Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India: Vol. III: Baluchistan and the First Afghan War

Baluchistan today lies in Pakistan with Afghanistan to the north, Iran to the west, India the east and the Arabian Sea on the south. The two main cities are Quetta up on the Afghan frontier, and Karachi the port on the Arabian sea. This volume, however, begins with an introduction to the Baluchistan of some three hundred years ago, describing its geography, its peoples (tribes) and early history including the acquisition by the British of a territory considerably larger than the British Isles. The narrative then takes us through the history of the country and it s relations with the British, mainly actions by hostile tribes and our reacting to them by sending punitive expeditions to deal with them. An example of one of these was the Zhob Valley Expedition of 1884 on which we sent a mixed force of artillery, cavalry and infantry amounting to some 5,000 men. The second half of the book is taken up with an account of the First Afghan War which ran from 1838 to 1842, largely, if not entirely the fault of the Governor General (the title later was changed to Viceroy) Lord Auckland who decided to replace the ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed with a puppet king. Shah Shuja, which led to a large scale British invasion of the country. The British met with disaster in which some 4000 soldiers and 12,000 followers perished, only one man escaping, Dr Brydon. There is a well-known painting by Lady Butler of Brydon arriving at the garrison of Jalalabad, an exhausted survivor.