The Makings of Modern Afghanistan (review)

The book under review examines the evolution of the Afghan state in reaction to Britain’s imperial presence in South Asia during the first half of the 19^th century. It looks at the pressures shaping British strategic policies beyond its northwestern frontier. The British East India Company, founded in 1600 with a charter from Queen Elizabeth I, obtained a monopoly of trade with limited authority to make laws and punish interlopers. By the middle of the 18^th century, the Company was the de facto ruler of Bengal, and slowly expanded its control over northern India, impinging by the time period of this study on the territories of the Sikh state of Ranjit Singh.

The author debunks the importance of the “Great Game” in Central Asia — the rivalry between Britain and Russia — and maintains that Company policy was primarily about containing the emerging Sikh state. Ranjit Singh was to be prevented from eastward and westward expansion, leaving only the north and confrontation with the Afghans.

The first chapter outlines the Company understandings and misunderstandings of the Afghans, which the author calls the “Elphinstonian episteme” (the data provided by Mountstuart Elphinstone during his mission to the court of Shah Shuja in 1808–1809). The second chapter argues that “while the ‘Game’ certainly Fdid exist with a real physical manifestation in the late nineteenth century, for the early nineteenth century it was little more than a paper chase” (p. 165), and the Russian threat was restricted to the imagination of the British “official mind.” The third chapter examines the nature of Anglo-Sikh relations and their effect on British actions toward Afghanistan. The fourth chapter outlines the “internal fractions,” the mutual contradictions of tribe, Islam, and royalism. The author maintains that “their interactions only served to exacerbate the contradictions of the Afghan socio-political universe” (p. 166). Chapters Five and Six examine the breakdown of the Afghan political economy from a transit economy of merchant traders to the need of Afghan rulers to rely upon tax receipts and forced urbanization. He maintains that the decline and eclipse of the Afghan model economy, with its consequences for the political evolution of Afghan political authority provide a case study for other frontier areas on the margin of the emerging global order, which have been marginalized by circumstances. The payment of a regular subsidy by Britain turned the Durrani state into a fiscal colony.

The author draws heavily on archival sources from the India Office Records, the British Library, and Public Records Office in London, as well as the National Archives of India in New Delhi, India, and the Punjab Provincial Archives in Lahore, Pakistan. The four early 19^th century maps by John Macartney, J.G. Gerald, and Alexander Burnes are mainly of ornamental value. Those by Macartney are illegible.

The reader who may expect a history of “The Making of Modern Afghanistan” may be disappointed, since the study examines only a short period of Afghan history. The book originated as a doctoral dissertation for the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. It is highly theoretical and of special interest primarily for scholars of British Empire relations and their impact on the development of the Afghan political economy in the early 19^th century.

In addition to copious annotations, the author provides a glossary of foreign terms, a bibliography of unpublished sources and contemporary published works, and concludes with a ten-page index. Because of its narrow focus and theoretical character, the work will be of interest primarily to the historian of early East India Company relations.