Second Anglo-Afghan War
Battle of Kandahar
| date | 1878 to 1880 |
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| place | Afghanistan |
| output | Treaty of Gandamak |
| consequences | British withdrawal from Afghanistan
Afghan foreign policy now under British influence |
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The Second Anglo-Afghan War ( English Second (Anglo) Afghan War ) from 1878 to 1880 was one of three military interventions by the British Empire in Afghanistan between 1839 and 1919, the Anglo-Afghan Wars . The aim of these wars was to secure British supremacy in this area and to put a stop to the expansionist efforts of the Russian Empire . The Anglo-Russian competition in this region is also known as The Great Game .
background
The conflict between Russia and Great Britain had led to the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839–1842 . In 1852 the situation worsened again with a wave of Russian expansion in Central Asia and the submission of the Kokand Khanate . The Emir of Bukhara was the next target of the Russians from 1866 to 1868. Samarkand fell on May 13, 1868 . The General Government of Turkestan was created in the neighborhood of Afghanistan.
After the death of Dost Mohammed , the opponent of the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War, his son Shir Ali Khan was his successor. But after only three years he was ousted by his older brother Mohammed Afzal Khan . In 1868, Shir Ali was able to regain the title of emirate. In July 1878, to the annoyance of the British, he allowed Russia to set up an embassy in Kabul . The Viceroy of India Lord Lytton protested and in September instructed General Neville Chamberlain to also secure the right of representation in Kabul. However, its mission was intercepted by the Afghans and forced to turn back.
course
The British marched into Afghanistan on November 21, 1878 with three columns. Due to the bad experiences in the First Anglo-Afghan War, strong forces of the British-Indian Army and the British Army were brought together. The largest column, the Peshawar Valley Field Force , consisting of two divisions with a total of 16,000 men, under Lieutenant General Samuel Browne , marched over the Chaiber Pass and won the battle of Ali Masjid . The second column under Lieutenant General Donald Stewart, 1st Baronet , the Kandahar Field Force, marched with 13,000 men over the Bolan Pass . The smallest column was the Kurram Valley Force under Frederick Roberts . The three columns occupied a large part of the country.
Shir Ali fled to Russia, which he hoped would support him, but died in Mazar-e Sharif in February of the following year . He was succeeded by Mohammed Yakub . He signed the Gandamak Treaty in May 1879 . This granted the British not only the right of residence in Kabul and other cities, but also gave them control over Afghanistan's foreign policy. On the British side, the treaty was signed by Louis Cavagnari . He entered Kabul on July 24, 1879 with an escort of 89 armed men as British envoy. On September 3, 1879, Cavagnari and his entire staff were murdered by insurgent Afghans.
This began the second phase of the war. In this first the British under General Frederick Roberts occupied Kabul on October 9, where they were besieged in December. On July 22, 1880, Roberts appointed Abdur Rahman , son of Dost's eldest son, Mohammed Afzul Khan, as the new emir. Another son of Shir Ali, Mohammed Ayub Khan , who had stayed at Herat in the west of the country , defeated a British army in the bloody battle of Maiwand in July 1880 , but was defeated on September 1 after he had besieged the survivors in Kandahar , defeated by Roberts' forces at the Battle of Kandahar .
consequences
On September 1, 1880, Abdur Rahman Khan became the new Emir of Afghanistan. Mohammed Ayub Khan went into exile in Persia and later to India , where he died in 1914. Abdur Rahman Khan had to hand over control of Afghan foreign policy to the British. Abdur Rahman Khan received annual financial support for this. The new British government under William Ewart Gladstone , elected in April 1880, was satisfied with what had been achieved, partly because of the high costs of the occupation, and in 1881 decided to withdraw the troops. With the Durand Line in 1893, Great Britain succeeded in delimiting its colonial possessions in India from Afghanistan. The line was named after the then foreign minister of the Indian administration, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand , and was decided under British pressure by mutual agreement for 100 years from 1893 to 1993. The demarcation line was deliberately laid through the Pashtun settlement areas in order to make Afghanistan a buffer zone and thus better control the Afghans. About a third of Afghanistan was annexed by the British. These tribal areas are now in Pakistan.
literature
- Philip J. Haythornthwaite: The Colonial Wars Source Book. Arms and Armor, London 1997, ISBN 1-85409-436-X .
- Thomas Barfield: Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-14568-6 , p. 146 ( preview in Google Book Search).
- John Duncan, John Walton: Heroes for Victoria 1837-1901. Queen Victoria's Fighting Forces. Spellmount, Speldhurst 1991, ISBN 0-946771-38-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl J. Schmidt: An Atlas and Survey of South Asian History . M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N. Y./London 1995, ISBN 1-56324-333-4 , pp. 74 ( Scan - Internet Archive - limited preview).
- ↑ a b L. W. Adamec, JA Norris: Anglo-Afghan Wars . In: Encyclopædia Iranica . Vol. II, Fasc. 1, December 15, 1985, here: J. A. Norris: ii. Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80) , p. 37–41 (English, iranicaonline.org [accessed on May 25, 2020], last updated on August 3, 2011).
- ^ A b Thomas Barfield: Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-14568-6 , p. 146 ( preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Martin Kay: Understanding Holocausts . How, Why and When They Occur. iUniverse, 2002, p. 84 (English, preview in the Google book search [accessed on August 22, 2010] also and d. T .: Understanding Holocausts: How, Why and When They Occur. Bad Posturee ).
- ↑ Masato Toriya: Afghanistan as a buffer state between Regional Powers in the Late Nineteenth Century . An Analysis of Internal Politics Focusing on the Local Actors and the British Policy. In: Cross Disciplinary Studies . No. 5 . Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University , Sapporo 2015, p. 49–61 , p. 49 (English, hokudai.ac.jp [PDF; 301 kB ; accessed on May 25, 2020]).