wars, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 survived even the Schleswig-Holstein Question, to reappear in Lloyd George's dislike of the Western Front and in Churchill's insistence that Stalingrad was a diversion from el-Alamein. During the First World War, the war cabinet was not offended that no military effort seemed likely to succeed on the Western Front: it was offended that its generals considered such an effort to be necessary. Somehow, winning should have been possible without fighting; or by persuad- 152 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

ing somebody else to fight. In Europe, where this assumption led the British repeatedly to disaster, it did not lead to invasion: they might shelter, for what it was worth, behind their navy. In Asia their navy afforded no shelter. They needed a substitute, and the object of the Great Game in Asia was to supply it: to persuade somebody else to defend British India. The game began on 29 December 1829.2 Two men were respon• sible for starting it, the prime minister, the duke of Wellington, and his president of the board of control for India, Lord Ellenborough. They shared an alarm at the expansion of Russia in the Middle East, fearing that whenever Great Britain opposed Russia in Europe, Russia would threaten to invade India.3 This fear must not be exaggerated. What worried Ellenborough was not the danger of invasion, but being uncertain whether it was possible. 'What we ought to have,' he told the governor of Bombay, 'is Information. The first, the second, and the third thing a government ought always to have is Information.'* To obtain it, Ellenborough persuaded Wellington to agree to sending a series of British agents to tour Central Asia.5 Ostensibly sent to discover whether a European enemy might easily invade British India, they were actually to discover whether the British might best defend it by meeting the Russian advance in Afghanistan and Turkestan. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars the British had defended India in alliance with Persia. Ellenborough needed no information about Persia: that Persia was weak and increasingly overawed by Russia was well known. After the treaty of Turkmanchay in 1828 it was doubtful whether Persia could be expected to oppose a European invasion.6 Wellington and Ellenborough blamed this on Canning,7 because Canning had refused to complicate the settlement of the Greek Rebellion by intervening in the Russo-Persian war.8 The blame may not have been deserved. The British had realized during the Napoleo• nic Wars that Persia, however useful as an ally against France, would

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 be incapable of defending India against Russia. If somebody else was to defend British India, the British had to discover whether an alter• native to Persia could be found. Unfortunately, they had already weighed the alternatives, and found them wanting. This obsession with defending the North-West Frontier of India against invasion eventually propelled the British into the remote valleys of Gilgit and Chitral.9 The earlier invasion routes were more obvious, if in appearance scarcely less implausible. Their selection 153 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

began in 1798. When Bonaparte invaded Egypt, Henry Dundas, the president of the board of control, who was certain that Bonaparte was on his way overland to India,10 demanded a detailed description of his likely route. Dundas's advisers knew of four overland routes: they disagreed about which one Bonaparte would choose. He might sail to Constantinople and across the Black Sea to Trebizond, then march through Erzerum across northern Persia to Herat. He might sail to Alexandretta, march across Syria to Baghdad and Basra, and then alongside the Persian Gulf to Sind. Or he might sail to Alexandria, march across Egypt to Suez and the Red Sea, and then either sail straight to Mangalore or to Goa, or march across Arabia to Oman and sail across the strait of Hormuz to Makran.11 These four routes were reduced immediately to two. Bonaparte would not march through Trebizond and Erzerum. If the Turks should permit him to pass the Straits, the Russians, who would expect him to attack them, would bar his way in the Black Sea. Similarly, he would not march across Arabia towards Makran. Single travellers took forty days between Jedda and Muscat. Unless the French could advance as quickly, they might arrive to find a British squadron on patrol in the strait of Hormuz. It was Bonaparte's likely choice between the two remaining routes that caused controversy. The East India Company decided that if Bonaparte were to invade India, he would travel by sea from Suez.12 Not only would this be risky, because it meant crossing the Arabian Sea in the presence of a hostile fleet, it would also be difficult to plan owing to the peculiar climate of the Red Sea. For most of the summer, during the south• west monsoon, sailing ships could not enter the Red Sea; for most of the winter, during the north-east monsoon, they could not leave.13 Bonaparte's transports would have to be in the Red Sea in the spring, make the journey to Suez, load the expeditionary force, and be out again before the monsoon changed, or they would be imprisoned

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 inside the straits of Bab el-Mandab. For the same reason the British must move quickly to close the straits before the French could escape. The admiralty, which understood this, sent Admiral Blankett on an ambitious voyage from England to the Red Sea against the north-east monsoon.14 The French navy was less ambitious. From Brest, its fleet could not reach Cartagena without heavy damage aloft. Dundas, ignoring the advice from the East India Company,15 154 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

decided that Bonaparte would march to India from Syria. If the French travelled overland all the way, they need not hurry, and they would be less open to attack by the British fleet. Nor was it likely that any of the Middle Eastern states would bar their way. Their own experience had shown the British the superiority of European tactics and discipline.16 More important, Alexander had used this route, which made it a British favourite. Later the British realized that the Russians might march to Kabul from Orenburg through Bukhara. They had not at first thought of this. In 1800, when Orlov's Cossacks were actually on the march, the British were expecting an advance from Tiflis through Astarabad.17 This was a sensible expectation: the provinces around the Caspian were the most fertile part of Persia. Nevertheless, long before the British conceived that the Russians might be seeking a warm water port in the Persian Gulf, they decided that the Russians, too, might prefer to strike south from the Caucasus towards Baghdad and then turn east along the coast.18 The British have always had a healthy respect for ignorance. They ruled India as if it were uninhabited,19 partitioned Africa by drawing lines along rivers or lines of longitude, and played the Great Game in Asia without maps. As late as the congress of Berlin, Disraeli's maps were hopelessly inaccurate.20 Few Englishmen thought this mattered. Lord Grenville, when foreign secretary, was one who did. When Dundas in 1798 proposed to hire Russian troops to fight Bonaparte in the Middle East, Grenville could not see what Russia was 'to do, whom she is to attack, nor where her army is to march,' and demanded of Dundas 'a calculation of distances, a reference to history, and a consideration of the present state of the intervening countries.'21 Grenville's was the good sense of the ignorant. To Englishmen, the contemporary Middle East was a collection of myths and legends. They knew more about the political geography of the Macedonian and Achaemenid empires than of the Ottoman, and

22

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 resented everything they had to learn. The Lebanon was the home of Lady Hester Stanhope, the Atlas Mountains, according to Lady Cicely Waynflete, the home not of the Rif but of Shelley's witch. Classical studies and a taste for Romantic poetry were equally influential and were reinforced not undermined by travel. It was staying on the spot that distorted judgment. British agents in the Middle East knew what was going on about them. Their superiors in London and Calcutta judged much better. 'You could not... ask a 155 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

more ignorant person than myself,' admitted Grenville, in 1800, 'with respect to the balance of power in India.'23 The British, like the Roman Catholic church, managed much better when their foreign secretaries, as Palmerston recommended and as popes used to do, stayed at home. The routes to India were of political, not military, significance. A European army might try to invade India, but the British had no doubt that they would eventually defeat it. The danger was that they might not defeat it quickly enough. A reverse at the frontier would guarantee a rebellion: the prospect of invasion would threaten one.24 What alarmed the British most was the thought of having to fight a foreign and a civil war simultaneously. They would still win. Even Dundas at his most alarmist expected to win, but victory would take longer and cost more. The government of India always had difficulty balancing its budget. To win, it would need substantial reinforce• ments and large sums of money from England.25 This of itself would defeat the purpose of British India, which was to be a source of tribute not expense, and the public, who would be disappointed, might not be willing to pay.26 As with most other public works in the nineteenth century, the defence of British India was to be kept as cheap as possible. Not everyone was so afraid. Grenville refused to believe that Bonaparte would try to invade India.27 In a celebrated dispatch from St. Petersburg in 1830, the British ambassador, Lord Heytesbury, thought that Nicholas I had 'too thorough a consciousness of the real weakness of the country to entertain for an instant a serious thought of ever embarking in so gigantic an enterprise.'28 The government of India could not afford to be so sceptical. Any rumour of invasion had to be treated seriously, in case disaster should follow if it turned out to be true.29 Almost as serious, the French and Russian empires, merely by expanding, would throw the Middle Eastern states into disarray.30

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 The government of India reasoned like Prince Metternich when advocating the Holy Alliance: that upheaval, like liberalism and nationalism, was contagious. The timidity of Austria, which so exasperated all British foreign secretaries except Castlereagh, was shared by the government of India, because it shared Austria's exposed political position. Even if Persia and Afghanistan were not turned into puppets and used as weapons of indirect assault, as the Dundases had expected General Gardane to use them for France31 156 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

and as Palmerston argued that Count Simonitch did use them for Russia,32 the confusion the French and Russians caused would itself be threatening. Ellenborough never expected

that the Russians will at first look to the actual invasion of India, they will rather desire to occupy the countries from which former conquerors of India have in a campaign marched to Delhi ... Their mere presence will excite doubts and apprehensions in the minds of all our subjects and ruin our finances by the expense of constant preparation for war ... It must be our object to prevent the sowing of the seed, not to wait till it has become a tree beyond our means to remove.33 What was alarming was less the danger of invasion than the danger of bankruptcy and rebellion. The fear of rebellion dominated British life in India. The British reacted so violently to the Mutiny because it justified their expecta• tions. Their attitude to missionaries made this clear. If the prospect of invasion would excite a rebellion, so might the prospect of religious reform. The best way to conciliate Indians was not to interfere with them.34 The evangelicals thought the opposite. Given an opportunity, Indians would be delighted to adopt English attitudes and customs, particularly Christianity, and their conver• sion would be of political rather than religious significance.35 Christ• ianity would reduce the danger of rebellion: reform rather than foreign policy would defend British India. To decide that British India must be defended in the Middle East, and to debate vigorously and acrimoniously how this might be best done, was easy. To set about doing it was difficult. The ideal means, because the cheapest, was trade. In the heady atmosphere of the early nineteenth century, the British assumed that their goods would be followed by their values. Manufactures, like Christianity, were to be at the service of the empire. The most spectacular example, Ellen- borough's decision to put steamers on the Indus in order to expand British trade with Turkestan, is already famous.36 Two similar

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 attempts were also made, equally revealing but less well known. In 1830 the London merchants who traded to the Levant complained that they needed more help from the government in dealing with the Turks. In response the foreign office agreed to open a British con• sulate at Trebizond.37 Its task was to increase the flow of British goods through Trebizond into Armenia and Azerbaijan, because increased trade would increase political stability. After the treaty of Turkmanchay, Persia would never be able to resist a Russian 157 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

invasion, but she might be able to avoid giving Russia pretexts for intervention.38 British goods in Persia were to be reinforced by British soldiers. An expanded military mission would train the Persian army to act, like the Indian Army, as a paramilitary police force.39 In Turkestan the goods, and the values built into them, had to manage by themselves. Even Ellenborough never thought of sending troops to Bukhara, where the inhabitants had nothing to exchange for British goods 'except turquoises, lapis lazuli, and the ducats they receive from Russia.'40 This vision of defending British India by promoting British trade in the Middle East, thereby reinvigorating the Middle Eastern states, was older than might be supposed. It was shared, oddly enough, by Wellesley, not while he was in India, but while he was at the foreign office. The state of British trade with the Middle East was certainly provoking. English woollen goods, of no use to Indians, seemed ideal wear for Central Asian winters. They did not sell in Turkey, and in Persia and Turkestan, where they sold very well, they were sold by Russians.41 Sending English woollens to Central Asia overland through Russia was cheaper than sending them by sea around the Cape of Good Hope.42 By the end of the eighteenth century, the East India Company's trade with the Persian Gulf had therefore died. Wellesley proposed to resurrect it. In 1809, the British envoy to Persia, Sir Harford Jones, concluded a preliminary treaty of alliance and sent it to London for confirma• tion. Wellesley's revisions to the treaty revealed that he expected Persia to contribute far more than had been previously expected to the defence of British India. The Persians were hoping for British support against Russia. Wellesley had decided, before he returned from India in 1805, that the British would one day have to stop the expansion of Russia in the Caucasus.43 As Great Britain was herself at war with Russia, this seemed a suitable moment to do so. How to do so was less obvious. It would have to be managed cautiously and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 indirectly: too obvious an interest in Persia might provoke a Russian counter-attack, precisely what Wellesley was aiming to prevent. If the Russian army should invade Azerbaijan, the British navy could not stop it. The best solution to this conundrum was to rely on trade. Wellesley agreed to subsidize Persia while she was at war with Russia, and to send officers to train the Persian army and shipwrights to build gunboats on the Caspian. In return he demanded a new commercial treaty and the right to open consulates and factories

158 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

anywhere in Persia.44 If a closer connection, followed by a military mission and increased trade, should sufficiently reinvigorate Persia, she would be able to contain further Russian expansion in the Caucasus by herself. Wellesley's purpose was political and strategic: he had no interest in the potential profits, only in the security of India. By stimulating trade India might be defended both cheaply and far away. Underlying this vision of the civilizing properties of British manu• factures was a realistic calculation of power; or an assumption that any other defence policy would require the British to make a realistic calculation of their power. The debate about the possible policies provoked arguments echoed half a century later in the celebrated quarrels between the Bombay and Punjab Schools of Indian defence and between Lord Wolseley and Lord Roberts.45 The simplest way to defend British India was to defeat a European invader on the borders of Turkey and Persia, somewhere between Mosul and Tabriz. This was Minto's aim in 1808. As soon as he decided that General Gardane was in Persia as the forerunner of a French advance over• land from Poland, Minto sent John Malcolm back to Persia to prepare the way for a British army of 20,000 men.46 Unfortunately, however seductive, this method defeated its own object. Sending a British army to the Middle East would be embarrassingly expensive. It might also embarrass Great Britain's relations with the states that were to provide the battleground. A temporary expedient, designed to repel an actual invasion, it could neither contribute to the political tranquillity of India by preventing threats of invasion, nor under• mine enemy influence in the Middle Eastern states. The best escape from these embarrassments was to use an ally's army to defeat the enemy. The British would lose this opportunity later, but during the Napoleonic Wars, while their enemy was France, they had the alternatives of sending a Russian or, when desperate, a Turkish army to defeat a French invasion. Throughout

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the eighteenth century the British government, when obliged to go to war, had been divided between supporters of continental and colonial warfare.47 In the Napoleonic Wars both sides needed the help of Russia; to strengthen any coalition in western Europe or to attack the French in the Middle East. When Bonaparte invaded Egypt, Dundas hoped to use a Russian army to prevent him from advancing beyond Syria. When Grenville refused to ask for one, Dundas contemplated an appeal to the tsar himself.48 Eventually he 159 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

decided that such an appeal would be unnecessary. With proper training, to be provided by a British military mission, the Turks should be able to defeat the French. Dundas was disappointed, but not dissuaded, when the commander of the mission enquired whether he could reasonably be expected to train an entire army.49 Under pressure, Dundas therefore agreed to give the Turks a little help. The Indian Army would stage one diversion in the Red Sea, the British army another by capturing Alexandria. Nevertheless, the principal victory was to be attributed to the 'intrepid impetuosity' of the Turks.50 Dundas's strategy for the British expedition to Egypt in 1800 was an attempt to implement overseas the traditional British strategy on the Continent. In Europe, as Swift prescribed, the British always assumed that their ally would play the principal role, but overseas they had previously fought themselves, in the West Indies with disastrous results. They could not afford to do the same in Egypt, or 'people would say that we had lost one army in a contest with the yellow fever and were now going with another to try our hand upon the plague.'51 To defend British India by means of alliances with the Middle Eastern states appeared to satisfy all of Great Britain's requirements. An actual invasion, if their ally could defeat it, would be defeated far away; the British, supplying arms and ammunition, or a subsidy when pressed, should be able to limit their expenses; and a perma• nent connection should guarantee the supremacy of British influence and forestall others. Unfortunately, as Minto discovered when he tried to negotiate alliances, first to supplement and later to substitute for the Indian army he had planned to send to Persia, these advan• tages were vitiated by one over-riding drawback: the Middle Eastern states were all at odds with one another. Minto tried to dodge this fact by allying with all of them at once. To each he made the same claim: they were as interested as the British in resisting a European invasion.52 Each in turn replied that it was not. In return for an Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 alliance, the Sikhs wanted British help in conquering Peshawar, which belonged to the king of Kabul, while the king, beset by rivals, wanted the British to support him against Persia as well as France and, above all, against his subjects.53 Minto refused to help either of them. The basis of any agreement with the Middle Eastern states must be their 'common interest' in resisting the French.54 The British had made the same assumption in 1798. The governor of Baghdad was surprised to learn that his offer of British co- 160 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

operation was restricted to attacks against the French in Egypt and did not include his own enemy, the imam of Oman.55 To insist that the Middle Eastern states were as interested as the British in pre• venting a European army from marching eastwards was clearly unrealistic: to admit that they were not would cause serious compli• cations. If mutual assistance against the French or Russians was not a sufficient common interest, the British had no basis for negotiating. Any other interest would entrap them in insoluble local squabbles which would otherwise not affect them. The British interest in the Middle East was sometimes European, sometimes imperial, but never local. At times it appeared that Minto had been right. The only worthwhile connection would have permitted the British to ally with all of the Middle Eastern states at once. If they had to choose between them, the terms of the alliance were likely to be unsatisfactory and its purpose misdirected. Owing to the difficulties of sending a British army to fight in the Middle East and the unreliability of the available allies, three methods were considered by which the British might both preserve sufficient influence in the area and, when necessary, defeat a Euro• pean invasion. The first implied that the North-West Frontier of British India was best defended at the frontier. This was the view held in the 1790s by Sir John Shore and his commander-in-chief, Sir Alured Clarke.56 In reality, this was a political, not a military, calculation: the British did not need to be connected with the Middle Eastern states because none of them was strong enough to attempt to invade British India, and any European state that might attempt it would not succeed.57 This scepticism was shared, ironically, by Wellesley. When Bona• parte invaded Egypt in 1798, Wellesley pretended to be alarmed, as he pretended to be alarmed that Tipu Sultan would invade the Carnatic and Zeman Shah Oudh,58 and for the same reason. Threats of invasion, especially the danger of French-bred coalitions, were the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 best shield behind which to disguise his policy of territorial expan• sion. 'To every person conversant with the true nature of the British interests and power in India,' Wellesley told the commander-in- chief, India, in 1803, 'the north-western frontier of Hindustan must have appeared to present the most vulnerable point of our extensive empire.' Wellesley added that 'the enterprising spirit of France, or the ambition of Russia, or even the violence and rapacity of the Afghan tribes ... might have pursued objects of invasion in that 161 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

quarter, which might have occasioned considerable embarrassment to the British power in India.'59 To Wellesley, however, the North- West Frontier was an enticement not a danger: he was trying to justify going to war against the Marathas. Shore and Sir George Barlow, as employees of the East India Company, felt obliged to be more straightforward. Lacking powerful political support from the government, the prerequisite of a successful term of office in India,60 they could be fettered more easily by a board of directors which knew that it would have to pay for adventurous and alarmist policies over which it often had little control.61 Even the most alarmed Englishmen never doubted that the Indian Army would defeat a European invasion, but preparing to fight on the frontier would do nothing, either to forestall enemy influence in the Middle East, or to preserve the political tranquillity of India from its unsettling effects. The success of this policy depended upon assuming that, given time, Indians would grow content with British rule and anxious to prevent its overthrow. It is not surprising that Shore was a friend of Wilberforce and Charles Grant, and spent his retirement working for Bible societies. Men, like Wellington, who had no such illusions, had devised an alternative method of prevent• ing a European invasion, free from both the complexities of Middle Eastern intrigue and the dangers of fighting on the frontier.62 This, as Wolseley sometimes suggested in opposition to Roberts, was to defend British India by attacking any likely enemy in Europe. The defence of British India should be treated as an aspect of the Euro• pean balance of power. Wolseley talked of attacking Russia all over the world,63 but by the 1880s it was difficult to imagine where he could mean. Earlier his meaning would have been obvious, in the Black Sea. In the Crimean War the British, who had once used the Russians against the French, instead used the French against the Russians. As far as Palmerston was responsible for defining their policy, it was free for once from its usual confusion. Re-establishing

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 the balance of power in Europe would itself increase the security of British India.64 Unfortunately, if this policy were not to reveal the limits of sea power, the British would require an ally. In the winter of 1806—7, in an attempt to revive the Third Coalition by persuading the Russians to rivet their attention upon the French advance across Poland, the British undertook to prise the sultan of Turkey away from his alliance with France. Although it was not their purpose in sending 162 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

the expedition to the Dardanelles, a victory there would also have increased the security of British India by preventing the French from using their alliances with Turkey and Persia as vehicles for invasion.65 As the expedition failed to overawe the Turks, and a British expedi• tion to Egypt proved equally ineffective,66 when the treaty of Finken- stein was followed by the treaty of Tilsit the board of control decided that it must prepare for the invasion of India.67 In its alarm it failed to notice that, as far as the two treaties related to an invasion of India, the terms of Tilsit contradicted the terms of Finkenstein. Bonaparte might reasonably hope to disrupt British India in alliance with Russia, or in alliance with Turkey and Persia: he could not expect the help of all three. The French in invading India, as the British in defending it, were paralysed by the need to choose.68 To pretend that either the Russians or the Turks and Persians had as great an interest as the French in driving the British from India would have been as absurd as pretending that the Sikhs and Afghans had as great an interest as the British in defending it. The British rarely had the same confidence in sea power as Captain Mahan had, and rightly so, but occasionally they were over- optimistic. The defence of British India appeared to require the British to act as a continental military power on the grandest scale: political and financial considerations prevented them from doing so. They instinctively sought for a strategy able to rescue them from this dilemma, by permitting them to defend British India from the sea. They found the solution, or frequently hoped that they had found it, in a fortress in the Persian Gulf.69 Ideally, the fortress would antici• pate the growth of any potentially threatening European influence in the Middle East, by providing a safe bazaar for the merchants of Persia, Baghdad, and the Gulf, and a method by which British manufactures might be reintroduced into the area. Malcolm, unlike Wellesley, had no faith in the ability of the British to trade in Persia and Baghdad themselves; their goods would have to be handled for

70

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 them by natives.' Both men, however, expected that the Middle Eastern states would be reinvigorated and better able to resist the political pressure, if not the military power, of Europeans. The danger of Persia or Afghanistan turning into 'the advance guard of Russia'71 would diminish. Should the danger not diminish, the British, from their fortress in the Persian Gulf, could themselves exert equivalent pressure on Baghdad and Persia to persuade them not to jeopardize British

163 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

interests. In the 1840s and 1850s, Palmerston and Hobhouse assumed that sending British troops to Kharg would persuade the Persians to raise the siege of Herat.72 Should they refuse, the troops in the Gulf were to coerce them. The usual method was by threatening to raise a rebellion in the south-west, where, in 1857, the British enlisted the aid of the tribes in Khuzistan.73 The equivalent strategy earlier in the century had been to resurrect in Fars a minor prince of the previous Zand dynasty.74 That the governors of the south• western provinces of Persia would be susceptible to British pressure, and could be used to influence the imperial government at Tehran, became an accepted principle of British policy. If Persia were either too disordered or too responsive to Russian pressure, the British could still control the areas strategically most important to them. The consequences were not always up to British expectations. In 1887 Lord Salisbury hoped that conferring the Star of India upon the governor of Isfahan, who was in charge of all of south Persia, would strengthen British influence over him and through him over the shah. Instead he was summarily stripped by the shah of most of the sources of his power.75 The disgrace of the governor of Isfahan revealed, as Sir Harford Jones, Malcolm's great rival, had often claimed, that India could not be defended from an island base in the Persian Gulf. The British were attracted to the route down the Tigris-Euphrates and alongside the Persian Gulf because it seemed to be open to attack from the sea, whereas it would be impossible from the sea to prevent an enemy army marching from Azerbaijan or Astarabad to Herat.76 Either the shah of Persia would have to act for the British, or they would have to march far inland to attack their enemy in the flank. Jones understood that owing to the dependence of the Kajars for political supremacy upon the support of tribes who lived in Azerbaijan and around the Caspian, they would always be more sensitive to Russian pressure than British. Setting up a British base in the Gulf might therefore

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 provoke them into joining instead of opposing a Russian advance.77 The fate of the Indian states had warned everybody what happened when the British were permitted to annex territory. Jones was just as doubtful whether the British could find a way to attack an enemy flank. There were too few routes north from the Gulf; too few troops would be available there; and if reinforcements had to be sent, any expedition might more sensibly start from Bombay. This 'proposed island in the gulf,' concluded Jones, 'will lead to enormous expense 164 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

to no purpose.'78 If sea power were to defend India, the British should be careful not to sacrifice their strategic mobility by shutting them• selves up in useless island bases in the Middle East. Choosing between these policies involved choosing between the Middle Eastern states. Each might contribute towards the defence of British India, but each had drawbacks. This was particularly so with Persia. To the government of India, Persia was the ideal ally: with Persian co-operation British India might be defended as far away as possible. Turkey was, of course, further away, and a European war further still, but over them the government of India would have no control.

The greatest object we had in view when forming an alliance with Persia [commented Sir Gore Ouseley, the British ambassador at Tehran, in 1811] I conceive to be the making of it a bulwark to our possessions in India. Uniting in it the advantage of being situated at a great distance from our immediate frontiers, yet being a country which must necessarily be traversed by an European invading army, Persia was considered more eligible for the establishment of a system of defence of India than any of the intermediate kingdoms or provinces; and to ensure this most desirable object all other interests and relations that in any shape clashed with it were neglected.79

How Persia might contribute to the defence of British India was nevertheless disputable. Malcolm, who claimed to be the expert on the subject, could never make up his mind whether the weakness and poverty, or potential strength, of Persia would be of more use to the British.80 This dispute was illustrated by the British attitude towards the Persian army. Apart from the royal bodyguard, the strength of the Persian army at the end of the eighteenth century depended upon levies of irregular cavalry supplied by the tribes. If the weakness of Persia suited Great Britain better, so would this type of army. A European army bound for India might be delayed, if not defeated, by constant Persian attacks upon its flanks, communications, and supplies, all without the risk of a general engagement. While such an Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 army might prevent the French from invading India, it could not prevent the Russians from annexing Persian territory. As soon as the British turned their attention from the French to the Russians, if only as potential French allies, they had to assume that Persia would remain coherent enough, and powerful enough, to prevent the expansion of Russia. In sending a British military mission to Persia, the British were calculating that this could be done best by training a 165 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

force of regular infantry upon the European model. It might be able to pin down the Russian army in Georgia: it should certainly be able to prop up the shah and prevent a civil war when he died.81 'If restored to power,' argued Malcolm, Persia 'might... be an ally of considerable importance.'82 However attractive to the government of India, an alliance with Persia, especially one that attempted to reinvigorate her, appeared just as unattractive to the board of control and the foreign office. Whatever the government of India might hope, such an alliance would entangle the defence of India in the balance of power in Europe, by entangling Great Britain in Persia's quarrels with Russia and Turkey. Even if the Ochakov debate had no other repercus• sions,83 it convinced Dundas that Catherine II would brook no interference with Russia's expansion around the Black Sea and in the Caucasus. When pressed in 1796 to consider making an alliance with the ruler of Fars, Dundas replied that while Persia was disordered she was too weak to be a useful ally: attempting to reinvigorate her would provoke Russian retaliation.84 This recognition of the limits of Great Britain's power in the Middle East, and of her need to place the alliance of Russia in Europe before the needs of the defence of British India, was the basis of Castlereagh's policy in the years following the congress of Vienna. Owing to Europe's need of peace to guard against any revival of the Revolution, Castlereagh assured the tsar at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle that he would not permit a promise given to Persia by Ouseley in 1813, that Great Britain would try to persuade Russia to moderate the terms of the treaty of Gulistan,85 to interfere with the working of the Congress System.86 When Canning refused in 1827 to intervene in the Second Russo-Persian War, he was, as usual, merely following where Castlereagh directed. Dundas could disregard Persia so calmly because he had formu• lated an alternative policy for defending British India in alliance with Afghanistan. This alliance would not complicate Great Britain's

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 relations with Russia, and, because the Afghans were Sunnis, not heretic Shi-ites like the Persians, it would also not complicate Great Britain's relations with the Turks. Instead, according to Harford Jones in 1799, the British would be able to take advantage of their friendly relations with the sultan when trying to persuade the amir of Afghanistan to assist them.87 Dundas and Jones were also confident that this Afghan alliance could be negotiated and managed from London. They did not intend to transfer the responsibility for 166 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

defending British India to the governor-general. In this they were wise, because the government of India had grave doubts about the value of an alliance with Afghanistan. British India should be defended in alliance with Persia or along the frontier. An alliance with Afghanistan would merely complicate both. This attitude was taken for opposite reasons by both Wellesley and his successors. Wellesley did not want to turn the amir of Afghanistan into a British ally and refused his offer in 1799 of an alliance because his enmity was more useful.88 To Wellesley, who never believed that the French could invade India overland,89 the prospect of an Afghan invasion offered an excellent opportunity to justify the partition of Oudh. It was also made to justify John Malcolm's first mission to Persia in 1800.90 If the shah would divert the amir by an attack on Herat, Wellesley would not have to station a large army on the North-West Frontier until he could overawe the nawab-vizier.91 The partition of Oudh took longer than Wellesley expected, because although Dundas was prepared to believe in the danger from Zeman Shah,92 the vizier of Oudh was not. Nor was Wellesley's predecessor, Sir John Shore. The unsuccessful attempt made by Lord Minto to defend British India in alliance with Afghani• stan, after Malcolm had failed in his second mission to Persia in 1808, revealed how false Dundas's calculations had been. Dundas, however, was not at fault, because in the interval Ranjit Singh had established himself as leader of the Sikhs. While at Pesha• war in 1809, Mountstuart Elphinstone quickly realized the effect of this development. Owing to the hereditary enmity between the Sikhs and Afghans, the British would have to choose between them. Ideally they should choose the Afghans, because otherwise French troops based in Afghanistan would be able to strike at India at will.93 Unfortunately, an Anglo-Afghan alliance would offend the Sikhs, who could prevent the British from reinforcing their ally, unless Sind had been annexed to open up a route to Afghanistan from Bombay, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 or the Punjab itself had been taken over.94 Clearly, instead of con• tributing to the defence of British India, an alliance with Afghanistan was more likely to provoke a frontier war. As soon as the East India Company realized how badly it had been deceived by Wellesley, it was determined to prevent any subsequent strategy for the defence of British India from turning into a pretext for territorial aggrandizement.95 In 1809 the remedy, the choice between the Afghans and Sikhs, could be postponed; but only for 167 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

thirty years.96 In 1836, Lord Auckland could not avoid it, and then it seemed wiser to choose the Sikhs. Minto had been rescued by revolts against Bonaparte in Spain and against Shah Shuja in Afghanistan. Elphinstone had to leave Peshawar to avoid witnessing Shah Shuja's defeat.97 This did not disappoint the British. If they could not have an alliance, they preferred Afghanistan to remain a group of small and warring principalities. The British experience in the Napoleonic Wars appeared to prove that British India could not be defended in alliance with Afghanistan. In alliance with the Sikhs, India might be defended on the Indus: in alliance with the Persians it might be defended further away, as the British preferred. Occasionally, because the shah of Persia was no less troublesome an ally than the Afghans, the British proposed to defend British India on the Euphrates, in alliance with the governor of Baghdad. This proposal followed one of their lessons from history: 'if the passage of the Euphrates had been properly guarded, Darius might have been saved.'98 The governor was expected not only to stand up to the French advancing from Egypt or Anatolia,99 but also to a Russian advance from Tiflis. In 1828 Sir John Malcolm, by then the governor of Bombay, argued that Great Britain should send the governor arms, ammunition, and instructors to train his army, because reinvigorating Baghdad would have the same effect as reinvigorating Persia in restricting the expansion of Russia. Malcolm was making the same assumption as Ellenborough that little effort and expense would be needed. The natives were bound to prefer the British to the Russians, because their trade depended upon access to British capital.100 Twenty years before, Harford Jones had judged more shrewdly. The governor of Baghdad, he claimed, would never resist a French advance overland from Egypt: 'the whole thoughts of this government are absorbed in contriving the means of evading, instead of executing, the orders they might expect to receive from Constantinople.'101 The governors of the Asiatic provinces of Turkey Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 were well aware that autonomy within the Ottoman Empire was the best they could hope for. If they could avoid it, they would fight neither against the sultan nor for him. Deciding where and how to defend British India was made more complicated by the conflicting needs of Great Britain as a European and world power. According to Dundas, the defence of British India was Great Britain's only interest in the Middle East. The East India Company made no profits there, and Dundas had quickly lost his 168 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

enthusiasm for encouraging the overland trade, except so far as it would help to pay for the post.102 Dundas talked of the French as Ellenborough later talked of the Russians: they were to be fought everywhere.103 Both the foreign office and the government of India, usually less afraid than the board of control of the danger of in• vasion, had an alternative conception of Great Britain's most vital interests. The business of the foreign office was the balance of power in Europe. British policy in the Middle East must depend on the needs of the coalition during the war and of the alliance after it. Whereas the board of control connected all Middle Eastern questions with the defence of British India, partly because this was an easy way for the president of the board to try to increase the impor• tance of his office, the foreign office separated them and often ignored what affected India. Their differences were revealed in their attitude to the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire. From Bagh• dad in 1802 Harford Jones pointed to the Russians in the Ionian Islands, the Crimea, and the Caucasus, and was worried about the effects of the sultan's loss of control over his Asiatic provinces upon the safety of British India.104 Lord Hawkesbury and Henry Adding• ton, pointing to the French in Dalmatia, Constantinople, and Egypt, were worried about the effects of his loss of control over his Euro• pean provinces upon the prospect of a third coalition.105 At the end of the eighteenth century Anglo-Indian foreign policy was strongly influenced by two rival vested interests: the officers of the Indian Army tried to dominate the governor-general: the private traders tried to dominate the government of Bombay. The posts most coveted by Indian Army officers were political and diplomatic appointments; the habit of employing soldiers as diplomatists was most marked in the Middle East. As were its effects. Every time Malcolm pleaded for a fortress in the Persian Gulf and offered to take command of the garrison, he asked for just enough troops to oblige the commander-in-chief to promote him, to give him a high

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 enough rank.106 As Malcolm rose in rank the number of troops needed in the Middle East to defend British India rose accordingly.107 The attraction for Malcolm of failure on his second mission to Persia in 1808 was being able to threaten force; seizing the responsibility for Anglo-Persian relations from his civilian rival, Sir Harford Jones, who had been sent out from England.108 As long as the government of India employed soldiers as diplomatists, repeated demands for military intervention in the Middle East could be expected. In 1798, 169 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Lord Grenville, who had expected them and had protested against the habit,109 was ignored. As long as the government of India's interest in the Middle East was strategic, soldiers would appear to be its best qualified agents. The government of Bombay's interest in the Middle East was trade. The East India Company might make no profit from trading there, but its employees at Bombay, who controlled the local trade from India, made handsome profits.110 They were determined to prevent plans for the defence of British India or Great Britain's connections with the Middle Eastern states from being permitted to interrupt trade. In 1800 they criticized a plan to blockade the sherif of Mecca, who was supplying the French army in Egypt, because it would interrupt their trade with Jedda.111 Four years later they were equally anxious not to have to rely on the shah to protect their trade in the Persian Gulf.112 Their priorities were revealed by their choice among the Middle Eastern states. The board of control and the government of India debated the rival advantages of connections with Persia, Afghanistan, and Baghdad: the government of Bombay preferred a connection with Oman. The imam of Oman, whose own position rested upon the profits from the Arab slave trade to Zanzibar, was the only Middle Eastern potentate whose interests coincided with Bombay's. As the power of the imam waned, Bombay was willing to police the Persian Gulf in his place.113 That was all they were willing to do; all they thought to be necessary. Nothing could be gained or averted by close connections with other Middle Eastern states: 'the history of our connection with Turkish Arabia from the earliest period exhibited a series of insults and reconciliations with• out redeeming advantages, political or commercial, and the less we extend that connection the better.'114 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the government of Bombay did not share the premisses of its successor, the Bombay School of Indian defence. These differences partly provoked, and partly were aggravated by, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 an administrative confusion that marked British agencies in the Middle East, a region habitually regarded by the British as a desert having two edges. In this light, certain divisions of responsibility were generally understood. The residents at Basra, Bushire, and Muscat, who had the duty of protecting British trade, were respon• sible to the government of Bombay. The ambassador at Constanti• nople and the consuls who served under him were responsible to the foreign office. The division corresponded to that between Great 170 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

Britain's Asiatic and European interests. Complications arose im• mediately when anyone tried to connect the two. The status of the residency at Baghdad and the mission in Persia caused constant annoyance. To function properly the resident at Baghdad needed the status of a consul and the support of the ambassador at Constanti• nople.115 His duties, so far as he had any in addition to forwarding the East India Company's post, concerned only the government of India; but from the time the residency was set up in 1798 the resident had been encouraged to consider himself as an independent adviser to the board of control.116 There was 'certainly something peculiar in the atmosphere of Baghdad and Basra that diplomatizes the heads of the Company's residents there.'117 'The real and necessary duties of these residencies are ... very limited,' commented the governor- general in 1806, 'and are far less important than might be supposed from the... correspondence of the two gentlemen now holding those stations.'118 The residency at Baghdad was closed in 1821 and reopened in 1828, when the governor of Baghdad invited the resident at Basra to move.119 Its status never, however, caused the confusion created by the British embassy at Tehran's being bounced like a tennis ball every ten years between the government of India and the foreign office. Wellesley, who made the British connection with Persia for Indian reasons, took the control of it with him to the foreign office, also for Indian reasons. Castlereagh, who was determined to ignore such reasons, whenever they might tend to disrupt the Congress System, attempted to ignore the Persian Connection by ignoring the British embassy at Tehran.120 This device might temporarily have succeeded, but Canning, with his flair for the unnecessarily dramatic, insisted upon returning the Persian mission to the control of the government of India.121 So many of Canning's gestures were nothing more. Persia stood on the margins of the defence of British India and of the balance of power in Europe. As Palmerston realized, when taking

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 back control of the mission, only the foreign office was interested in both. In 1900 and 1901, by refusing to ally with Germany, the British, unawares, took the decision that was to govern their foreign policy until the First World War. As a result, while the Committee of Imperial Defence went on debating how to defend India against Russia, the foreign office was debating how to defend France against Germany.122 In 1814 the British were equally unaware of the likely 171 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

effects of their refusal to support Persia against Russia. By the time they became aware, fifteen years later, Persia was no longer worth supporting. The debate about how else to defend India from Russia began. After seventy years of debate a German alliance seemed the only resolution, which was why the Germans would not agree to it. The British appeared so inconsistent in the Middle East during the Napoleonic Wars, partly because their agents habitually exceeded their instructions (they thought they had to, they were sent so few), partly because the instructions were often from a previous govern• ment. The most extreme example was provided by Sir Gore Ouseley, ambassador at Tehran from 1812 to 1814, whose work was over• taken by the retreat from Moscow and the fall of Wellesley in 1812. Ouseley's mission was to reinvigorate Persia without provoking Russian retaliation.123 British manufactures were to do most of the work, but they were to be helped temporarily by a British subsidy. Ouseley argued that if Persia were to be strengthened, the British must subsidize the shah in peacetime as well as in wartime, at least until a satisfactory frontier with Russia in the Caucasus had been agreed upon.124 In the hope that the British would guarantee such a frontier, the shah permitted Ouseley in 1813 to negotiate the treaty of Gulistan on behalf of Persia, and on terms which even the Russians admitted to have been more favourable to them than they need have been.125 Unfortunately for the shah, Ouseley was over• ruled by Castlereagh, who would neither promise to stand behind the treaty nor push the Russians into returning to Persia any of her former territory.126 The coalition first against France, then against the Revolution, was to take precedence over the defence of British India. What this meant became apparent after the treaties of Turkman• chay and Adrianople, a watershed in Anglo-Russian relations. The British then realized what Castlereagh had done. Castlereagh had assumed that Persia would always remain more friendly to Great Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Britain than to Russia, because Russia not Great Britain was threatening her integrity. Temporarily this was true; but unless Great Britain would guarantee her frontiers, the Russians would continue to threaten her. One day they would capture Erivan and Nakitchevan, when Persia would have to come to terms with them. This happened at Turkmanchay. The British, however, needed eight more years to admit it. They took so long because Palmerston and Charles Grant resented having to echo Aberdeen and Ellenborough. 172 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

By 1836 it was evident that Persia had become virtually a client of Russia, who could compensate for her losses in the Caucasus by encouraging her expansion towards Herat.

I really believe [remarked the British ambassador at Tehran, Sir Henry Ellis] that Persia ... in the event of war between England and Russia ... would be more likely to act against than with us, and I came to the conclusion that we must look nearer to India for defensive alliances.127 The British might still try to challenge Russian influence, but only by threats. Their vital interest in the Middle East, the defence of British India, would have to be protected some way other than in co• operation with Persia. Once this was admitted, the old alternatives were reconsidered; Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, the Punjab, and Sind. They were no more satisfactory than they had ever been. Thinking of them meant thinking of wars of conquest: doing something led to two disasters at Kabul. If the British could not defend India in Persia, they could not defend it at all, and had to assume that they would not have to. Castlereagh is rightly known as the most European foreign secretary Great Britain ever had. Sir Edward Grey was the next. One wanted to contain France, the other to preserve her: the effect on the defence of India was identical. Both were fortunate that Russia seemed willing to concentrate on the balance of power in Europe. Great Britain was both a European and a world power, and her interests as each some• times conflicted. Greatness meant not having to choose between them.

NOTES

1. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. H. Davis (Oxford, 1951), vi. 3-69. 2. Sc to ggic, 29 Dec. 1829, IO L/PS/5/543. For opposing views of the Great Game in Asia, see H. W. C. Davis, 'The Great Game in Asia,' Proceedings of the British Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Academy, xii (1926), 179-226, and J.L. Morison, 'From Alexander Burnes to Frederick Roberts: A Survey of Imperial Frontier Policy,' ibid., xxii (1936), 177- 206. 3. 'Prominently advanced into the centre of Armenia, in the midst of a Christian population, Russia holds the keys both of the Persian and Turkish provinces; and whether she may be disposed to extend her conquests to the East or to the West, to Teheran or to Constantinople, no serious obstacle can arrest her progress.' Aberdeen to Heytesbury, private, 31 Oct. 1829, Add. MSS 43089. 4. Ellenborough to Malcolm, private, 27 Oct. 1829, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 5/2. Ellen- borough had been reading two books recently published by Colonel George de

173 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Lacy Evans, On the Designs of Russia (London, 1828), and On the Practica• bility of an invasion of India (London, 1829). These revealed nothing new, and were not particularly alarmist, but they appeared at the right moment. 5. The most famous was Alexander Burnes, but Arthur Conolly, who started from Tehran, was the first. For details, see J. A. Norris, The First Afghan War, 1838-1842 (London, 1967), 18-31. 6. 'Were we ever to expect any essential aid from Persia in the time of our own need,' argued Sir Charles Metcalfe, 'we should most assuredly find ourselves miserably deceived and disappointed. If ever Russia be in a condition to set forth an army against India, Persia most probably will be under her banners.' Sir J. W. Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London, 1854) ii. 197. 7. Wellington to Ellenborough, 9 Oct. 1828, Wellington, v. 117. 8. See M.E. Yapp, The Control of the Persian Mission, 1822-1836,' University of Birmingham Historical Journal, vii (1959-60), 164-70; and P.W. Avery, 'An Enquiry into the Outbreak of the Second Russo-Persian War, 1826-28,' in Iran and Islam: in Memory of Vladimir Minorsky, ed. C.E. Bosworth (Edinburgh, 1971), pp.31-2. 9. See G.J. Alder, British India's Northern Frontier, 1865-1895: A Study in Imperial Policy (London, 1963). 10. To the English an overland invasion meant any attempt to invade India from the near east, whether by land from Syria and Turkestan, or by sea from Egypt. An invasion overland did not necessarily mean an invasion by land. 11. Bruce and Blair to Dundas, 28 May 1798, IOL Film. MSS 759; 'Memorandum [by Eton] on the practicability of the French finding their way to India by different routes,' [May 1798] SRO GD 51/1/768/10. 12. Bosanquet to Dundas, 1 June 1798, Wellesley, i. 651; see also Bosanquet to Dundas, 26 May 1798, SRO GD 51/1/768/11. 13. This was the British assumption. See Rainier to Nepean, 11 May 1799, Rainier MSS 7. In fact movement was restricted only for the three months during which each monsoon was at its height. 14. For an account of Blankett in the Red Sea see A. Bissell, A Voyage from England to the Red Sea and along the East Coast of Arabia to Bombay (London, 1806). 15. William Eton, the publicist of the Ottoman Empire, who had once been Dutch consul at Basra; Sir Mark Wood, formerly chief engineer at Bengal; and Lieutenant-General James Stuart, commander-in-chief, Bombay, 1797-9, Madras, 1801-4. 16. Dundas to Grenville, 13 June 1798, Wellesley, i. 688. Stuart to Dundas, private, 24 July 1799, WO 1/357,311. 17. King to Huskisson, secret, with encl.no. 1,14 Feb. 1801, WO 1/7712,593. For the Russian expedition, see J.L. Schneidman, 'The Proposed Invasion of India by Russia and France in 1801,' Journal of Indian History, xxxv (1957), 167-77.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 18. Ellenborough's diary, 25 Sept. 1828, A Political Diary, 1828-1830, ed. Lord Colchester (London, 1881), i. 224. 19. For an excellent example see Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London, 1930). 20. See W.N. Medlicott, The Congress of Berlin and After: A Diplomatic History of the Near Eastern Settlement (London, 1938; Frank Cass, 1963), p. 119. 21. Grenville to Dundas, 20 Sept. 1798, Dropmore, iv. 319. 22. In 1788 the Russians captured Jassy, 'which is, I believe,' remarked the foreign secretary, the duke of Leeds, 'the capital of Moldavia.' Quoted in Allan Cunningham, 'The Oczakov Debate,' Middle Eastern Studies, i (1965), 214. 'What are the domestic relations of the Arab tribes,1 claimed the foreign

174 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

secretary to the government of India in 1871, 'we neither know or are capable of understanding.' Note by Aitchison, 3 May 1871, IO L/PS/5/27. 23. Grenville to Buckingham, 17 Feb. 1800, Buckingham, Memoirs, iii. 37. 'My dear Count,' replied Salisbury at Berlin to Shuvalov's suggestions that Disraeli and Gorchakov should decide the fate of Batum, 'Lord Beaconsfield cannot negotiate! He has never seen a map of Asia Minor!' Quoted in Medlicott, Congress of Berlin, p. 107. 24. Minute of the commander-in-chief, 15 Feb. 1808, IO Bengal/SPC/205,15 Feb. 1808, no. 1. 25. Minto to Castlereagh, secret, 3 Nov. 1807, Minto MSS M/159; Minto to Dundas, secret, 10 Feb. 1808, ibid. 26. Dundas to Spencer, 5 Oct. 1798, Spencer, iv. 186; Scott to Dundas, private, 26 Sept. 1798, SRO GD 51/3/3/78. 27. Grenville to Buckingham, 13 June 1798, Buckingham, Memoirs, ii. 401. 28. Heytesbury to Aberdeen, secret and confidential, 18 Jan. 1830, FO 65/185. 'But Heytesbury,' snapped Ellenborough, was 'a mere Russian.' Ellenborough, Diary, ii. 88. 29. Minto to Barlow, private and secret, 1 Feb. 1808, Minto MSS M/159. 30. Jones [resident at Baghdad] to Malcolm, 19 Jan. 1802, Kentchurch Court MSS 9213. 31. Dundas to Minto, private, 9 Dec. 1807, NLS MS 1063, fo. 11. 32. Memorandum by Palmerston, 2 June 1856, quoted in Kelly, Persian Gulf, p. 464. 33. Ellenborough to Macdonald, private, 15 May 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1/5. See also sc to ggic, 4 Oct. 1830, IO L/PS/5/543. 34. Toone to Warren Hastings, 28 and 30 Jan. 1808, Add. MSS 29183, fos. 153, 158. 35. See Grant's, 'Observations.' 36. See Norris, Afghan War, chs. 3-4. Ellenborough could 'not but hope that we might succeed in underselling the Russians and in obtaining for ourselves a large portion of at least the internal trade of Central Asia.' Scto ggic, 12 Jan. 1830, IO L/PS/5/543. But when Ellenborough read of a proposal to expand Russian trade with Tartary by way of the Caspian and the Oxus, he commented that 'all this is absurd.' Ellenborough, Diary, ii. 181. 37. Turkey merchants to Aberdeen, with minute of Aberdeen, 29 Jan. 1830, FO 78/195. Aberdeen to Brant, 31 March 1830, ibid. For the volume of trade, see Charles Issawi, 'The Tabriz-Tabzon Trade, 1830-1900,' International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, i (1970), 18-27. 38. Wellington to Ellenborough, 9 Oct. 1828, Wellington, v. 117; sc to ggic, 7 Nov. 1828, IO L/PS/5/543. 39. Wellington to Ellenborough, private, with ends., 9 Oct. 1828, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 2/5. 40. 20 Dec. 1829, Ellenborough, Diary, ii. 153. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 41. The extent of Russian trade in Central Asia in British goods had been revealed by William Moorcroft. For some account of Moorcroft, see R. N. Chowduri, 'Anglo-Russian Commercial Rivalry in 1812,' Journal of Indian History, xxix (1951), 16-25. 42. Memorandum by resident at Bushire, 1 April 1809, IO G/29/30. 43. Private secretary to governor-general to resident at Baghdad, 29 April 1802, Kentchurch Court MSS 6534. 44. Wellesley to Persian ambassador, 16 Feb., 6 March 1810, FO 60/4; Draft of George III to Ouseley, 13 July 1810, FO 60/4. 45. See C.J. Lowe, The Reluctant Imperialists: British Foreign Policy, 1878-1902

IDBI-G 175 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

(London, 1967) i. 73-93. 46. GgictogicB,secret, lOMarch 1808,IOBengal/SPC/205,11 March 1808,no.5. 47. See Richard Pares, 'American versus Continental Warfare,' English Historical Review, li (1936), 429-65. 48. Dundas to Huskisson, 27 Aug. 1798, Add. MSS 38735, fo. 110. 49. Memorandum by Koehler, 16 Oct. 1798, FO 78/25. 50. Memorandum by Dundas, 2 Oct. 1800, SRO GD 51/1/777. 51. Windham's diary, 30 Sept. 1800, Add. MSS 37924, fo. 63. 52. See draft of minute of Minto, 7 March 1808, Minto MSS M/334. 53. Elphinstone to Minto, 23 and 28 March 1809, IO H/657, pp.283, 367; Met• calfe to Edmonstone, 20 and 24 Sept. 1808, IO H/593, pp.37, 61. 54. Edmonstone to Elphinstone, 19 Aug. 1808, IO H/657, p.l. 55. Jones to gicB, 19 Oct. 1798, IO Bombay/SPP/380/73, p.4379. 56. Shore to Wellesley, 7 March 1798, Wellesley, i. 602. For an account of Anglo- Afghan relations, see B. Varma, English East India Company and the Afghans, 1757-1800 (Calcutta, 1968), pp. 63-98. 57. Ggic to cd, 31 July 1807, IO L/PS/6/17. 58. For Wellesley's statements to Dundas in 1798 and 1799, see Dundas, passim. 59. Wellesley to Lake, secret, 27 July 1803, Wellesley, iii. 208. 60. Philips, East India Company, p. 259. 61. In 1798 Pitt rejected the Company's claim that the British government should pay for the defence of British India against a possible invasion from Egypt because it was a vital national interest. Minutes of sc, 28 Aug., 10 Sept., 10 Dec. 1798, IO L/PS/1/4. 62. 6 March 1830, Ellenborough, Diary, ii. 206. 63. See R. L. Greaves, Persia and the Defence of India 1884-1892 (London, 1959), p.41, fn. 1. 64. A.J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (Oxford, 1954), pp.53-5, 60-1. 65. E. Ingram, 'An Aspiring Buffer State: Anglo-Persian Relations in the Third Coalition, 1804-1807,' Historical Journal, xvi (1973), 509-33. 66. See Mackesy, War in the Mediterranean, chs. 6-7. 67. Sc to ggic, 24 Sept., 12 Nov. 1807, IO L/PS/5/539. 68. For a description of French diplomacy in the Near East, see Puryear, Napoleon and the Dardanelles. 69. Malcolm to Wellesley, 26 Feb. 1800, IO G/39/22, p.53. 70. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 3 Sept. 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 380. 71. Memorandum by Palmerston, 2 June 1856, quoted in Kelly, Persian Gulf, p. 464. 72. Hobhouse to Palmerston, 3 April 1847, IO H/845. 73. Kelly, Persian Gulf, pp.450-4. 74. Jones to Minto, private, 5 June 1808, Minto MSS M/137.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 75. Greaves, Persia, pp. 150-5. 76. Jones to Malcolm, 10 Oct. 1800, Kentchurch Court MSS 8381; Jones to Willis, 29 Nov. 1800, ibid., 9213. 77. Jones to Willis, 17 May 1801, IOL Film. MSS 742. 78. Jones to Griffith, 17 July 1801, Kentchurch Court MSS 9213. 79. Ouseley to Wellesley, private, 21 April 1811, Add. MSS 37285, fo. 256. 80. Malcolm to Kirkpatrick, private, 5 May, 4 June 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fos. 244, 281. 81. Sc to ggic, 27 Oct. 1829, IO L/PS/5/543. Ellenborough would have liked to expand the mission. Ellenborough to Wellington, private, 18 Oct. 1829, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1/1.

176 RULES OF THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

82. Malcolm to Manesty, 22 March 1800, Add. MSS 13707, fo. 223. 83. See Cunningham, 'Oczakov Debate,' pp.209-11. 84. Dundas to Lushington, 3 March 1796, IO G/29/21. 85. Ouseley to Castlereagh, 28 Sept. 1813, FO 60/8. 86. Castlereagh to Morier, 9 Jan. 1815, FO 60/10; Castlereagh to Cathcart, secret, 2 Feb. 1819, FO 181/17. 87. Jones to Lushington, 14 April 1799, IO SLV/6. 88. Encl. in resident in Sind to governor of Bombay, 29 Oct. 1799, IO Bombay/SPP/ 381/7, p.5967. 89. Wellesley to Rainier, 29 Aug. 1798, Wellesley, i. 248. 90. Ggic to sc, 28 Sept. 1801, IO L/PS/5/4, p. 83. 91. Ggic to sc, 27 Jan., 7 March 1800, IO L/PS/5/3, pp.359, 389. 92. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 18 March 1799, Dundas, p. 126. 93. Elphinstone to Minto, private, 14 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/341. 94. Elphinstone to Minto, 23 and 28 March 1809, IO H/657, pp.283, 367. 95. Sc to ggic, 24 Sept. 1807, 14 Sept. 1808, IO L/PS/5/3. 96. A. Wellesley to Malcolm, 25 Feb. 1808, Kaye, Malcolm, i. 430. 97. For an account of Elphinstone's mission see S. R. Bakshi, British Diplomacy, pp. 44-52. 98. Jones to Inglis, 29 Nov. 1802, Kentchurch Court MSS 8380. 99. Chairman of EIC to governor of Baghdad, 6 July 1798, 30 June 1803, IO L/PS/5/538. 100. Minute of Malcolm, 23 March 1828, IO Bombay/SP/67, 9 April 1828, no. 4. 101. Jones to Tooke, 26 April 1799, Kentchurch Court MSS 9211. 102. See J. Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (New York, 1969), pp. 437-40. 103. Dundas to Wellesley, private, 31 Oct. 1799, Dundas, p.206. 104. Jones to Willis, 12 March 1802, 2 April 1804, IOL Film. MSS 742. 105. For the difficulties of restoring stability in Egypt, see S. Ghorbal, The Beginnings of the Egyptian Question and the Rise ofMehemet Ali (London, 1928), ch. 11. 106. This was clearly the hope of Lt.-Col. Murray, who commanded the British expedition to Perim in 1799, when he suggested that the government of India should garrison Aden. Murray to Duncan, 4 Oct. 1799, IO Bombay/SPP/381/6, p. 4821. 107. The commander-in-chief, India, eventually protested. See Hewitt to Minto, private and confidential, 29 Dec. 1808, Minto MSS M/173. 108. Malcolm's journal, 8 July 1808, Kaye, Malcolm, i. 424. See also p.427 fn. 109. Grenville to Dundas, 13 Dec. 1798, SRO GD 51/1/772/2. 110. See P. Nightingale, Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784-1806 (Cam• bridge, 1970). 111. Duncan to Wellesley, 1 Jan. 1800, IO Bombay/SPP/381/9, p.46. 112. GicB to cd, 10 Aug. 1804, IO L/PS/6/169, p. 79. 113. See Kelly, Persian Gulf, ch. 3. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 114. Minute of Warden, 23 March 1828, IO Bombay/SP/67, 9 April 1828, no. 5. 115. See Elgin to Hawkesbury, 6 July, 20 Aug., 5 Sept. 1801, FO 78/32. 116. Draft of Wellesley to Elgin, 13 July 1800, Add. MSS 13792, fo. 2. 117. Ellis to Grant, private, 13 Sept. 1833, IO Persia/48. 118. Edmonstone to Warden, 21 Jan. 1806, IO Bombay/SPP/382/18, p.4236. 119. Taylor to gicB, 13 Jan. 1828, IO Bombay/SP/67, 9 April 1828, no. 1. 120. Castlereagh refused to raise the British charge d'affaires to minister pleni• potentiary. Castlereagh to Willock, 28 March 1820, FO 60/17. 121. See Yapp, 'Persian Mission,' pp. 164-9. 122. G. Monger, The End of Isolation: British Foreign Policy, 1900-1907 (London, 177 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

1963), ch. 5. 123. Ouseley to Wellesley, 15 March 1812, FO 60/6. 124. Ouseley to Castlereagh, 28 Sept. 1813, FO 60/8. 125. Cathcart to Castlereagh, 31 Dec. 1813, FO 65/8. 126. Records of conferences between Castlereagh and the Persian ambassador, 20 June, 26 July 1819, FO 60/18. 127. Ellis to Palmerston, private, 15 Jan. 1836, Broadlands MSS GC/EL/41. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

178 XI

THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION, 1828-1835

In no part of the world has party work and clan work run higher than in Persia. Lord William Bentinck1

Throughout the nineteenth century, the Persian Mission reflected as a mirror the changing strategies devised by the British to safeguard British India from the unrest and crippling expense expected to follow from the unchecked expansion eastwards of Russia. Control of the mission was seized by the foreign office, and, when friendly relations with Russia seemed necessary to maintain the European balance of power, was sloughed off on to the board of control and later the India office. If the status of the Persian mission thus reflected the attempts the British made to postpone the choice they so feared between continental commitment and imperial defence, the mission's continued attachment to the foreign office after 1907 might imply that the Anglo-Russian entente was not meant merely to reinforce the opponents of Germany in Europe. The willingness of Russia in 1907 to agree to terms she had hitherto refused, suggested that the problem of how to defend India against the repercussions expected to follow from a military demonstration by Russia in Central Asia, might have been solved by the terms of the revised Anglo-Japanese alliance.2 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 All plans for the defence of British India in the nineteenth century had to bring victory far away and cheaply. Most of them were made either by the Backward (or Punjab) School, led by Lord Lawrence and later Lord Wolseley, or by the Forward (or Bombay) School, led by Lord Roberts. The blueprints had been handed down from two equally bitter rivals earlier in the century, dubbed the Ludhiana School and the Bombay School by H.W.C. Davis.3 The Punjab School followed the Ludhiana School by proposing to defend India

179 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

on the banks of the Indus. This idea was most popular and most sensible between 1856 and 1874. The application of steam power to warships, followed by the demilitarization of the Black Sea at the end of the Crimean War, implied that a stationary defence along the North-West Frontier of India could be made more effective by a demonstration against Russia in the Black Sea. Later in the century, it was doubtful whether the British could force their way into the Black Sea over the opposition of the sultan and the tsar. Earlier, the British had been held back by the wind and the current in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.4 The dependence of the Ludhiana and Punjab Schools on the ability of Great Britain to attack Russia all over the world, as Wolseley put it, was the argument used by both Bombay Schools to justify their alternative of an offensive strategy in Central Asia. The Bombay Schools treated an offensive in Central Asia as equi• valent to the independent course of action supposedly followed everywhere else by Great Britain in defence of her most vital inter• ests. If British India were to rely for its safety upon the maintenance of the European balance of power, Great Britain would be compelled to give up the independence hitherto given to her by her powerful navy and insular position. On the other hand, the attempt to carry out an independent policy in Central Asia might compel the British to treat Russia as an enemy when her help was needed, at least in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the war between liberty and equality. Whether to subordinate the defence of India to the maintenance of the European balance of power and whether to rely for help upon a European or an Asiatic ally, were less contentious issues in the early nineteenth century than the choice between the allies available. The Ludhiana and Bombay Schools spent the 1820s and 1830s arguing over the competing charms of Afghanistan and Persia. The successes and failures of both sides were shown at any moment in the tasks being assigned to the Persian Mission.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 In the unreformed political system before 1832, well-connected young Englishmen went into politics and equally well-connected Scotsmen went out to India, as the best, if not most certain, way to get ahead. A refinement of the system in India was the practice of officers in the Indian Army of trying to get promotion without fighting.5 So marked was their preference for political and diplo• matic appointments that, in an attempt to restore the opportunities being lost to civilians, the practice of employing soldiers as diploma- 180 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

tists was, in 1828, forbidden by the board of control.6 The practice had been most marked in the Middle East, where the Persian Mission was claimed by Sir John Malcolm as the property of himself, his family, and his faction. While on his first mission to Persia in 1800, Malcolm had, as it were, founded and begun to staff the Bombay School of Indian defence. For twenty-five years after 1807, the Persian Mission had been the prize in a long war between the 'Malcolmites' and the 'Harfordians,' the admirers of Sir Harford Jones Brydges, the first British resident at Baghdad, who had crowned his career with his appointment in 1807 as the first ambas• sador, since the reign of James 1, from the king of England to the shah of Persia.7 In 1824, the 'Malcolmites' were confident that the war had been won. When the responsibility for Anglo-Persian relations was trans• ferred by George Canning from the foreign office to the government of India, Malcolm's family recovered control of the Persian Mission at the expense of the last of the 'Harfordians,' the British charge d'affaires at Tehran, Sir Henry Willock. The family's final loss of control in 1835, when the Persian Mission was returned to the supervision of the foreign office, marked both their failure as a faction attempting to hang on to office and the defeat of the Bombay School by their rivals, the Ludhiana School, in the planning of Great Britain's strategy in the Middle East at the beginning of the Great Game in Asia. The fall of the 'Malcolmites' in Persia was accompa• nied by the rise of Afghanistan. The fame in history of the 'Malcolmites' is owed to their leader's literary appeal as much as to his military and political distinction. Sir John Malcolm made an ideal subject for biography. Victorians, who both revered pro-consuls as saints and read biographies as eagerly as they read novels, expected acquaintance with all three to be morally improving. India and the Middle East, where the climate was vile, the countryside uninviting, and the habits of the natives incomprehen•

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 sible, posed an unending challenge to an Englishman's ability to live by acting rightly. The proper response to the challenge was not to ask whether the acts of men had any effect, but to follow in the footsteps of those who had trod before. Didactic biography, in England the entertainment of the propertied classes, became in India a beacon beckoning every public servant. This had odd effects upon books. The cynosure of Victorian biographers, Sir John Kaye, who knew better than anybody that exhortation not explanation was the object 181 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

of his art, was able to turn John Malcolm, big, talkative, and good at games, into the beau ideal of the Anglo-Indian public service.8 Some of Kaye's other heroes had to be more cautiously portrayed. Of Malcolm's two greatest rivals, one, Sir Charles Metcalfe, married an Indian wife, had two children whom Kaye never mentioned, and was an intellectual with a dreadful seat on a horse. The other, Mount- stuart Elphinstone, could be excused his equally disquieting intellec• tual tastes only by his vigour in the saddle. He might read Greek poetry until the early hours, but at least he was out riding every morning before breakfast.9 The difference between Metcalfe and Malcolm, both in habit and temperament, had political as well as literary consequences in the years between 1828 and 1832, when Malcolm was governor of Bombay and Metcalfe the junior member of the Bengal council and one of the most influential advisers to the governor-general, Lord William Bentinck. Malcolm, the last of the great trio of romantic imperialists, who with Sir Thomas Munro and Elphinstone had dominated the East India Company's service since the Napoleonic Wars, remained anxious to govern India as far as possible according to Indian customs: tolerating the burning of widows and encourag• ing education in local languages instead of English, in an attempt to conciliate the Brahmin castes.10 To place Metcalfe amongst either the imperialists or the utilitarian and evangelical adherents of Bentinck is difficult. Metcalfe's preferred system of land tenure in northern India denied the utilitarians' belief in private property, just as it denied the evangelicals' belief in individual responsibility for self- improvement; nor did Metcalfe share the confidence of both groups in the efficacy of conversion. Because Metcalfe also saw no reason to tolerate the vestiges of privilege likely to prevent the East India Company's territories and the territories of its subsidiary allies from being better governed, his concern to protect the cultivator was matched by his willingness to destroy the Brahmin castes, in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 belief that good government could stablize an empire more effective• ly than a strong army.11 These differences, as such differences can be shown often to have done, affected the priorities of the two men when formulating defence and frontier policy; turning a dispute about the membership of the Persian Mission into a debate about the most effective method of defending British India. After the defeat of the Maratha Con• federacy in 1818, Metcalfe preferred consolidation to further expan- 182 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

sion. Thorough reform and European settlement within the empire would provide security against invasion and stabilize the North- West Frontier by ending the fear of rebellion. What happened in states beyond the frontier, over which the British had no control, should be ignored. Malcolm, whose first diplomatic experience, in parading around Persia in 1800 at the behest of Wellesley, was as formative as Metcalfe's humiliation in 1808 at the hands of Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, believed that Great Britain's power and prestige could be kept up only by a forward policy meant to ensure that the military frontier of British India was drawn far in advance of its boundaries. This led him to emphasize the value of Great Britain's connection with Persia, as much to suit the interests of his family as the security of British India. For the thirty years between 1798, when the government of Bombay took the preliminary steps leading to the first Anglo-Persian Treaty in 1801, and the treaty of Turkmanchay in 1828, the Persian Connection provided the method by which the British tried to defend India both from afar and cheaply. They had tried in Asia to follow Swift's prescription for success in Europe: finding the necessary ally who could be expected in the event of war to fight as the principal, while the British won easy prizes with their navy at the periphery. The Kajars had been expected to fight Russia when she allied with France; to negotiate peace when Russia became an ally of Great Britain; and to subordinate their need to find a permanent frontier with Russia in the Caucasus to Great Britain's attempt to use the Congress System to re-establish the European balance of power.12 After the treaty of Turkmanchay, when Russia both annexed the most strategically satisfactory frontier between Russia and Persia in the Caucasus and obtained privileges for Russian merchants that became the pattern for European capitulations throughout the nine• teenth century, the British realized that they must find another ally who would defend British India, in case Persia should be turned into

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 a Russian protectorate. The young men, who criss-crossed Central Asia to provide details of the political and social structure of the other Middle Eastern states, and the policies that were sometimes based on their recommendations, have given the Great Game in Asia its name.13 At the end of the eighteenth century, appointment to diplomatic and political posts was the best way for junior officers in the Indian Army to bypass the rules of seniority designed to ensure that the

IDBI-G* 183 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

service should not be dominated by men with influential connections in England. Because Sir John Malcolm's mission to Persia had launched his successful career, until 1824, when he refused to return to Tehran as the British resident, he had always treated Anglo- Persian relations as his personal domain.14 He had ruthlessly attacked anyone else who claimed an influence over them, particu• larly Sir Harford Jones, whose career he did all he could to ruin.15 Malcolm was equally ruthless in pushing forward his relatives, traits ignored by his biographer who was writing at a time when such habits were supposed to have become anachronistic. Malcolm, when young, proved unable to hand over the Persian Mission to his cousin Charles Pasley,16 but in mid-career he kept up his influence through his connections at the board of control, and, despite refusing the residency at Tehran himself, obtained it for his brother-in-law, Colonel John Macdonald Kinneir.17 These personal considerations clearly underpinned the strategies devised by the Bombay and Ludhiana Schools. The Ludhiana School, epitomized by the resident at Ludhiana in the 1820s and 1830s, Sir Claude Wade, predicted a Russian advance against India from the Caspian through Khiva and up the Oxus. The best way, therefore, both to stablize the North-West Frontier and to provide a means of defeating an invasion, either by armed intervention in Afghanistan or by a prepared defence at the Indus, was by a connec• tion with the Sikhs. The Bombay School, expecting the Russians to advance from Georgia through Tehran and Herat, preferred to keep up the traditional British connection with Persia. These preferences were the result of political as well as military calculations, and the two schools, like their successors the Punjab and Bombay Schools in the second half of the nineteenth century, were alternately influen• tial. The Bombay School was at its zenith between 1828 and 1830, when Malcolm was governor of Bombay, his old friend the duke of Wellington was prime minister, and Lord Ellenborough was presi• Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 dent of the board of control and receptive to all forward policies as the most likely to prove his suitability to replace the earl of Aberdeen at the foreign office. After 1830, during Earl Grey's administration, the initiative in the Great Game in Asia passed to Lord William Bentinck at Fort William, where he and Sir Charles Metcalfe, although they disagreed about North-West Frontier policy, both believed that the Persian Connection had outlived its usefulness.18 The Persian Connection had always been valued by the govern-

184 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

ment of Bombay, on account of its shortage of revenue from land. The profits from the trade with Persia, where the Persians who had little to sell paid for their purchases in cash, provided a source of short-term supply able to be repaid out of subsidies from Bengal.19 The political advantages of maintaining the connection with Persia were matched for Sir John Malcolm by the opportunities it gave the four members of his family attached to the British mission. Colonel Macdonald had with him in Persia his son as commander of the escort, Malcolm's second cousin, Captain John Campbell,20 as his second assistant, and Captain Benjamin Shee, the bastard of Mal• colm's sailor brother, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, attached to the British military mission. The Great Game in Asia is as famous for the violent animosities between the Englishmen who worked in the Middle East as for the unending debate about where and how British India could be defended most easily and effectively. Malcolm's relatives could neither forward their careers nor reassert their claim to supervize Anglo-Persian relations, unless they first ruined the careers of the two brothers who had been representing Great Britain in Persia for the ten years since the congress of Vienna. The British charge d'affaires, Henry Willock, was the last of the 'Harfordians,' who had gone out to Persia in 1808 in the suite of Sir Harford Jones. He had been joined there by his brother, George, who had been put in command of his escort.21 Willock had represented the foreign office. After 1822, when George Canning decided that the embarrassment caused by the Persian Connection to Anglo-Russian relations in Europe would increase the difficulty of managing the crisis caused by the Greek rebellion, he decided to put the Persian Mission back under the control of the government of India.22 Willock had agreed to stay on in Persia as first assistant to the resident, provided he was paid an unusually high salary to compensate him for taking a sub• ordinate position. He had his way owing to Canning's wish to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 mislead the shah, who was worried that the Persian Connection was being broken off, into thinking that the size and importance of the British mission was being increased not diminished.23 The offence given to Malcolm's connection by Willock's high salary was compounded by two other developments. The 'Harford- ians' were Whigs or were patronized by Whigs. Jones had also managed to attach himself to Henry Dundas, but he owed to the Whigs his appointment as envoy to Persia.24 Willock owed the

185 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

knighthood he was awarded in 1827, which the 'Malcolmites' so bitterly resented, to the Whig president of the board of control, Charles Wynn.25 Wynn had recognized the value of Willock's efforts to maintain harmonious Anglo-Persian relations at a time when Lord Castlereagh was trying to disentangle Great Britain from the treaty of Tehran. The second development took place in October 1827. Willock had gone home on leave when Macdonald took up his duties and was due to return to his post. At Wynn's suggestion, he was sent en route on an unofficial mission to St. Petersburg. Here he was mistaken for, or, according to Macdonald, deliberately passed himself off as, the British minister in Persia.26 Upon the outbreak of the Second Russo-Persian War in 1826, the British Government had been unable to decide whether the Persians were entitled to British mediation under the terms of the treaty of Tehran.27 The British did not wish to mediate; the Russians made it clear that they would not permit the British to do so: a belated offer made in 1827 met with a firm refusal.28 The continuance of the war, however, was an embarrassment to the British at a moment when a solution to the Greek Question seemed in sight. Willock was sent to St. Petersburg for the reason Canning had once planned to send Harford Jones there at a crucial moment during the war of the Third Coalition: to find out what terms of peace would satisfy Russia and to persuade the Persians to agree to them.29 The careers of both Jones and Willock would suffer from this entanglement of the Persian Connection with Anglo-Russian relations in Europe. Owing to the unbridgeable gap between the British and Russian notion of reasonable terms of peace, Willock's mission to St. Peters• burg accomplished nothing.30 But it left Willock open to attack from Macdonald. Willock's return to Tehran was delayed until after both the signature of the treaty of Turkmanchay and the revision of the treaty of Tehran. Macdonald had persuaded the shah to agree to the abrogation of the subsidiary articles of the treaty in exchange for one

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 payment of the subsidy to help him pay off part of the indemnity owed to Russia.31 According to Macdonald, his success proved that Willock was not needed at Tehran, where the British resident could manage with only one assistant. This was nonsense. Macdonald had only managed without Willock because he had had the help of the surgeon attached to the British mission, Dr. John McNeill, who had been left behind at Tehran while Macdonald and Campbell were away at Tabriz negotiating with the governor of Azerbaijan, Abbas 186 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

Mirza, who had been put in charge of Persia's foreign relations and was responsible for the war against Russia. The Russians had quick• ly realized how much of the work of the British mission was being done by McNeill.32 Despite the apologies offered to Macdonald by the Russian chancellor, Count Nesselrode, for mistaking Willock for the resident and Macdonald's dismissal of the mistake as a 'matter of trivial importance,'33 from the moment of Willock's return to Persia, Mac• donald did everything he could to get Willock recalled. Macdonald was supported in his campaign by Malcolm, who offered to remain at Bombay as long as he was needed to defend Macdonald's interests, and showered both the government of India and the board of control with lavish praise of Macdonald and abuse of Willock.34 Although hinting at the dark things they knew which would prove that Willock was up to no good, neither Macdonald nor Malcolm would ever explain what they were. Evelyn Harden, who has published some of the correspondence,35 takes the accusations at face value, but offers no evidence in support of them. At Fort William, where Willock had influential friends in the secretariat, little attention was paid to the accusations. At London, however, they found a readier ear in the new president of the board of control, Lord Ellenborough. Macdonald's and Campbell's commendation of each other and Malcolm's praise of them both was unmerited. It bore no relation to what was happening in Persia and reminds one of the praise heaped on one another by members of Sir Garnet Wolseley's 'ring' after the Ashanti War. According to Campbell, the increasing British influence and prestige in Persia was to be attributed solely to the personal reputation of Macdonald. Macdonald, who naturally agreed with this explanation, added that his influence was unshake- able.36 The claim was made at the moment when Persia was agreeing to a Russian proposal for a joint Russo-Persian expedition against Khiva, precisely what Macdonald had been sent to Persia to prevent.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 The expansion of Persia eastwards, either towards Khiva or Herat, was bound to be opposed by the British, as soon as Persia seemed to be acting as an ally or as the advanced guard of Russia. The temporary success of the 'Malcolmites' therefore depended upon the time lag between the occurrence of events in the Middle East and the comprehension in London of their significance. Working out the implications of the treaty of Turkmanchay took six years. In April 1829 the East India Company, under pressure from

187 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Ellenborough, told the government of India to reduce the number of assistants employed in Persia to one. Fearing nothing had been done, in October Ellenborough sought the support of the prime minister, the duke of Wellington. According to Ellenborough, Willock 'gives himself airs ... costs a great deal and does no good.' Wellington agreed that Willock might be recalled. Six months later, still fearing nothing had been done, Ellenborough reminded the chairman of the East India Company that, as Macdonald and Willock disagreed 'upon all points, his being at Tabriz can only be a detriment to the public service.'37 Although appointments in Persia were supposedly now made by the government of India not the board of control, who could only decide to reduce the number of assistants but not decide whether Willock or Campbell should be recalled, Ellenborough's hints on the subject had been acted on more quickly than he had realized. On 11 December 1829, the government of India had already told Macdonald that he was to keep Campbell as his assistant and send Willock home. Willock's brother, George, was also to return to his regiment in India.38 Although the close connection of the 'Malcolmites' with Welling• ton and Ellenborough led to their first triumph over the Willock brothers, political as well as personal considerations were involved. Ellenborough was trying to reverse Great Britain's policy in Persia. He saw Willock as a symbol of foreign office dominance over policy in the Middle East and its subordination to European needs. If the board of control could take over from, and act independently of, the foreign office, the British might be able to regain enough of their former influence in Persia to protect India from the repercussions Ellenborough expected from the unhindered expansion of Russia. This would have to be done cheaply. Ellenborough knew that Wellington was suspicious of the Persian Connection. If its revival should lead Persia to quarrel with Russia, it might provoke the crisis in the Middle East it had been meant to postpone. It might also

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 turn into a great drain on the public purse, as it had during the Napoleonic Wars. The connection would be valuable to Wellington, only so far as it indicated the determination of the Kajars to strengthen the hold of the dynasty over the provinces. If the Kajars were serious about this, they would willingly pay for the military mission they were asking for and Ellenborough was eager to provide.39 Sir John Macdonald did not live to enjoy the family's success. On 12 June 1830 he died; followed a week later by Major Hart, who was

188 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

in charge of the British military mission and also commanded the army of Azerbaijan - the most effective body of troops in Persia despite their poor performance against the Russians in the Second Russo-Persian War.40 Oddly enough, these deaths had occurred just before the arrival at Tehran of the government of India's instructions recalling the Willocks. Campbell took over as acting resident and appointed McNeill to act as his assistant. Although Willock did not protest against these arrangements, permitting Campbell to take over the supervision of Anglo-Persian relations, he saw an opportu• nity to recover the ground he had been losing and asked to be appointed Macdonald's successor.41 Macdonald, after all, had given no reason except his need of only one assistant and preference for Campbell to justify Willock's recall. As Campbell was equally quick to ask for the position of resident, a nasty struggle ensued at Tehran, as Campbell tried to force the Willocks to leave Persia and they thought up the best reasons they could for staying put. George Willock had naturally expected to take over command of the British military mission in succession to Hart, at least until somebody else could be sent to take over. When Camp• bell told him to be out of Persia in three months, he replied that he could not possibly leave in less than five, owing to the time of year. In the height of summer no ships sailed from the Persian Gulf to Bombay. In seven months George Willock was due to go on leave. He had planned to stay in Persia until his tour of duty was at an end and argued that Campbell ought to invite him to do so. Otherwise the British would give the impression that they wished to sever their connection with the Persian army.42 In an attempt to disguise this and to escape the responsibility for it, Campbell offered to allow George Willock to stay in Persia as long as Abbas Mirza, for whom he would be working, would pay him. Naturally, as Campbell did not press him to do so, Abbas Mirza refused. He wanted to obtain a supply of British officers to train his troops free of charge.43

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Sir Henry Willock was just as determined as his brother not to leave. He could not leave for Europe without the permission of the commander-in-chief at Madras, to whose staff he was still techni• cally attached despite his long secondment in Persia. He refused to try to reach India, owing to the plague. He therefore told Campbell that he would wait in Persia for an answer to the appeals for pro• motion both of them were sending to London.44 Campbell appealed straight to Ellenborough, backing up his appeal by a letter from the 189 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Persian government that purported to state that they would like him to stay. Willock appealed through the ambassador at Constanti• nople to the foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen. This did him no good. Ellenborough was determined to cut the foreign office out of his half of the Middle East. His search for a diplomatic triumph was partly an attempt to prove his ability to do better than Aberdeen, whom he thought bumbling and too conciliatory. When Aberdeen passed Willock's testimonials on to Ellenborough, they were returned with• out comment.45 In India, Sir John Malcolm did all he could to consolidate, even to extend, the hold of his family on the Persian Mission. He told Bentinck that Macdonald's dying wish had been for Campbell to succeed him; he also asked Bentinck to send his nephew, Lieutenant Duncan Malcolm, to Persia. About Willock, Malcolm admitted that 'my opinion ... is, from knowing the scene, very decided.' The appointment of Willock 'would excite hopes and fears of a change in policy amongst the Persians.'46 This tactic had the opposite effect to the one intended. Sir Charles Metcalfe protested that neither Mac• donald nor Malcolm had ever substantiated their criticisms of Willock. His recall had been an injustice and the opportunity, pro• vided by the death of Macdonald, to reappoint him should be taken. Metcalfe, in opposition to Malcolm, clearly preferred Willock and the policy of restraint with which he was associated to the policy of prestige associated with the 'Malcolmites.'47 The maintenance of a close connection with Persia was not, in his opinion, a vital interest of the government of India. Bentinck agreed with Metcalfe's conclusion, but was not sure that the Persian Connection did not interest the foreign office and the board of control. Bentinck had always criticized Canning's transfer of control over the Persian Mission to the government of India. A British envoy at Tehran could not manage without a commission from the Crown: without it, he was bound to take second place to an Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 envoy accredited by the tsar. Bentinck had therefore treated the Persian Mission as 'under the immediate direction of the Home Authorities,' both because letters travelled more quickly between Tehran and London than between Tehran and Calcutta and 'from the greater importance of its connection with the politics of Europe in respect to Russia.'48 Bentinck echoed his predecessor's criticism of Canning's attempt to separate the Persian Connection from Euro• pean international politics. As a result, Bentinck warned Willock in 190 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

September 1830 that, despite the support of the members of the Bengal council, he could not be named resident at Tehran in case his appointment should not be acceptable to the board of control.49 Bentinck then left Ellenborough to choose Macdonald's successor. Ellenborough had already decided to do so.50 He planned to illustrate by his selection the renewed importance now given by the British to their connection with Persia. This boded ill for the 'Malcolmites:' it meant that if Willock would not get the post of resident, neither would Campbell. Ellenborough needed a high Anglo-Indian official, whose reputation would signify the determi• nation of the British to resist the transformation of Persia into a protectorate of Russia. The months of August and September 1830 were spent by Ellenborough in an uncomfortable search for some• body sufficiently eminent who would agree to go out to Persia. Amongst others, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Malcolm's predecessor at Bombay, and the former resident at Nagpur, Sir Richard Jenkins, both refused. Ellenborough was no more successful in persuading a senior army officer who knew something about the Middle East to take command of the British military mission.51 At the end of Sep• tember the selection of a resident for Tehran was therefore handed back to the government of India.52 Ellenborough's difficulties were partly caused by the opposition of the East India Company, which was determined not to be lumbered with the bills for Ellenborough's adventurous and expensive forward policies. He had persuaded the company to pay for the new military mission he was planning to send to Persia, and was trying without success to make it pay for a similar mission he wanted to send to Baghdad.53 The salary of the resident at Tehran had been fixed at the scale paid to first-class residents in India. For this, nobody who met Ellenborough's requirements was likely to accept the post. The only applicant who seemed suitable was Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs, who had retired in 1827 from the post of resident at Satara, and who

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 might have been acceptable to the 'Malcolmites' because he had begun his career as an assistant on Malcolm's first mission to Persia in 1800. Ellenborough quickly changed his mind about Briggs's ability. Turning him down, however, left Ellenborough at the mercy of the East India Company, which calculated that leaving the Persian Mission in the hands of the governor-general would be the best way to keep down its cost. A personal interest lay behind the company's resistance. In the 191 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

spring of 1830, Captain Campbell's father, Sir Robert Campbell, had become its deputy chairman. If Ellenborough were likely to pass over his son, he might stand a better chance of promotion if the decision were left up to Bentinck. Despite the admiration of Malcolm which Ellenborough took up from Wellington, he did little for Campbell except to scotch the appointment of Willock.54 It was already obvious that the 'Malcolmites' had been making far more of the misunderstanding at St. Petersburg about Willock's rank than the incident had warranted. Ellenborough told Campbell to stop making life uncomfortable for Willock and to do nothing to lower his standing in the eyes of the Persians. 'Pray give Captain Campbell a hint,' Ellenborough asked Campbell's father, 'that his official letters to Sir H[enry] Willock and to Major Willock are not quite according to the forms of courteous intercourse between a Chief and the subjects of his Government at a foreign court.'55 The board of control's self-denial did not lead to a decision, however, because in India Bentinck had no more success than Ellen• borough at filling the position of resident at Tehran with somebody of suitable rank. The resident at Gwalior had refused the post owing to the cut in salary and allowances.56 Fortunately for Campbell, the delay lasted until Wellington's resignation late in 1830 led to the replacement of Ellenborough at the board of control by Charles Grant. Grant was far less self-confident and opinionated than Ellen• borough, and relied for advice about the Middle East on Henry Ellis. This ought to have benefitted the Willocks, because Malcolm had blamed on Ellis, Henry Willock's special appointment and high salary,57 but Ellis did little on Willock's behalf in 1831. Late in April, Grant finally told the East India Company to pick the new resident at Tehran, which cleared the field for Campbell, whose father was at that moment starting his year as the chairman. On 20 July, Bentinck was told that he was to keep the responsibility for the Persian Mission and to put Campbell in charge of it.58 By now Malcolm, too, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 had resigned and his successor, the earl of Clare, did not think much of the choice: 'What a glorious job his appointment is; it brings one back to the good old days when Pagoda trees grew in India.'59 Although the willingness of Grant and Ellis to permit the appoint• ment of Campbell is to be attributed to an equivalent willingness to play a smaller part in the politics of Persia than Ellenborough had meant to play, in the hope that Russia would act with similar self- restraint, they soon found that more would have to be done to 192 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

prevent Persia from turning into a protectorate of Russia. By the time Campbell's appointment as resident at Tehran was confirmed by the government of India in December 18 31, he had shown that he would not be up to the job.60 Fortunately the surgeon to the mission, Dr. McNeill, had been made his assistant, who would prevent him 'from getting you into scrapes,' explained Clare.61 This task quickly proved beyond even McNeill, capable and sensible though he was. He was also an old friend of the Willocks, which cannot have made a difficult job less irksome to him.62 One of the first scrapes into which Campbell dragged the British in Persia, was the last bid of the 'Malcolmites' to make use of the connection to get ahead. On 3 October 1831, Campbell had sent on to Calcutta with his support a request from Captain Shee, the acting commander of the British detachment after the departure of George Willock, for confirmation in this post.63 Shee was the bastard of Sir John Malcolm's brother, and clearing a path for him had been one reason why Campbell had been determined to force George Willock as well as Sir Henry Willock to leave Persia. Shee soon proved as unsuited as Campbell was himself to a job demanding any political acumen. In the winter of 1831—2, the British detachment was follow• ing the Persian army as it marched into Khorasan on an expedition that seemed likely to lead, if successful, to an attack on Khiva or Herat. This had long been set down as something the British must try to prevent, particularly as Persia seemed to be acting on the advice of, and presumably as the advance guard of, Russia. Shee, like so many Englishmen cut off in the Middle East among natives whose customs and manners they were baffled by, promptly made a valiant, if misguided, attempt to defend the national interest. On 15 January, Shee protested to Abbas Mirza against the pro• posed Russo-Persian embassy to Khiva. In return for giving it up and dismissing his Russian advisers, Shee offered him a British subsidy of 100,000 tomauns. The result was just what might have been

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 expected: every local ruler who heard of the offer, tried to make a similar bargain.64 Although Clare laughed at Shee 'frightened out of his wits,'65 the incident could not be treated so lightly by Campbell. He denounced the agreement, told Shee not to meddle in politics, and, in a rare example of family disloyalty, denounced him to his father.66 When McNeill joined the Persian army in Khorasan the following winter, he decided that the Persian threats to attack Herat had been meant only to frighten the British into reverting to their old 193 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

habits, when a subsidy had been the agreed method of expressing common interests.67 In fact, Campbell turned out to be no better suited to his job than Shee. He was vain, untruthful, and offended everybody in Persia: the Persians eventually complained to the foreign office and demanded his recall.68 His incompetence might not have mattered so much, except that, if the British wished to turn Persia into an effective buffer state, they had to resist what appeared to be a determined bid by Russia to increase her influence. In December 1832, a new Russian ambassador, General Count Simonitch, arrived at Tabriz with a large and imposing suite. His arrival demonstrated the fallacy of Macdonald's claim that he needed only one assistant. Persia in the early 1830s contained three centres of power: Tabriz, Tehran and Khorasan. The British needed to be effectively represented at all three. The shah, in particular, resented British neglect of him,69 which might lead him to follow Russian rather than British advice in naming his successor. On 4 September 1832 Campbell therefore asked for a second assistant, and in January 1833 the board of control consented.70 After a protest from the East India Company, it changed its mind and did nothing until the end of the year, when it was decided to send James Baillie Fraser to obtain a detailed report of the political situation in Persia. How far Great Britain's interests in Persia had been subordinated to those of the 'Malcolmites' was becoming embarrassingly clear. The decline of Great Britain's influence in Persia in the early 1830s was partly due to the niggardliness characteristic of the British government during the utilitarian and evangelical heyday. As the government was to do as little as possible, it should not need to spend money. The treatment of the Persian Mission offers an extreme example. The resident's house was in a bad state of repair. Assuming that 'it was doubtless the intention of the court of directors to provide a suitable residence ... to the representative of the British

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Government at the Court of Persia,' the board of control suggested in July 1832 that the necessary repairs should be made. The East India Company, tired of the government's willingness to spend other people's money but never its own, replied that as the resident at Tehran was now treated as a resident in India, first class, he had to provide his own housing. Macdonald had been told this and had been offered a fixed sum for the repair of his present house.71 The search for a solution to this problem, too, was now handed over to 194 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

Bentinck.72 Leaving the government of India to run the Persian Mission would be the best way to keep down its cost. By the end of 1832 administration was evidently running counter to policy. The board of control and the East India Company were arguing about the draft of a dispatch to Bentinck, in which the company was determined to reassert the point that he was respon• sible for choosing the resident at Tehran, even if he had chosen to follow a suggestion from London. The board, on the other hand, did not wish Bentinck to interpret the dispatch as a suggestion that Campbell ought to be recalled.73 Such an action would be particu• larly embarrassing at a moment when the board had decided, by obtaining a knighthood for Campbell, to signify that Great Britain was anxious to keep up the Persian Connection. The government of India was also told to send to Persia, as quickly as possible, the military mission Ellenborough had promised. Nothing had since been done about it. Finally, Bentinck was told to recall Shee. Officers for the military mission were to be selected in future for their political sensitivity as well as their professional competence.74 These instructions terminated the career in Persia of Captain Shee. In March 1833 Shee had been dismissed by Abbas Mirza from the command of his troops as an expression of goodwill to Russia. Although Campbell had demanded Shee's reinstatement,75 the demand was made for political rather than family reasons. With his own actions under increasingly close scrutiny, Campbell could not afford to take advantage of his position to bring forward his relatives. His own knighthood followed from an unsuccessful attempt to meet the final challenge from Sir Henry Willock. In the summer of 1832 the board of control had been reconsidering the value of the Persian Connection as a defence of Great Britain's interests in India and the Middle East. Willock took the opportunity, not so much to deny the value of the mission of which he had been a member for so many years, as to explain why an attempt to increase

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 its influence would be pointless. Willock saw the gravest danger to the British from Russian expan• sion towards Khiva and then up the Oxus, where Russian move• ments might go almost unnoticed. As long as the nomadic ways of the inhabitants of the region made it impossible to find satisfactory frontiers, the Russians were bound to move forward and the British would have no reason to protest. This threat to British India could not be met by a closer connection with Persia: Great Britain's neces- 195 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

sary Asiatic ally would have to be sought in Afghanistan. Persia should be treated as a buffer state and control of the Persian Mission should therefore be given back to the foreign office.76 The govern• ment of India might negotiate with the Afghans without regard to the balance of power in Europe; but could not negotiate with the tsar. This emphasis by Willock upon the importance of Afghanistan, with its corollary that the British should do whatever they could to fore• stall quarrels with Russia and Persia, placed Willock in the Ludhiana School of Indian defence. As a 'Malcolmite,' Campbell was a member of the Bombay School. He saw the route between Astarabad and Herat as the most likely line of Russian expansion and a close connection with Persia as the best way to keep up an effective deterrent.77 It became an axiom of the Bombay School that Great Britain's command of the sea gave her the opportunity to defend India in Persia by taking a Russian army marching eastwards in the flank.78 Such a strategy disregarded the physical geography of Persia as completely as any• body frightened of the invasion of India tended to disregard climatic conditions in Central Asia. William Moorcroft, travelling beyond the Himalayas in 1812 was astonished to meet Russians in Tibet. The Napoleonic expedition he expected to follow in the Russians' footsteps might have found it as difficult as Moorcroft did to breathe.79 The attempt by the 'Malcolmites' to re-establish the pre-eminent position of the Persian Connection, and with it the tenets of the Bombay School of Indian defence, had proved a failure. During 1833 and 1834 Willock's point was gradually taken that the control of the mission must be given back to the foreign office. This was done in stages. And each stage was designed as a response to a Russian initiative or to forestall an increase in Russian influence, not as a means of obtaining paramount influence for Great Britain. One spur was the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. The British, who interpreted the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 treaty as an attempt to turn Turkey into a protectorate, expected the Russians to make a similar attempt in Persia. This the British were determined to resist, not only for its own sake but for its probable effect upon the sultan. Unless the British could demonstrate their determination as well as their ability to support the sultan, he would make no attempt to regain his independence.80 Because Campbell's dispatches were considered to be incomprehensible, in December

196 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

1833 the government decided that Fraser should also suggest how the Persian Mission could be reorganized.81 During the summer of 1834, despite reports from Fraser that revealed to the board of control and the foreign office what the government of Bombay and the governor-general already knew, that Campbell was incompetent, the British sent Campbell a dispatch showing him to be a representative of the state, not merely of the East India Company. This was meant to ensure that he would be able to stand up to Count Simonitch. The board of control had first asked in August for a dormant credential. When Palmerston, not knowing what was implied, agreed to provide one, his under-secretary had to explain that this would be tantamount to transferring the control of the Persian Mission from the government of India to the foreign office.82 By the time the Whigs were dismissed in November, the flight of McNeill to London to escape the damage likely to be done to his career by association with Campbell had proved that decisive steps must be taken to restore the efficiency and credibility of the Persian Mission, if Persia were to be maintained as a buffer state and not to fall into dependency on Russia. John McNeill had been attached to the Persian Mission since 1820. In December 1830 Malcolm had named him to succeed the resident at Bushire, who had resigned. This appointment was not taken up owing to the death of Mac• donald and Campbell's invitation to McNeill to act as his assistant. To compensate him for the loss of salary he would otherwise have suffered, he was to be paid a salary equal to a resident's. When Clare took over at Bombay from Malcolm, he condemned this decision 'in terms of considerable severity.'83 The East India Company could not understand why. Such an arrangement would have been automatic in India. McNeill had suffered a further loss in the winter of 1831-2. He made an unnecessary journey to Bushire at a time when the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 government of India was hoping to persuade the resident at Gwalior to take over as head of the Persian Mission. Upon the resident's refusal, McNeill had to return to Tehran.84 Although McNeill had since been confirmed in the post of assistant and recommended by the East India Company for promotion, should he prefer to go back to Bombay, he feared that his association with Campbell had injured him with Clare.85 Instead, in September 1834, he persuaded Camp• bell to send him on leave to England, where he threw himself into the 197 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

arms of the foreign office and endeared himself to both Ellenborough and Palmerston by writing his famous pamphlet The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East.96 More important to the destruction of the 'Malcolmites' than the defection of McNeill, who had written the only dispatches from Campbell that made much sense, was the defection of Henry Ellis. Ellis, the bastard of the earl of Buckinghamshire and brother-in-law of Viscount Goderich, had begun his career as a 'Malcolmite.' He had been attached to Malcolm's mission to Persia in 1808 and had then accompanied another of Malcolm's admirers on a mission to Sind. While acting as private secretary to his father, who was president of the board of control in the earl of Liverpool's admini• stration from its formation in 1812 until 1816, Ellis was sent to Persia to negotiate the final terms of the treaty of Tehran. Although Ellis had warned Castlereagh that the British would have to find a way to prevent the transformation of Persia into a protectorate of Russia,87 until he joined the board of control in 1830 he shared the assumption of the 'Malcolmites' that keeping up the Persian Connec• tion would be the best way to defend British India. Ellis had sup• ported Canning's decision to put the Persian Mission back under the control of the government of India in the hope that the British would then be able to act in Persia with greater vigour.88 The terms of the treaty of Turkmanchay showed that this was a forlorn hope. During his four years at the board of control Ellis transferred himself, as it were, from the Bombay to the Ludhiana School of Indian defence. His strategy for propping up Persia as a buffer state devoted more attention to holding back Russia than regaining Great Britain's former influence. As long as the Kajars agreed to live with the north-west frontier they had accepted at Turkmanchay, could be persuaded to give up their claims to Herat, and would defer to the governor of Azerbaijan as the obvious successor to Fath Ali Shah, Persia would be stable enough to suit the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 British. Nothing was likely to happen equivalent to the success of Mahomet Ali over Mahmud II and the opportunity it had given to the Russians.89 If Ellis had decided that the security of British India should rest on a defensive strategy in Persia, he also recognized that this would have to be accompanied by an offensive in Central Asia. The papers written by Henry Ellis between 1832 and 1835 provided the clearest picture of what the British aimed to achieve in the Great Game in 198 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

Asia and of the way in which they meant to take advantage of their moment as the first industrialized state to establish the conditions necessary for their stability as the first world power. A chain of buffer states, stretching from Egypt through Anatolia and Azer• baijan to Khiva and Bukhara, was to separate the Russians in eastern Europe and the French in the Mediterranean from the British in India. The British could hope to rely on their navy to exert sufficient pressure from the Red Sea to influence events in Egypt and to extend the range of sea power from the Persian Gulf up the Tigris and Euphrates to influence events in Syria, Anatolia, and Persia. But how to stabilize Turkestan and forestall paramount Russian influence there ? Khiva and Bukhara would have to be transformed into settled communities with recognized frontiers, which, in itself, would first require the transformation of Sind, the Punjab, and Afghanistan. They, too, were to settle the frontiers between them; and Afghani• stan was to be transformed from a group of small principalities, perpetually at odds, into a united state whose possession of Herat would give the British control over all of the routes to the East.90 As soon as Persia proved her inability to act as Great Britain's necessary ally in Asia, the role was thrust upon Afghanistan. The 'Harfordians' had recommended this as early as 1798.91 In an attempt to realize their vision, Ellis was sent in November 1834 on a special mission to Persia with McNeill as his assistant, technically to congratulate the new shah on his accession but in fact to make a final decision about the control of the Persian Mission.92 Ellis made two recommendations. The mission must be given back to the foreign office, who alone could measure Great Britain's need to hold back Russia in the Middle East with the need of her help, if limited help, in Europe in resisting the equally tiresome, if less threatening, preten• sions of France. The second conclusion was this: 'that Persia can never be of much use to us in contributing to the protection of our Indian empire.'93 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 This victory of the Ludhiana School over the Bombay School of Indian defence was reflected in the final if posthumous victory of the 'Harfordians' over the 'Malcolmites.' Although Jones was still alive, while Macdonald and Malcolm were now dead, Jones's own career had been ruined in 1812 owing to the war waged against him by Malcolm, first through Lord Minto, while he was governor-general, and later through the Marquis Wellesley, while he was foreign secretary. Ellis and McNeill, however, one having defected from the 199 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

'Malcolmites,' the other a 'Harfordian' owing to his association in the 1820s with Sir Henry Willock, finally destroyed the connection on Jones's behalf in 1835. In 1834 Sir John Campbell had been encouraged to take leave of absence in order to obtain treatment for his eyes.94 Sensing the implication, he had put off doing so. A year later, on 1 July 1835, he was recalled.95 The end of the Persian Connection and the defeat of the 'Malcolm• ites' went hand in hand. Malcolm's connection partly suffered for their close association with the ultra-Tories. The 1830s were the beginning of the final flowering of the Whigs. How apt an illustra• tion of continuity in the Great Game in Asia that a friendly letter from Lord Holland to Sir Harford Jones in 1836 should have been found by the author three years ago lying inside the front cover of Professor A. P. Thornton's copy of McNeill's famous pamphlet.96

NOTES

1. Bentinck to Ellenborough, private, 16 Jan. 1831, IOL MSS Eur. D/556/1. 2. See B.J. Williams, 'The Strategic Background to the Anglo-Russian Entente of August 1907/ Historical Journal, ix (1966), 360-73; and I.H. Nish, The Anglo- Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894-1907 (London, 1966), pp.312-20. 3. H.W.C. Davis, 'Great Game in Asia.' 4. Mackesy, War in the Mediterranean, pp. 163-81. 5. Supra, pp. 50-1. 6. Melville to Astell, private, 22 Aug. 1828, NLS MS 1060, fo. 202; cd to ggic, 10 May 1831, IO L/PS/6/245. 7. For the early career of Sir Harford Jones [Brydges] see M. E. Yapp, 'The Establish• ment of the East India Company Residency at Baghdad, 1798—1806,' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vii (1959-60), 323-36; and Ingram, Commitment to Empire, chs. VI-VII. 8. Kaye, Malcolm; see also Woodruff, Men who Ruled India, i. 205-11. 9. Sir J.W. Kaye, The Life and Letters of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London, 1854); Edward Thompson, The Life of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London, 1937), p. 11; and R.C. Choksey, Mountstuart Elphinstone: The Indian Years, 1796-1827 (Bombay, 1971). 10. K. Ballhatchett, Social Policy and Social Change in Western India, 1817-1830 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 (London, 1957), pp.278, 289, 295, 301-11. 11. Ingram, Great Game in Asia, pp. 105-7; D.N. Panigrahi, Charles Metcalfe in India: Ideas and Administration, 1806-1835 (Delhi, 1968), pp. 11-23. 12. Ingram, Great Game in Asia, ch. I. 13. For the best examples of their histories see Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara ...in the Years 1831, 1832, and 1833 (London, 1834); and Arthur Conolly, Journey to the North of India, Overland from England through Russia, Persia, and Afghanistan (London, 1834). 14. Kaye, Malcolm, ii. 480-1. 15. See Minto to Hewitt, private, 27 Aug. 1808, Minto MSS M/174; Minto to Jones,

200 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

31 Oct. 1808, 30 Jan. 1809, IO G/29/26, pp.5, 201. 16. For the family's delight at Malcolm's efforts on Pasley's behalf see C. Pasley to C.W. Pasley, 14 April 1800, Add. MSS 41961, fos. 97, 109. 17. Kaye, Malcolm, ii. 431. 18. Ingram, Great Game, chs. IV-V. 19. 'Report [by John Malcolm] on the State of Trade between Persia and India,' 1800, IO G/29/21. 20. Campbell's mother was Elizabeth Pasley, daughter of Gilbert Pasley, surgeon- general at Madras. Malcolm's mother, Margaret Pasley, was Gilbert's younger sister. See Records of Clan Campbell in the Military Service of the Honourable East India Company, 1600-1858, comp. Major Sir Duncan Campbell of Barcaldine (London, 1925), pp. 120,210; and Roll of the Indian Medical Service, 1615-1930, comp. Lt.-Col. D.G. Crawford (London, 1930), p.256 fn. Crawford states, inaccurately, that Gilbert Pasley had no children. 21. 'Notes on the Willock Family by H.D. Willock,' IOL MSS Eur. D/527. 22. Yapp, 'Persian Mission,' pp. 164-7; F. Adamiyat, 'The Diplomatic Relations of Persia with Britain, Turkey and Russia, 1815-1830,' (Ph.D., London, 1949), chs. VI-VII. 23. Swinton to Macdonald, 26 March 1824, FO 248/50. 24. Ingram, 'An Aspiring Buffer State,' pp. 525-8. 25. Charles Watkin Williams Wynn had joined the government in 1822 to represent the Grenville Whigs. He was connected with the duke of Buckingham. 26. Macdonald to Malcolm, 18 Feb. 1829, Portland MSS PwJf/2748/44; Macdonald to Sir R. Campbell, EUL MSS Dk/2/37, fo. 94. 27. Memorandum by Wellington, 9 Jan. 1827, FO 69/30; memorandum by Wynn, 8 Dec. 1826, FO 60/29. 28. Lieven to Canning, 26 Feb. 1827, FO 65/168; Nesselrode to Paskievich, 23 April 1827, Akty sobrannye kavkazskoiu arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu (12 vols., Tiflis, 1866-1904), vii. 540; Dudley to Disbrowe, 27 June 1827, FO 65/163; Disbrowe to Dudley, 19 July 1827, FO 65/165. 29. Dudley to Disbrowe, 8 Oct. 1827, FO 65/163. 30. 'Minutes of a Conversation,' 28 Oct. 1827, FO 65/166. 31. Macdonald to sc, 12 Oct. 1827, IO Persia/41; sc to ggic, 14 Sept. 1827, IO L/PS/5/543. 32. Macdonald to Bentinck, 21 July 1829, EUL MSS Dk/2/37, fo. 57; Volkovsky to Paskievitch, 7 Dec. 1827, Akty, vii. 33. Heytesbury to Macdonald, 3 April 1829, Macdonald to Heytesbury, 15 May 1829, EUL MSS Dk/2/37, fos. 12-15. 34. Malcolm to Wynn, private, 3 March 1828, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 2; Malcolm to Macdonald, 17 April 1829, EUL MSS Dk/2/37, fo. 29; Malcolm to Bentinck, private and confidential, 19 June 1829, Portland MSS PwJf/1428. 35. E.J. Harden, 'Griboedov and the Willock Affair,' Slavic Review, xxx (1971), 74- 92. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 36. Macdonald to Auber, 5 June 1830, Campbell to sc, 21 June 1830, IO Persia/45, pp. 1, 73; Macdonald to Bentinck, private and confidential, 7 Aug. 1830, Port• land MSS PwJf/1461; Yapp, 'Persian Mission,' pp. 171-2. 37. Ellenborough to Wellington, 18 Oct. 1829, Wellington, vi. 238; Ellenborough to Loch, 6 April 1830, PRO 30/9/4, pt. 2/3; Loch to Ellenborough, 6 April 1830, ibid. 38. Swinton to Macdonald, 11 Dec. 1829, FO 248/61. 39. Ingram, Great Game in Asia, pp.52-3. 40. Encl. in Heytesbury to Aberdeen, 13 July 1830, FO 65/86; Campbell to Swinton, 21 June 1830, IO Persia/45. 201 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

41. End. in Gordon to Aberdeen, private, 14 July 1830, FO 78/190. 42. Campbell to G. Willock, 1 July 1830, G. Willock to Campbell, 2 July 1830,10 Persia/45. 43. Ends. 1-2 in Campbell to sc, 6 Sept. 1830, IO Persia/45. 44. H. Willock to Campbell, 2 July 1830, IO Persia/45; Harden 'Willock Affair,' p. 83, fn. 30. 45. Campbell to Ellenborough, 17 July 1830, IO Persia/45; Gordon to Aberdeen, private, 14 July 1830, with ends., FO 78/190. 46. Malcolm to Bentinck, private and confidential, 6 Aug. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1/4; Malcolm to Bentinck, 15 Aug. 1830, Portland MSS PwJ#1463. 47. Metcalfe to Bentinck, 25 Aug. 1830, Portland MSS PwJf/1525; Bentinck to Campbell, private, 31 October 1830, Portland MSS, PwJf/2787/33. 48. Bentinck to Ellenborough, private, 26 Aug. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1/4. 49. Bentinck to Willock, private, 8 Sept. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1/7. 50. Ellenborough to Bentinck, private, 7 Aug. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 5/1. 51. Ellenborough's Diary, ii. 327; Ellenborough to Jenkins, 2 Aug. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 4/5. 52. Carter to Campbell, 30 Sept. 1830, FO 248/60. 53. Sc to gicB, 7 Nov. 1828, IO L/PS/5/573. 54. Ellenborough to Bentinck, 7 and 15 Aug. 1830, Portland MSS PwJf/943, 954. 55. Ellenborough to Campbell, private, 20 Sept. 1830, Ellenborough to Sir R. Campbell, 21 Sept. 1830, PRO 30/9/4 pt. 1. 56. Bentinck to Sir R. Campbell, private, 14 Dec. 1830, IOL MSS Eur. D/556/1. 57. Malcolm to Bentinck, private and confidential, 17 May 1829, Portland MSS PwJf/2748/22. 58. Grant to chairman of EIC, 27 April 1831, IO E/2/36; cd to ggic, 20 July 1831, IO L/PS/6/244. 59. Clare to Bentinck, private, 5 Jan. 1832, Portland MSS PwJf/624. 60. Prinsep to Campbell, 13 Dec. 1832, IO Persia/47. 61. Clare to Bentinck, private, 5 Jan. [1832], Portland MSS PwJf/624. 62. Memoir of the Rt. Hon. Sir John McNeill, G.C.B. (London, 1910), p. 134. 63. End. no. 3 in Campbell to sc, 9 Oct. 1831, IO Persia/46. 64. Ends. 5-7 in Campbell to sc, 15 March 1832, IO Persia/47; Kamran Khan to William IV, n.d., IO Bengal/SPC/372, 19 March 1833, no. 44; J. Woolf to Campbell, 19 March 1832, IO L/PS/5/123. 65. Campbell to sc, 8 May 1832, with end. 3, IO Persia/47; Campbell to Sir R. Campbell, private, 18 May 1832, IOL MSS Eur. D/556/2. 66. Clare to Bentinck, private, 19 July 1832, Portland MSS PwJf/665. 67. End. 10 in Campbell to sc, 24 Dec. 1832, IO Persia/47; McNeill, pp. 157-61. 68. Abul Hassan Khan to Palmerston, c. 2 Aug. 1834, FO 60/34; Bentinck to Grant, private, 3 Sept. 1834, Portland MSS PwJf/1069; McNeill, p. 169. 69. McNeill to Campbell, 30 June 1832, McNeill, p. 153.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 70. Macaulay to Auber, 21 Jan. 1833, [cancelled], IO L/PS/3/117. 71. Jones to Auber, 2 July 1832, IO E/2/37; Carter to Villiers, 23 Aug. 1832, IO E/2/11. 72. Villiers to Auber, 24 Oct. 1832, IO E/2/37; cd to ggic, 24 Oct. 1832, IO L/PS/6/245. 73. Villiers to Auber, 24 Oct. 1832, IO E/2/37; Auber to Macaulay, 15 Dec. 1832,IO E/2/11; cd to ggic, 2 Jan. 1833, IO L/PS/6/245. 74. Sc to ggic, 14 Jan. 1833, IO L/PS/5/572. 75. Campbell to sc, 1 June 1833, IO Persia/49. 76. Memorandum by Willock, 6 March 1832, FO 60/32; Yapp 'Persian Mission,' p. 173. 202 THE STRUGGLE OVER THE PERSIAN MISSION

77. Campbell to sc, 4 Sept. 1832, IO Persia/47. 78. See Preston, 'Frustrated Great Gamesmanship,' passim. 79. See Alder, 'William Moorcroft,' p. 187. 80. Ingram, Great Game in Asia, pp. 300-1. 81. Palmerston to Fraser, 4 Dec. 1833, FO 60/33. 82. Memorandum by Backhouse, 27-8 Aug. 1834, with minute of Palmerston, 29 Aug. 1834, FO 60/35. 83. GicB to cd, 30 Dec. 1832, 11 Sept. 1832, IO L/PS/6/169. 84. Cd to gicB, 21 Aug. 1833, IO L/PS/6/414. 85. Clare to Bentinck, private, 8 July 1834, Portland MSS PwJf/777. 86. McNeill, pp. 174-7. 87. Ellis to Buckinghamshire, 22 Aug. 1814, IOL Film. MSS 764; 'Memorandum on the Extent of the British Mediation between Persia and Russia,' 28 March 1815, FO 60/10. 88. Memoranda by Ellis, 5 Oct., 5 and 19 Dec. 1826, FO 60/29. 89. Memoranda by Ellis, 21 April, 14 June 1832, IO Persia/48. 90. Memorandum by Ellis, 27 Jan. 1834; Ellis to Grant, 27 April 1834, IO L/PS/5/ 543. 91. E. Ingram, 'A Preview of the Great Game in Asia - II: The Proposal of an Alliance with Afghanistan,' Middle Eastern Studies, ix (1973), 164-5. 92. Ellenborough to sc, 20 Dec. 1834, IO E/2/38. 93. Ellis to Palmerston, private, 15 Jan. 1836, Broadlands MSS GC/EL/41. For details of the mission see J. A. Norris, Afghan War, pp. 65-91. 94. Sc to Campbell, 26 May 1834, IO L/PS/5/545. 95. Sc to ggic, 1 July 1835, IO L/PS/5/545. 96. For A. P. Thornton's essays on the Great Game in Asia see his For the File on Empire (London, 1968). Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

203 XII

THREE APPROACHES TO THE GREAT GAME IN ASIA

so Round about And round about And round and round about And round about And round about I go. A. A. Milne Now We are Six

The behaviour of Englishmen in the Middle East in the nineteenth century resembled a formation dance more complicated than the Circassian Circle. As Lord Curzon would explain it, the British walked round and round, regularly returning to their starting point having done nothing on the way.1 The best example of this was given by Curzon himself. At the end of the First World War, he and Lord Hardinge, another former viceroy of India, who had gone back to his previous job of permanent under-secretary for foreign affairs, tried to answer a question the British had been asking since 1798. Their choice of Batum as the forward base from which sea power could protect India cheaply and far away, made it the last in a series of proposed bases which had begun with the selection of the islands of Perim in the straits of Bab el-Mandab and Kharg in the Persian Gulf during the war of the Second Coalition.2 In the interval, the British Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 selection had ranged from Cyprus and Alexandretta in the eastern Mediterranean to Sukkur on the Indus. All of the possible choices turned out to be unsuitable for the same reason: they entangled Great Britain in local affairs in the Middle East instead of permitting the British to decide when and in what way they would intervene. The degree of Curzon's interest in the Middle East partly explains the failure of his career. Or so Hardinge, whose own reputation was EES THREE APPROACHES

irreversibly tarnished by the defeat of the Indian Army in Meso• potamia, may have concluded.3 To North Americans, mesmerized by the oil bubbling away beneath quarrelling Arabs, Persians, and Israelis, the Middle East is today an area of great interest. Few men who mattered in nineteenth century Great Britain found it of inter• est, and most of those who did, knew that it ought, if possible, to be ignored. The Straits, which forced themselves upon the attention of the British during the Ochakov Crisis in 1791, were to prove as great a nuisance as the Suez Canal. One strengthened Russia, the other France and, later on, Italy.4 By the end of the eighteenth century, British trade with the Middle East had vanished; the overland post had been started. Most Englishmen apparently interested in the area were merely trying to prevent the partition of Middle Eastern states, lest this should destroy either the European balance of power or the stability of British India. European attempts to assess the likely effects of the partition of Turkey on the balance of power are known as the Eastern Question: the attempts made by the British in the Middle East to isolate India from European politics are known as the Great Game in Asia. For Great Britain, being both a European and an Asiatic state, the two were indistinguishable. These two characteristics of the British in the Middle East point one towards two of the traps into which historians of British diplo• matic and imperial history often fall: choosing the second half of the Napoleonic Wars as a chronological dividing line - as if Great Britain burst into the congress of Vienna a fully industrialized state carrying no baggage — and dividing the Middle East geographically along a line running south from Tabriz through Baghdad to Suez. One cannot tell what the British were up to in Afghanistan and Persia without asking what they were up to at Constantinople and Cairo; the apparently sudden and novel British alarm after 1828 at the expansion of Russia in the Middle East turns out to be neither sudden nor novel, if one looks at the events of the late eighteenth Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 century; and any attempt to assess the influence of the possession of India upon the formulation of British foreign policy in the nineteenth century must take account of fears of France as well as of Russia. The importance of India to the British and the effect of its conquest upon Great Britain's relations with the Middle Eastern states have been examined recently in three scholarly, interesting, but, each in its own way, odd books by David Gillard, Malcolm Yapp, and Muriel Atkin.5 They have one feature in common: the alarm felt by the 205 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

British in the early nineteenth century at the expansion of Russia in the Middle East is dismissed as unimportant or unjustified by all of them. Gillard and Atkin assume that such Englishmen as were alarmed had no need to be; Yapp assumes that most of them were not as alarmed as they pretended. Both assumptions need to be questioned. Little sense can be made of the Great Game in Asia, unless one assumes both that many Englishmen were alarmed and that they had good reason to be. For a short time in the 1830s, they also thought that they had discovered an effective response. One way to illustrate this claim is to open Gillard's book in the middle and to read the second half first. Defeat in the Crimean War, followed by the apparently successful British use of force against Persia and China, changed the Russians' view of the world. Because, in Gillard's view, the British had demonstrated their military as well as economic superiority over every state in Asia, and because con• tinuing British expansion seemed the only reasonable prediction of the future, Russia set out to erect a barrier to the British stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific: a chain of buffer states or a neutral zone between the two Asiatic empires was no longer thought to offer security. At the same time, the Indian Mutiny seemed to give the Russians an opportunity to threaten the British by stirring up rebel• lion in India, thus straining the finances of its government. Plans for both defence and offence were, therefore, to be made as quickly as possible. 'A policy of restraint would risk missing, perhaps forever, the opportunity to turn the tables on the British in the next war.'6 The expansion of Russia across Central Asia was so successfully carried out that by the 1870s Bukhara and Khiva had been turned into Russian protectorates, while Afghanistan, which the Russians expected the British to control to a similar degree, remained an independent state. Although the Russians learnt during the congress of Berlin and the British learnt during the Penjdeh Crisis that each could defend itself against the other more effectively than it could

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 launch an offensive, without the aid of a European ally who was not likely to be found, the British, not the Russians, were left until the First World War in the increasingly weaker position in the Middle East. The denunciation of Younghusband in 1905 was due to worries about the Russian reaction to his agreement with Tibet; the entente over Persia in 1907 was seen by the Russians merely as a device for winning the struggle with Great Britain for economic domination over Persia, while reducing the risk of war. The British 206 THREE APPROACHES

were left trying to solve the apparently insoluble problem of where to find the troops and the money for the defence of India, should they ever be needed. Gillard's account of the reinterpretation by the Russians of their world, mirrors his account of the British thirty years earlier re• interpreting theirs. Both the duke of Wellington and Lord Ellen• borough after the treaty of Turkmanchay, and Palmerston after the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, were responding 'to an essentially new interpretation of unexpected events.'7 Oddly, however, whereas the Russians' alarm is seen to have been reasonable, apparently British alarm was less so. Why, one wonders ? Less than fifty years later, the predictions made in 1828 and 1829 by Sir George de Lacy Evans had come 'close to reality,' so successfully had the Russians advanced across Central Asia; and the treaty of Turkmanchay had turned Persia into a Russian protectorate resembling Khiva and Bukhara later in the century.8 If this was a fact, not merely a British percep• tion, British alarm at the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi is more readily comprehended. Such scepticism follows from the questionable assumption that Palmerston and his associates took it for granted that Russia had a grand design for the Middle East. An offensive throughout Asia was thought necessary to counter it and, according to Gillard, by 1840 the British had successfully launched one in Turkey, Afghanistan, and China. Malcolm Yapp will have none of this: no interest, no threat, no grand offensive. Two of the claims to be demonstrated by his magisterial study of British interests beyond the North-West Frontier of British India in the first half of the nineteenth century are that India never counted for much in the formulation of British foreign policy and that the defence of British India accordingly always took second place to Great Britain's European interests. In support of these claims, three proofs are offered: an account of the Anglo-Persian alliance, an account of the First Afghan War and its

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 consequences, the annexation of Sind and the Punjab, and an alter• native explanation of the government of India's receptiveness to forward policies. To discuss Yapp's claims is difficult owing to his insistence that nobody talking about British strategy in the early nineteenth century meant what he said. True enough — except that sometimes somebody did mean what he said and, at others, his private meaning differed from Yapp's version of it. The account of the Anglo-Persian alliance,

IDBI-H 207 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

first formalized in the treaties negotiated in 1801 by John Malcolm and given some substance in 1809 by the preliminary treaty of Tehran, is intended to show that nobody but the members of the British mission saw any need of Persia as a buffer against France during the Napoleonic Wars, nor any value later on in Persia as a buffer against Russia. The government of India preferred to focus its attention on the Persian Gulf; the British government was merely trying to create or to anticipate diversions in its fight against Napole• onic France. After 1814, both were determined to behave, as far as possible, as if the alliance no longer existed. Two groups, other than the members of the British mission, can be shown to have had an interest in Persia at different times between 1798 and 1838. Both while in India and while at the foreign office, Lord Wellesley and his disciples aimed at turning Persia into a protectorate, the frontier province of his expanding Indian Empire. The problem posed by Persia's enmity towards Russia was to be solved as Gillard describes the solution to the similar problem in Afghanistan in the 1880s. Persia's frontiers were to be established; the dynasty was to gain as much control over the tribes and the religious institution as was necessary for stability (but not order); and Great Britain was to supervize, if not conduct, Persia's foreign relations. The British found, however, that the only frontier accept• able to Russia was likely to leave Persia dependent on Russia rather than Great Britain, owing to Russia's ability to offer compensation in areas where the British stood in the way. A second group interested in Persia was the board of control (often more influential than Yapp allows) and the foreign office directed by Palmerston. Their aim was just what Yapp denies: to turn Persia into a buffer state, not an area in which Great Britain necessarily had any interest - Yapp may be right to discount the economic importance of trade - nor of any importance in itself, but an area where she displayed a determination and ability to prevent its dominance by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 anybody else. This seems to have been just as applicable at times to the policy of the government of Bombay. What else could have been meant by British supremacy in the Persian Gulf? The confusion stems partly from Yapp's unwillingness to distinguish between a buffer state and a protectorate. Although nobody but Wellesley contemplated a protectorate over Persia, the board of control di• verged from his method rather than his aim: to draw the boundaries

208 THREE APPROACHES

between two imperialist states far enough away from British India to keep down the cost of maintaining its stability. The reason why buffer states were thought to be needed is shown by Yapp's account of the origins and conduct of the First Afghan War. Responsibility for the invasion of Afghanistan is pinned firmly on the government of India, most firmly on the governor-general, Lord Auckland, not on the British government. Instructions from London setting out forward policies were ignored. The decision to invade Afghanistan, the form and extent of the occupation, Ellen- borough's symbolic demonstrations of wrath after the disastrous evacuation in 1841, and even the annexation of Sind, were all deter• mined by fear of trouble or bankruptcy in India or by the need to keep up the prestige of the army. As Palmerston would have put it, somebody had to be bashed up at regular intervals to remind every• body else that the British still had the knack. Yapp is quite right to stress the domestic determinants of Anglo-Indian foreign policy: the British had been assessing the significance of European influence in the Middle East according to its probable effects in India since the war of the American Rebellion. Yapp is equally wrong to conclude that this means the British had no fear of France and Russia and made no plans to counter them. Because the invasion of India was never a bugbear, as Atkin seems to think it was, need not mean that foreign fidgetting was not thought to be a menace. Much of the expansion of British India and most of the advocacy of forward policies is attributed by Yapp to the self-interest of officials striving to get ahead - John S. Galbraith's theory of the moving frontier turned upside down.9 One marvellous story is told of the progress north-westwards of the British frontier in India as each frontier agent tried to prove the strategic importance of his region, in the hope of gaining direct access to government and afterwards promotion. Delhi found itself passed by Ludhiana, Ludhiana by Kabul, Kabul challenged, this time unsuccessfully, by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Herat; each in turn piling up evidence seemingly difficult to contro• vert or controverted only by similar evidence from equally self- interested groups. Gillard's theory of the perception of threat is transformed by Yapp into a theory of the manufacture and vocabu• lary of threat. One of the attractions of this theory is in its identification of the true economic interest of the British in the Middle East in the early 209 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

nineteenth century. V.G. Kiernan and Ainslee Embree have criticized Yapp for underestimating the importance of economic interests. They make one wonder why so many imperial historians, particu• larly anybody eager to fly his Marxist colours, will insist that all forward policies must have been tailored to economic interests that were substantive, immediate, local, and concerned with trade or investment. Although Yapp does underestimate the political signifi• cance of the utilitarian and evangelical vision of trade with Central Asia, he conclusively proves that forward policies were meant to suit what we now take for granted to be the most important economic interests of any bureaucracy: career progress, salary raises, promo• tion, and pensions. These things are more important than trade to anybody who works for the board of trade, more important than investment to anybody who works for the treasury. If one wants to find a class interest one must look in the right places. The result of Yapp's theory is that anybody, like Wellington, Ellenborough, and Palmerston, who seemed to take a threat serious• ly is given short shrift, particularly if he was worried about the actions of the French. To find out why the British should have perceived themselves to be threatened by the expansion of Russia and why, indeed, they were threatened, one has only to read Atkin. This is not the subject of her book, nor the conclusion she herself draws from it. Owing to her assumption that the British were worried about a Russian invasion of India, she draws the opposite conclusion that the British were not threatened. Her book is a study principally of Russia's relations with Persia between the reign of Catherine II and the treaty of Gulistan; the treatment of the years between 1813 and 1828 is slight, the explanation of British interests in Persia unconvincing. The treatment of Catherine II and Paul, however, new and interesting in itself, also makes interesting com• parisons with the experience of the British in the Middle East. Russian ignorance of the Caucasus and Persia left Catherine II, like Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Auckland, at the mercy of self-interested groups, whose advocacy of forward policies was meant principally to promote their own gain. Second, both Catherine and Alexander I assumed, like British utili• tarians and evangelicals, that they stood for progress; that the stable government and security for property they were offering would be appreciated. They were as disappointed as the British by Persian contumely, although, given Catherine's failure to prevent the sack of Tiflis in 1795, they had no reason to be surprised by it. Third, the

210 THREE APPROACHES

ignorance of the Russians was exposed as clearly as British ignorance whenever decisions had to be carried out. Valerian Zubov was saved from disaster during his invasion of Persia in 1796 only because both the Turks and the Persians happened to be busy. Atkin's book is most useful for the help it gives in revising the traditional view of the character and achievements of Paul, an attempt begun in an earlier article.10 Her account of Paul's realistic assessment of Caucasian and Persian politics matches Hugh Rags- dale's recent account of Paul's rapprochement with Bonaparte and formation of the Second League of Armed Neutrality, which, between them, destroyed the Second Coalition.11 Paul is portrayed in both books as shrewd and farsighted; determined to demonstrate that stability in Europe, the Middle East, and India, would depend upon the accommodation of Russia. Otherwise Bonaparte's preten• sions in Europe, Fath Ali's in Persia, and Wellesley's in India, could never be realized. Paul failed, of course. In Europe, Bonaparte would not under• stand, and, in Asia, the Russians failed to win their war against Persia quickly and decisively enough. It is the treatment of the Russo- Persian war and, in particular, the various negotiations for peace, that makes Atkin's book so odd. The British, according to Atkin, need not have feared the expansion of Russia in the Middle East as long as the Russians proved incapable of subjugating the Caucasus. I, for one, am told off for having remarked that the Persian army was defeated every time it met the Russians in battle. Although I was glad to find myself echoed recently by J. B. Kelly,12 perhaps I should have remarked only that the Persians lost every war. For lose they did. Atkin attempts to show that the Persians need not have made the treaty of Gulistan, because the Russians were on the defensive and the Persians could, therefore, have carried on an irregular war as long as they liked and forced the British to pay for it. Despite this, the Persians, supposedly, were forced to make peace by the British

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 ambassador. From Atkin's account, it is impossible to tell who is supposed to have been in control of whom and why. However, one thing is clear: the Persians did not deserve the sympathy nor the Russians the abuse Atkin heaps upon them. Why the British should have worried about the expansion of Russia in the Middle East also emerges clearly from the confusion. Whether or not the Russians had won the war in the Caucasus, they were determined and proved able to set out the terms of peace.

211 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Similarly, whether or not the Arras and the Kura made a strategically effective frontier, and in Atkin's opinion they did not, they were thought to be one by the Russians. And the Russian advance to the two rivers was accompanied by, even if it did not itself lead to, a protectorate over Persia, exactly as had been predicted by, amongst others, that most unjustly neglected of Great Gamesmen, Sir Har• ford Jones. Here was an excellent example of the 'expansion [that] had become a habit of Muscovite statecraft' before the end of the eighteenth century, of which Atkin's reassessment of Paul sets out the ultimate goal.13 Catherine II, too, had hoped to create an Asiatic empire as an equivalent source of wealth and power to the empires of Great Britain, Spain, and France. As Gillard explains, that the con• solidation of this empire would one day lead to dominance over Turkey as well as Persia was taken for granted. The problem to be solved during the Great Game in Asia had, therefore, been set out before the Napoleonic Wars had even begun: how, by establishing limits to the expansion, or influence, of Russia and France in the Middle East, to make certain that the empire in Asia the British were creating did not turn into a wasting asset strategically before its economic potential could be fully realized. To return to the two claims made earlier. Both Gillard and Atkin place their work in the wrong chronological setting when they claim that British interest after 1828 in the expansion of Russia was some• thing new. Atkin's own account demonstrates why the British had begun as early as 1800 to fear that Russia would turn into an alternative enemy to France. If worry about how to safeguard British India from the repercussions of Russian expansion was not new, worry about the probable consequences of any European great power creating a sphere of influence in the Middle East had begun even earlier. According to the secretary of state for foreign affairs, writing shortly after the end of the war of the American Rebellion, the likely effects of French dominance over Egypt upon the British Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 possessions in India were so obvious as not to need repeating.14 In relation to British interests in the Middle East and British strategies for the defence of British India, the Napoleonic Wars were merely — as they often were - an interruption. In this case the interruption lasted sixteen years and was equivalent to the fourteen years between 1905 and 1919, when the British had to turn their attention away from their worldwide imperial interests to stand alongside, and later fight instead of, the ally who had been expected to maintain the

212 THREE APPROACHES

European balance of power on their behalf. The interruption began when George Canning took over at the foreign office in 1807. Save for the three years of normality between 1809 and 1812 while Wellesley was at the foreign office, the interruption lasted as long as the dominance of Canning and Lord Castlereagh. Attention was focussed throughout these years on attempts to destroy the Napole• onic Empire created at Tilsit and to legitimize as an alternative to it a balance of power among a group of states, all of which recognized the right of the others to exist. European states had not thought of balance of power in this way in the late eighteenth century, nor had the British then looked in this way at their world. The security of the British empire, particularly British India, had then been treated as just as important as events on the Continent. Wellington and Ellenborough were returning to the standard view, not taking a new view. Yapp's attack on this order of priorities is also not new: it fits neatly into the framework long ago established by Sir Charles Webster, H. W.V. Temperley, and R. W. Seton-Watson. Maybe, as long as attention is confined to Persia and Afghanistan, the framework can be made to seem a reasonable one for the first half of the nineteenth century. Turn to Turkey, however, and the argument will not stand up. To find out how important a part was played in the formulation of British foreign policy by the need to stabilize British India, the place to look at is Egypt, not Persia and Afghanistan. The argument equivalent to Yapp's, that Egypt was connected only to the workings of the European balance of power, will also not stand up. In British eyes, Mahomet Ali posed a threat to British India as well. He, too, knew this; which explains the pains he took trying to prove that he could help to defend it. India as well as Europe lay behind Great Britain's role in the Second Mahomet Ali Crisis, behind the army sent to Egypt in 1807, and, most clearly, behind the Egyptian Expedition of 1800—1801. On the first occasion when the British sent to Egypt Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 their only strategically disposable force, they had to desert their European allies and took the decision despite the written dissent of those members of the cabinet, including the foreign secretary, who argued that French control of Egypt did not affect the balance of power on the Continent. The defeat of the French army in Egypt was thought to be indispensable, however, if negotiations for peace were not to leave the British permanently threatened by the unrest and expense likely to follow from the control of Islamic empires, 213 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

apparently in decline, by another powerful European state.15 This is the point from which David Fromkin sensibly began his recent analysis of the Great Game.16 One difference to be found between the periods before and after the Napoleonic Wars is the degree of British self-confidence. The British in the 1830s resembled the Germans in the years leading up to and during the First World War; wondering how best to take advantage of a moment of assumed power to anticipate potentially threatening developments. The British plans for a zone of buffer states stretching from Turkestan to the Straits, behind which was to be constructed a chain of protectorates stretching from Afghanistan through the Persian Gulf to Baghdad, are not to be dismissed merely as bureaucratic busywork and self-promotion. Of course individuals tried to better themselves. The plans, however, have a significance beyond the careers of the authors of them. How, as Gillard asks, were the frontiers of Russia to be drawn, if Great Britain did not manage to draw them ? Perhaps Yapp makes choices that need not be made, were not supposed to be made in the early nineteenth century, and, when the British were fortunate, did not have to be made. Individuals in history represent more than themselves and ought to be expected to advance themselves as well as, and at the same time as, the state. Similarly, no choice need be made between European and Indian interests. Ideally, the British empire was stabilized partly by the maintenance of the European balance of power. In an emergency, both the empire and the balance of power could be defended by a fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, or by turning one of Great Britain's likely rivals against the other. Yapp is particularly hard on anybody responsible for India who worried about France, perhaps seeing Ellenborough as a madman and Wellington as an old buffer, past his best, still fighting Waterloo and prophesying Lord Raglan in the Crimea. But the British had a difficult choice to avoid in the years after the Napoleonic Wars. Who

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 in the 1830s was the greater threat, Russia behind the siege of Herat or France behind the invasion of Syria; Russia apparently scheming in Afghanistan or France apparently scheming in Arabia? Even Gillard, who recognizes the primary place of Turkey in Anglo- Russian rivalry, chooses Russia. So does G.J. Alder.17 In their opinion, Great Britain and Russia emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the two most formidable European powers, and Russia as the only state able to threaten Great Britain and which Great Britain

214 THREE APPROACHES

contemplated fighting. As good a case could be made for France. For much of the nineteenth century, France was the only state with a large population, resources, and funds. She was also willing to spend them. The British, who had the resources, were not often permitted to spend their money, and were embarrassingly short of deployable troops. In one sense Great Britain's relations with the Middle Eastern states were attempts to find a substitute for the lack of military power so clearly illustrated by Yapp in his account of the First Afghan War. The books under discussion here all deal with aspects of the Great Game in Asia. This phrase was invented by Arthur Conolly on his way to a nasty death in Bukhara, was taken up by Sir John Kaye, and was immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in Kim. What should it be permitted to mean ? It may not be used as both Fromkin and Gillard use it, to describe the history of Anglo-Russian rivalry throughout Asia, nor to describe Russo-Chinese antagonism, or anything to do with the United States. In Conolly's phrase, it was the British who had a great game to play, nobody else. According to Alder, such a definition would reduce the Great Game to 'a kind of patience, played alone.'18 Perhaps golf offers a better metaphor: one has an opponent, one can tell by the score whether one is beating him, but one does not play against him directly. Conolly's Great Game was a dream, one of the many dreamt by Englishmen in the 1830s and 1840s, of the Middle East transformed, partly by the superior and more humanitarian values built into British goods. Elie Kedourie long ago described Stratford Canning's similar vision of Turkey.19 Yapp separates humanitarianism from strategy and strategy from trade. Such choices are unnecessary. For the British, the three went hand in hand: trade, for example, was expected to bring with it both progress and safety. Conolly's game was played between 1830 and 1842, and depended upon replacing Great Britain's former protectorate over

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Persia with a protectorate over Afghanistan. The British would still need a connection with Persia but the Persian Connection, the result of the treaty of Tehran, would be abandoned. Yapp's careful account of the First Afghan War is designed to show that it had no connection with the Great Game in Asia defined in this way. Owing to Yapp's exaggerated emphasis upon the domestic determinants of Anglo- Indian foreign and frontier policy, he will also not accept the other useful definition of the Great Game. The British did not, in his

IDBI-H* 215 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

opinion, spend the first half of the nineteenth century trying to isolate India from the repercussions of events in Europe or the actions in the Middle East of other European states. John Duthie recently argued that sense could be made of British activities in the Middle East, only by seeing them as part of a larger 'Russian' question.20 This echo of Gillard was taken further by Gordon Martel, who showed that the defence of India was merely one of the many aspects of 'world policy.'21 Although both writers describe a later period, they challenge Yapp's most questionable assumption, that Indian affairs can be explained solely from discussions about India. The argument about the nature and extent of British interests in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and of the proper defini• tion of the Great Game in Asia will, I hope, continue to go round and round. One of the pleasant consequences of the recent Persian Revolution and of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan has been their challenge to Arab and Israeli demands for attention. The Great Game in Asia has just as great a significance for contemporary international politics as the partition of Turkey and the origins of the Six Weeks War, and deserves more careful explanation than has yet been given to it. More to the point, it is a bizarre and interesting subject in itself. It will keep me happily employed for many years to come.

NOTES

1. G.N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (London, 1892), ii. 605. 2. J.D. Rose, 'Batum as Domino,' pp. 266-87. 3. M.L. Dockrill and Zara Steiner, The Foreign Office at the Paris Peace Con• ference in 1919,' International History Review, ii (1980), 55-8; Briton Busch, Hardinge of Penshurst: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (New York, 1980), pp. 265-74.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 4. R. Quatararo, imperial Defence in the Mediterranean on the Eve of the Ethio• pian Crisis (July-October 1935),' Historical Journal, xx (1977), 185-220. 5. D. Gillard, The Struggle for Asia (London, 1977), recently reissued in paperback; M.E. Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798- 1850 (Oxford, 1980); M. Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780-1828 (Minneapolis, 1980). 6. Gillard, Struggle for Asia, p. 112. 7. Ibid., p. 126. 8. Ibid., pp. 130-1, 183. 9. John S. Galbraith, The "Turbulent Frontier" as a Factor in British Expansion,'

216 THREE APPROACHES

Comparative Studies in Society and History, ii (1959-60), 150-68. 10. M. A. Atkin, 'The Pragmatic Diplomacy of Paul I: Russia's Relations with Asia, 1796-1801,' Slavic Review, xxxviii (1979), 60-74. 11. H. Ragsdale, Detente in the Napoleonic Era: Bonaparte and the Russians (Lawrence, Kansas, 1980). 12. J.B. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf, and the West (London, 1980), p. 300. 13. Atkin, Russia and Iran, p. 22. 14. Carmarthen to Ainslie, 10 and 19 May 1785, FO 78/6. 15. Ingram, Commitment to Empire, pp.379-88. 16. D. Fromkin, The Great Game in Asia,' Foreign Affairs, lvii (1980), 936-51. 17. G.J. Alder, 'Big Game Hunting in Central Asia,' journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, ix (1980-1), 327. 18. Ibid., p.319. 19. E. Kedourie, England and the Middle East: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire (reprinted Hassocks, Sussex, 1977). 20. J. L. Duthie, 'Some Further Insights into the Working of Mid-Victorian Imperial• ism: Lord Salisbury and Anglo-Afghan Relations, 1874-1876,' Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, viii (1979-80), 181. 21. Martel, 'Documenting the Great Game,' p. 289. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

217 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Confined to collections and works cited in the Notes)

Manuscript Sources

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218 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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219 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

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220 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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221 Printed Sources

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231 INDEX

Aberdeen, earl of, 43,172,184,190 Bentinck, Lord William, 7,91,179, AboukirBay, 69,76-7 182,184,190-1,192,194-5 Addington, Henry, 104,105,120,169 Black Sea, 16,40,166,180 Aden, 14,88 Blankett, Admiral John, 37-9,41,154 Adrianople, treaty of (1829), 11,87, Bonaparte, Napoleon, 3,43,68,69, 172 110,211; and India, 2,49,108, Afghanistan, 13,89,127,138,152, 117,154-5,163; and invasion of 153,155,156-7,163,184,205, Egypt, 9,32,70,72; see also 206,207,208,213,214,215,216; France Elphinstone mission (1809), Bukhara, 7,12,13,14,155,158,199, 130-49,167-8; First Afghan War, 206,207 7,10,14,15,63,207,209,215; merits of as British ally, 16-17,78, Campbell, Sir John, 185,186,187, 166-8,170,173,180,181,196, 188,189-90,191-4,195,196-7, 199; Second Afghan War, 16; Shah 200 Shuja (1809), 131,140-9,160, Canning, George, 104,106,132,133, 168; (1830s/40s) 14,15; treatiesof 153,166,171,181,185,186,190, Tehran (1801), 97-8; Zeman Shah 198,213 (1798-1801), 80,81-2,84-6,91- Cape of Good Hope, 10,59, 111, 112, 2,93,96,98-9,161,166-7; see 117,134 also Herat Castlereagh, Viscount, 103,104,106, Ainslie, Sir Robert, 26,30 108,109,156,166,171,172,173, Arabia, 20-2,23,39,74,88,90,170; 186,198,213 see also Mecca, sherif of; Oman Catherine II, 33,36,92,166,210, Army, Indian, 4-5,10,29,48-63,169- 212; see also Russia 70,180-1,183-4 Caucasus, the, 11,13,18,85,91,93, Atkin, Muriel, Russia and Iran, 99,131,158-9,166,169,172, 1780-1828,205-6,209,210,211- 173,183,210,211 12 Coalition, First, 34,35,36,37,39,41, Austria, 3,4,9,27,71,76,106,107, 107 109,110,112,113,117,156 Coalition, Second, 3,9,10,34,35,51, 67-77,78,83,91,92,98,105, Baghdad, 12,13,22-4,28,36,85,87, 107,109,146,204,211 90,92,93-4,134,160-1,163-4, Coalition, Third, 1,68,103,105,106, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 168,170,171,181,191 108,110,117,131,132,162,169, Baldwin, George, 21,25-6,28-9,30- 186 5,37,39,42 Congress System, 103,166,171,183 Bandar Abbas, 118,120,121-3,124, Conolly, Arthur, 215 128,134 Cornwallis, Earl, 30-1,34,51,56-7, Barlow, Sir George, 133,134,135, 58,60,62,63,105,133 162 Crimean War, 9,10,16,17,30,33, Batavia, 59-60,73,118,120,123,128 162,180,206 Batum, 12,18,204 Curzon, Lord, 18,204

232 INDEX

Dardanelles Expedition (1807), 10, 213-14; and India, 2,27-8,30-1, 117,162-3 35-6,42-3,49,55-6,60,73,78, Declaratory Act (1788), 32,35,61, 89,90,92,108,154-5,156-7,159- 62,63 60,163,167,173,205,209,212; el-Dhahab,Abu,22,24 and Oman, 28,35,36,82-3; and Dundas, Henry (Viscount Melville), Persia, 28,36,93,95,97,98,153, 27-43,48,51,52-3,55-63,81,91, 163,208; and Russia, 30,75-6, 92,93,94,104,105,130,132, 162,165; and strait of Hormuz, 148-9,154-5,159-60,166-7, 117-28 passim; and Syria, 42,81, 168-9,185 92,214

East India Company, 39,40,41,42, Gardane, General, 54,131,132,134, 120,154,182; and Afghanistan, 156,159 132-3,167; and Indian Army, 48- George III, 94,104,105,147 63; and Middle East, 20-1,41,83, Georgia, 84,85,89,93-4,99 126,168,170; and Lord Minto, Germany, 1,6,17,18,43,71,75,107, 136-7,145; and missionaries, 133; 110,113,171,172,179,214 and Persia, 41,82,96,97,98,187- Gillard, David, The Struggle for Asia, 8,191-2,194,195,197; and 205-7,208,209,212,214,215, Persian Gulf, 24,87,89,158; and 216 private trade, 22,41,170; see also Grant, Charles, 133,136-7,162,172, Baldwin, George 192 East Indies, see Batavia; Manila Grenville, Lord, 33-4,35,36,37,42, Egypt, 12,15,23,199,213-14; British 81,103,104,105,107,108,109, expeditions to (1800-1801) 146,155-6,159,169-70 59-60,76-7,160; (1807) 163,213; Gulistan, treaty of (1813), 166,172, and France, 26-93 passim, 49,73, 211 111,213-14; and French invasion (1798), 2,9-10,32,36-7,42,69- Hardinge, Lord, 18,204-5 73, 70,108,154; and trade, 21-7, Harrowby, earl of, 104,105,106 29,32-3,35,37-9 Hastings, Warren, 21,22,24,26,27, Ellenborough, Lord, 5,7,11,43,91, 29,30,31,32,39,41 153,157,184,187-8,189-92, Hejaz, the, see Arabia 195,207,209,213 Herat, 14,81-2,92,164,167,173, Ellis, Sir Henry, 11,79,173,192,198- 187,193,198,199,214 200 Holland, 33,71,75,107,108,109, Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 130-1, 112-13 132,135,139-49,167,168,182, Hormuz, strait of, 117-28,135,154 191 Hyderabad, 58,80,82

Ferrier, Captain John, 123-7 Ibrahim Bey, 32,35,36 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Finkenstein, treaty of (1807), 131,163 India Act (1784), 30 France-and Afghanistan, 130-48 Islam, 9,41-2 passim; and balance of power in Italy, 71,107,108,109,110,112, Europe, 8-10,33-4,106-7, 113,205 109-13,117,212-13;and Egypt, 9-10,26-39 passim, 49,59,73,76- Jones, Sir Harford, 78-9,81,87-8,90, 7, 89,111,213-14 and invasion 91,92,94,135,136,147,149, (1798), 2,9-10,32,36-7,42,69- 158,164-5,166-7,168,169,181, 73,70,108,154,169,170,212, 184,185,186,199-200,212

233 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

Kabul, see Afghanistan 141,142-3,144,145-6,147,148, Kajar dynasty of Persia, 78,79,82,86, 159,160,161,167,168,199 87,89,90,91-2,93-4,95,97,99, Mirza, Abbas, 186-7,189,193,195 164,183,188,198 missionaries in India, 133,157 Kaye, Sir John, 80,181-2,215 Mulgrave, Lord, 103-10 el-Kebir,AHBey,21-2,24 Mulgrave's letter to Pitt (1804), 103- Kharg, 88,89,90,92,96,122,142, 14 164,204 ul-Mulk, Shah Shuja-, see Shuja-ul- Khiva, 12,14,187,193,195,199, Mulk, Shah 206,207 Munchengratz, treaties of (1833), 9 Khorasan, 36,82,84,85,86,91-2, Murad Bey, 32,35,36 96,97,98-9,193,194 Muscat, see Oman Kishm, 14,88,90,92,94,96,121, Mutiny, the Indian, 157,206 122,126,136 Mysore, 31, 37,51,55,57,59,79, 80,81 Lahore, see Punjab, the League of Armed Neutrality, Second, Napoleon, see Bonaparte, Napoleon 69,75,211 Napoleonic Wars, 3,4,5-6, 9,28,68, Levant Company, 20,21,24,26, 74,117,152,153,159,168,172, 40-1 188,205,208,212,214 Lytton, Lord, 136,140 Navy, the Royal, see sea power, British Macdonald, Sir John, 184, 185, 186- Nelson, Horatio, 68, 69, 70, 72,77 7,188-9,190,194 Netherlands, Austrian, 107,109, McNeill, Dr John, 186-7, 189, 193, 112,113 197-8,199-200; The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the Ochakov Affair, 33,166,205 East, 198 Oman, 28, 35,36, 82-4, 85,121, Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 2-3, 67,69, 126,161,170 73, 90,163 Ottoman Empire, see Turkey Mahomet Ali, 10, 79,198,213 Oudh, 49, 62, 80, 81, 82, 84, 96,98, Malcolm, Sir John, 53-4, 78-98 161,167 passim, 125-7,131,134,135-7, Ouseley, Sir Gore, 93,165,166,172 148,159,163,165-6,167,168, 169,181-200 passim, 207-8 Palmerston, Viscount, 11, 20, 29, 79, Malta, 37, 72, 73-4, 76,108, 111, 156,157,162,164,171,172, 112 197,198,207,208,209,210 Manila, 73,118,128 Paul 1,211,212 Maratha Confederacy, 1, 8, 31,59, Pellew, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward, 80, 99,122,162,182 118-20,122-3,124-5,126,127,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 Mauritius, 59-60, 73,118,120,122, 128 123,134,135 Perim, 74, 90, 204 Mecca, sherif of, 25, 26, 38-9,170 Persia, 9,11,12-14,13,15,17,18, Melville, Viscount, see Dundas, 24,28,36,41,48,53,54,130-73 Henry passim, 205-16 passim; mission to Metcalfe, Sir Charles, 91,141,182-3, (1799-1801), 78-99,85; struggle 184,190 over Mission in (1828-1835), Minorca, 72, 73,108 179-200; see also Herat; Hormuz, Minto, Lord, 53-4,120,123,124, strait of 125-6,127,133-5,136,137-40, Pitt the Younger, William, 29, 33,34,

234 INDEX

42,61,62,81,103-5,106,107, Syria, 11,12,42,81,92, 97,122, 108,109,110,146 155,159,199,214 Poland, 8-9,18, 33, 76,124,131, 132,134,159,162 Tehran, treaties of, 93, 95-9,186, Prussia, 3, 33, 75,106,107-8,109, 198,207-8,215 110,112-13 Tilsit, treaty of (1807), 9,11,131, Punjab, the, 14, 84, 86,127,131, 163,213 137-43 passim, 138,148-9,152, trade, 8,11,12,14,20-43, 67,71, 160,163,167-8,173,179-80, 73,74-5, 82-3, 87-90, 93, 96, 183,184,199,207 126-7,128,145,157-9,163,170, 210,215 Ranjit Singh, 14,140,141,142,144, Turkestan, 15,16,43, 153,157,158, 149,167,183; see also Punjab, 199 the Turkey-its army, 49, 81, 159-60; its Roberts, Lord, 17,159,162,179 Asiatic provinces, 168; and Black Russia, 1,2,3, 9,11-12,15-18,24, Sea trade, 40; as British ally, 86, 27, 33,36, 40,41,69, 75-6,84, 148,152,162-3,165, 166; as 88-99 passim, 131,132,152-216 buffer state, 12,16; Consulate at passim-, and Anglo-Russian Trebizond, 157; and Egyptian negotiations (1804-1805), 106, trade, 24-6, 27,30, 32,35; and 108,109; and strait of Hormuz, France, 9, 24, 30, 162-3; partition 118,125 of, 9,18,28, 205,216; and Persia, 139; and Russia, 9,11,16, 24,32, Salisbury, Lord, 93,164 92, 212; see also Ochakov Affair; Sardinia, 107,108,112,113 Unkiar Skelessi, treaty of sea power, British, 2-3,4, 8,10-11, Turkmanchay, treaty of (1828), 11, 12,15,18,34, 67-77, 90,109, 12,17, 91,153,157-8,172,183, 117-28,153,162-3,165,196, 186,187,198,207 199,204 Shee, Captain Benjamin, 185,193-4, Unkiar Skelessi, treaty of, 16,196, 195 207 Shore, Sir John, 53, 55, 57, 58,161, 162,167 Vorontsov, Count Simon, dispatch to Shuja-ul-Mulk, Shah, 14,15,131, (1805), 103,106-10 140,141,142,143,145,146-7, 149,160,168; see also Wellesley, Arthur, see Wellington, Afghanistan duke of Sikhs, see Punjab, the Wellesley, Richard, Marquis - and Simonitch, Count, 157,194,197 the French, 42, 49, 58, 93, 97, 98, Sind, 14-15, 28, 80, 84,122,126-7, 132, 161, 167; and Indian Army,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016 131,137-9,138,142,143,144, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58-60, 61; opposed 145,146,167,173,199,207,209 to blockade of Jedda, 41-2; and Sindhia, 49, 50, 53, 80 Persia, 43, 78-99 passim, 130, Smith, Sir Sidney, 37, 40, 81,122 158-9, 167, 171, 208; recalled to Spain, 11, 33, 37, 71, 72, 73,145, England (1805), 104; see also 168 Malcolm, Sir John Suez Canal, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26,154, Wellington, duke of, 11, 53,133, 205 153,162,184,188,192,207, Swift, Jonathan, Upon the Conduct of 210,213,214 the Allies, 152,160,183 Willock, George, 185,188,189,192,

235 IN DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA

193 Yapp, Malcolm, Strategies of British Willock, Sir Henry, 181, 185-93, India: Britain, Iran and 195-6,200 Afghanistan 1798-1850,5,205- Wolseley, Lord, 17,159,162,179, 6,207-10,213,214,215-16 180,187 Zand dynasty of Persia, 79, 87,93, World War, First, 17, 68, 69,76, 94,97,164 152-3,214 Zeman Shah, 80, 81-2, 84, 86, 91,93, World War, Second, 76,152 98-9,161,167 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:19 19 May 2016

236