LORD MAYO'S FOREIGN POLICY
When Lord Mayo entered on his Viceroyalty, three Asiatic States were
in disorder beyond the North-Western Frontier, and two great Powers
were stealthily but steadily advancing towards India through those
disordered States. On the Punjab Frontier, Afghanistan had just
emerged from six years of anarchy; and Russia was casting hungry eyes
on Afghanistan as a line of approach to India. On the Sind Frontier,
Baluchistan was the scene of a chronic struggle between the ruling
power and the tribal Chiefs; while Persia was taking advantage of
that struggle to encroach upon the Western Provinces of Baluchistan.
In the far north, beyond Kashmir, the new Muhammadan State of Eastern
Turkestan had erected itself on a ruined fragment of the Chinese
Empire, and was looking eagerly out for recognition on the one side
to Russia, and on the other side to the British Government of India.
Lord Mayo's foreign policy was therefore of necessity a Central Asian
policy. Its immediate object was {120} to create out of the
disordered territories of Afghanistan and Baluchistan two friendly
powers, who should have not only the desire to be our friends, but
also the strength which might make their friendship worth having. Its
ulterior design was, by thus erecting a breakwater of faithful States
around the North-Western Frontier of India, to counterbalance the
ominous preponderance which Russia had lately acquired in Central
Asia. Its result has been, as I mentioned in my opening chapter, to
supply the necessary complement to the change inaugurated by
Dalhousie; and to remove the relations of Russia and England in the
East from the arena of Asiatic intrigue to the jurisdiction of
European diplomacy.
During the seven years preceding Lord Mayo's arrival, the British
policy towards Afghanistan had been subjected to an increasing
strain, and a few months before his arrival that policy had
manifestly broken down. Our relations with Afghanistan continued
nominally on the basis laid down by Mr. [afterwards Lord] Lawrence
and Major Lumsden in 1858. Its cardinal principle was, in Major
Lumsden's words, 'to have as little to say to Afghanistan as
possible, beyond maintaining friendly and intimate intercourse with
the _de facto_ Government.' But in 1863, on the death of the powerful
Afghan ruler, Dost Muhammad, the _de facto_ Government of Afghanistan
disappeared. A war of succession followed among the sons and nephews
of the late Amir. Sher Ali, the rightful successor, was for a time
driven out {121} of the field by his brother Afzul Khan, in 1866.
Instead, therefore, of a single _de facto_ Government in
Afghanistan--such as existed in 1858--there were at least two Rulers,
each of whom claimed to be the Sovereign Power.
Lord Lawrence still endeavoured to maintain our relations with that
country upon the basis laid down in 1858. Both the claimants to the
succession asked for the recognition of the British Government. Lord
Lawrence expressed his willingness to recognise either of them who
should succeed in establishing a _de facto_ Government. 'My friend,'
he wrote to Afzul Khan, when he had obtained a footing in Kabul, 'the
relations of this Government are with the actual Rulers of
Afghanistan. If your Highness is able to consolidate your power in
Kabul, and is sincerely desirous of being a friend and ally of the
British Government, I shall be ready to accept your Highness as
such.'
The Afghans retorted that this policy was a direct premium upon
successful revolt, and tended to render the establishment of any
stable government in Afghanistan impossible. It amounted, in their
view, to a declaration that the British Government, while anxious to
obtain the support of the Afghan Ruler, was willing to turn against
that Ruler the moment that a rebel made head against him, and to
transfer its friendship to the rebel Chief. 'It is difficult,' said
the indignant Afghans, 'for any nation to get on with the English.
The meaning of this letter would {122} appear to be that the English
desire that our family shall exterminate one another.... Without
doubt they will have written the same to Sher Ali.'
Lord Lawrence did not shrink from accepting this situation. As a
matter of fact, he was not only willing to recognise any successful
claimant to the sovereignty of Afghanistan; he was also willing to
extend that recognition to even a partially successful claimant, to
the extent which such a claimant might have succeeded in dismembering
the country. 'So long,' Lord Lawrence distinctly declared to Afzul
Khan, 'as Amir Sher Ali holds Herat and maintains friendship with the
British Government, I shall recognise him as Ruler of Herat, and
shall reciprocate his amity. But, upon the same principle, I am
prepared to recognise your Highness as Amir of Kabul and Kandahar,
and I frankly offer your Highness in that capacity the peace and
goodwill of the British Government.'
This policy, instead of making allies of the two claimants, excited
the wrath of both. Sher Ali, on hearing of the above declaration,
exclaimed, 'The English look to nothing but their own interests, and
bide their time. Whosoever's side they see the strongest for the
time, they turn to him as their friend. I will not waste precious
life in entertaining false hopes from the English, and will enter
into friendship with other Governments.'
There was another Government which was only too happy to accept the
friendship thus offered. If {123} Russia could intervene as the ally
of Afghanistan, and consolidate a sovereign power in that State, she
would not only pose as the arbiter of Central Asia, but would also
establish a commanding influence on the very frontier of India. Lord
Lawrence, before he left India, recognised this fact. In the summer
of 1868, Sher Ali, by a desperate effort, regained the throne, and
entered Kabul in triumph. In September, 1868, he finally drove his
rival claimants out of the country. Meanwhile Sir Henry Rawlinson had
penned in England his memorable Minute of the 20th July, 1868. 'The
fortunes of Sher Ali are again in the ascendant,' he wrote. 'He
should be secured in our interests without delay. Provided he is
unentangled with Russia, the restoration of his father's subsidy, and
the moral support of the British Indian Government, would probably be
sufficient to place him above all opposition, and to secure his
fidelity; and it may indeed be necessary to furnish him with arms and
officers, or even to place an auxiliary contingent at his disposal.'
During the last four months of his rule, Lord Lawrence pondered
deeply over these words. On the 4th of January, 1869, he sent a
Despatch to the Secretary of State, which may fitly be regarded as
the political testament of the wearied Viceroy. 'We think that
endeavours might be made to come to a clear understanding with the
Court of St. Petersburg as to its projects and designs in Central
Asia, and that it might be given to understand in firm, but {124}
courteous language, that it cannot be permitted to interfere in the
affairs of Afghanistan or in those of any State which lies contiguous
to our frontier.' 'Then we think that our relations to the Court of
Teheran should be placed entirely under the Secretary of State for
India, and that we should be empowered to give to any _de facto_
ruler of Kabul some arms and ammunition and substantial pecuniary
assistance, as well as moral support, as occasion may offer, but
without any formal or defensive alliance.'
'I cannot bring my mind,' wrote Sir Stafford Northcote, then
Secretary of State for India, 'to the proposal that we should
subsidise first one, and then the other, according as accident brings
up Sher Ali or Abdul Rahman to the head of affairs.'
Nine days after Lord Lawrence signed his political testament, Lord
Mayo reached Calcutta. On the new Viceroy devolved the heavy
responsibility of carrying out the transition policy, somewhat
vaguely indicated by his predecessor, in such a way as to disclose no
break in the continuity of the Indian Government. In March 1869, the
Amir Sher Ali, who had meanwhile consolidated his power in
Afghanistan, came in state to India to pay his respects to the new
Governor-General. I do not propose to record the splendours of the
Ambala Darbar. All well-managed Darbars are imposing, and form an
oriental edition of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. I had the
privilege of being a guest of the Viceroy at the historical gathering
of troops, Native Princes, and British {125} administrators which
encamped on the Ambala Plain. But if I were to enter on the
spectacular aspects of an Indian Viceroy's career this book would
swell far beyond the limits assigned to it. My business is with the
less imposing but more permanent work actually accomplished. From the
moment the Amir crossed our frontier he was received with a
magnificence of hospitality which deeply impressed him. At Lahor he
let fall the words, 'I now begin to feel myself a King.'
Sher Ali came to India with five distinct objects in view. He
desired, in the first place, a treaty. In the second place, he hoped
for a fixed annual subsidy. In the third place, for assistance in
arms or in men, to be given 'not when the British Government might
think fit to grant, but when he might think it needful to solicit
it.' In the fourth place, for a well-defined engagement, 'laying the
British Government under an obligation to support the Afghan
Government in any emergency; and not only that Government generally,
but that Government as vested in himself and his direct descendants,
and in no others.'[1] Finally, he cherished a desire that he might
obtain some constructive act of recognition by the British Government
in favour of his younger son, Abdulla Jan, whom he brought with him,
and whom he wished to make his heir, to the exclusion of his elder
son, Yakub Khan, who had helped him to win the throne.
[Footnote 1: Minute in Council, by the Hon. Sir John Strachey,
G.C.S.I., sometime acting Governor-General, dated 30th April, 1872.]
{126} In not one of these objects was the Amir successful. The first
four were distinctly negatived; the fifth was not, I believe, even
permitted to enter into the discussions. Lord Mayo adhered to a
programme which he had deliberately put in writing before he left
Calcutta. Yet, by tact and by conciliatory firmness, he sent the Amir
away satisfied, and deeply impressed with the advantage of being on
good terms with the British Power. 'We have distinctly intimated to
the Amir,' he wrote, 'that under no circumstances shall a British
soldier cross his frontier to assist him in coercing his rebellious
subjects. That no fixed subsidy or money allowance will be given for
any named period. That no promise of assistance in other ways will be
made. That no treaty will be entered into, obliging us under every
circumstance to recognise him and his descendants as rulers of
Afghanistan. Yet that, by the most open and absolute present
recognition, and by every public evidence of friendly disposition, of
respect for his character, and interest in his fortunes, we are
prepared to give him all the moral support in our power; and that, in
addition, we are willing to assist him with money, arms, ammunition,
Native artificers, and in other ways, whenever we deem it desirable
so to do.'
These may seem but small concessions compared with the expectations
which the Amir had formed. But they were all that Lord Mayo deemed it
right to grant, and he granted them in such a way as to {127} render
the Amir a firm and grateful friend during the whole of his
Viceroyalty.
The Amir, on his return to Kabul, initiated English improvements with
an amusing promptitude. He forbade his troops and the inhabitants to
wear arms between 10 P.M. and 4 A.M. He appointed night watchmen, and
a judicial officer to hear petitions from the citizens. He
established post offices. He substituted cash payments for the old
practice of paying the Government servants by assignments of land or
revenue. He ordered the shoemakers of Kabul to sell off all their old
stock, and to make boots according to the English pattern! He dressed
himself in the English costume of coat and pantaloons, and directed
his officers to do the same! He organised a Council of State,
composed of thirteen members, as a constitutional body for advising
him in all departments of the administration. He remitted the more
terrible forms of punishment, and pardoned several ancient enemies.
In short, he did what in him lay to establish good government and win
the confidence of his people. Rapid reforms, however, are usually
short-lived. The most promising of them, namely, the substitution of
cash payments for assignments on the revenue, was so violently
opposed by the official class in Afghanistan, from the great
_Sardars_ downwards, that, so far as I can learn, it was never really
introduced.
'Surround India,' wrote Lord Mayo, shortly after the Ambala Darbar,
'with strong, friendly, and independent States, who will have more
interest in {128} keeping well with us than with any other Power, and
we are safe.' 'Our influence,' he says in another letter, 'has been
considerably strengthened, both in our own territories and also in
the States of Central Asia, by the Ambala meeting; and if we can only
persuade people that our policy really is non-intervention and peace,
that England is at this moment the only non-aggressive Power in Asia,
we should stand on a pinnacle of power that we have never enjoyed
before.'
Lord Mayo's next object was to open conciliatory relations with
Russia by honestly explaining the real nature of the change which had
taken place. He accepted Russia's splendid vitality in Central Asia
as a fact neither to be shirked nor condemned, but as one which, by
vigilant firmness, might be rendered harmless to ourselves. The
formal relations between the Courts of St. James and St. Petersburg
are of course conducted by the Foreign Office in England. But Lord
Mayo's travels in Russia had given him an insight into the strong
personal element in the working of the Russian official system, and
had made several of the Russian Ministers his warm friends for life.
Without interfering, therefore, with the regular relations between
the two Courts, he thought it might be advantageous that an
unofficial interchange of views should take place between the high
officers connected with the actual administration of Asiatic affairs.
He therefore took the opportunity of a distinguished Bengal Civilian
going home on leave, to authorise him, {129} if it met with the
concurrence of Her Majesty's Ministers, to give assurances to the
leading Russian officials of his peaceful policy, and to enter into
frank and friendly explanations on Central Asian affairs. Sir Douglas
(then Mr.) Forsyth reached St. Petersburg in October 1869. The result
of the confidential interchange of opinions which followed was the
acceptance of Lord Mayo's view that the best security for peace in
Central Asia consisted in maintaining the great States on the Indian
frontier in a position of effective independence. Efforts were also
made to prevent the recurrence of those unauthorised aggressions by
Russian frontier officers, which had kept Central Asia in perpetual
turmoil. Of these efforts it may be briefly said that they were
successful during the term of Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty.
In the interviews of Sir Douglas Forsyth with the Russian Minister of
War and the Minister of the Asiatic Department it was agreed that
Russia should respect as Afghanistan all the Provinces which Sher Ali
then held, that the Oxus should be the boundary line of Sher Ali's
dominions on the north, and that both England and Russia should do
their best to prevent aggressions by the Asiatic States under their
control. Lord Mayo lost no time in securing for Sher Ali the
guarantee of a recognised boundary against the Amir's neighbours in
Central Asia. In 1871 the Russians, however, raised grave objections
to Badakshan being included within the Afghan line. This question was
settled by friendly negotiations {130} in 1872. In January, 1873,
Count Schouvaloff arrived in London to personally express the
Emperor's sanction to the disputed territories being recognised as
part of Afghanistan. Subsequent delimitations have given precision to
the frontier. But practically it may be said that Afghanistan, as
territorially defined by Lord Mayo in 1869, remained substantially
the Afghanistan of the following twenty years.
Having thus placed the affairs of Afghanistan on a satisfactory
footing, Lord Mayo turned his attention to the great territories
which stretch southward from it along our Sind Frontier and eastwards
to Persia. He found that our relations with these territories,
loosely named Baluchistan or Khelat, were perplexed by two distinct
sets of complications--one external, the other internal. The first
referred to the frontier between Baluchistan and Persia. This had
never been settled, and had for generations formed the arena of
mutual aggressions and sanguinary raids. The internal complication
arose from the ill-defined position of the Khan or Ruler towards his
nobility. According to one party in Khelat, the Khan is the Sovereign
of the State; according to another, he is the head of a confederacy
of Chiefs. The net result was, that what between wars of
extermination on the Persian Frontier, and the internecine struggle
between the royalist and oligarchic parties within the State,
Baluchistan knew no rest, and might at any moment prove a troublesome
neighbour. Her internal rebellions and {131} her border feuds
rendered it very hard to discover with whom the actual authority
rested, or how far it extended, and made it difficult for the British
Government to take measures for the consolidation of the titular
ruler's power.
Lord Mayo vigorously addressed himself to the solution of both the
external and the internal problem of Baluchistan. His action led to
the demarcation of a political boundary between Afghanistan and
Persia; which practically put an end to the aggressions of the
latter. He displayed not less vigour in trying to help Baluchistan to
evolve from her conflicting factions a stable and permanent central
power. The task proved a most difficult one. Each of the great
parties in Baluchistan had a real basis of right on which to found
its claims. The nobles could show that they had frequently controlled
the Khan, and compelled him to act as the head of a confederacy of
Chiefs rather than as a supreme ruler. The Khan could prove that
although he had from time to time succumbed to his rebellious barons,
yet that he had only done so after a struggle, and that he had
exercised his royal authority whenever he again found himself strong
enough.
The question resembled the worn-out discussion as to whether England
was or was not a limited monarchy under the Plantagenets. The
constitutional difficulties in Baluchistan were embittered by wrongs
both great and recent on both sides; and at the time of Lord Mayo's
death, its consolidation into a {132} well-governed kingdom yet
remained to be accomplished. He lived, however, to see his efforts
bear fruit in a period of unwonted rest to its unhappy population,
and to place the whole problem in a fair train for settlement. Before
his sudden end, he had the satisfaction of being able to authorise a
high British officer to act as arbitrator between the Khan and the
tribal Chiefs.
Due north of India, beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, another State
made pressing claims on Lord Mayo's attention. This State was known
as Eastern Turkestan. It owed its origin to one of those revivals,
partly religious, partly political, which at that time threatened to
dismember the Chinese Empire. The Panthays had proved the efficacy of
such a revival by the establishment of an independent Muhammadan
State in the south-west of China. The Chinese Musalmans of the Desert
of Gobi on the far north-western frontier followed their example, and
ended by raising their rebellion to the dignity of a holy war. The
Chinese authorities were expelled and all who supported them were
massacred. In 1864 the new Musalman Power, composed of very
heterogeneous elements, found itself in possession of Eastern
Turkestan. After a further struggle among the victors, Yakub
Kushbegi, a brave soldier of fortune, emerged in 1869 as the Ruler of
the vast central territory which stretched eastwards from the Pamir
Steppe to the Chinese Frontier, and from the British-protected State
of Kashmir on the south to {133} the Russian outposts on the Shan and
Muzart ranges on the north.
In January, 1870, an envoy from the new Ruler arrived in India to
solicit, _inter alia_, that a British officer might accompany him
back on a friendly visit to his master. Lord Mayo consented to send
Mr. Douglas Forsyth on one express condition--that in no sense was
the visit to be a mission, nor was it to have a diplomatic object.
Mr. Forsyth was to abstain from taking part in any political
questions, or in any internal disputes, further than repeating the
general advice already given to Yakub's envoy by Lord Mayo: namely,
that Yakub would best consult the interests of his kingdom by a
watchful, just, and vigorous government; by strengthening the
defences of his frontier; and above all, by not interfering in the
political affairs of other States, or in the quarrels of Chiefs or
tribes that did not directly concern his own interests. Mr. Forsyth
was to limit his stay in the country, so as to run no risk of finding
the Himalayan passes closed by the winter's snow, and of thus being
detained in Yarkand till the following year. He was to collect full
and trustworthy information concerning the nature and resources of
Eastern Turkestan and the neighbouring countries, their recent
history, their present political condition, their capabilities for
trade, the Indian staples most in demand, their price in the Yarkand
market, and the articles which could be most profitably brought to
India in exchange.
{134} Mr. Forsyth, on his arrival in the Yarkand territory, found
that Yakub had not yet succeeded in consolidating his dominions. He
scrupulously abstained from being drawn into political discussions of
any sort, and after a brief halt at the southern capital, Yarkand, to
refit his camp with provisions and beasts of burden, he returned to
India. He brought back complete information regarding the most
practicable routes across the Himalayas, the industrial capabilities
and resources of the country, its recent history, and the actual
position of its Ruler. From first to last he made it clearly
understood that his mission was of a purely tentative and commercial
character.
As a part of the same policy, Lord Mayo opened up a free trade-route
through the Chang Chenmu valley by a treaty with Kashmir, and placed
the transit of Indian merchandise across the Himalayas on a securer
basis. The traffic which will pay the cost of carriage across the
snowy altitudes of Central Asia can never seem great, when expressed
in figures and compared with the enormous sea-borne exports and
imports of India. But it is a very lucrative one to certain classes
in the inland and warlike Province of the Punjab, whose population we
were trying to habituate to peaceful industry by every ameliorating
influence of wealth and commerce.
I have now described the measures which Lord Mayo took in pursuance
of his fixed resolve to create a cordon of friendly and well-governed
States on our western and northern frontier, from Baluchistan on
{135} the Arabian Sea, round by Afghanistan, to Eastern Turkestan. He
acted in the same spirit to his neighbours along the north-eastern
and south-eastern borders of the British dominions. Towards Nepal he
maintained an attitude alike firm, friendly, and dignified, and
consolidated the satisfactory relations which he found existing with
that State. On the north-east of Bengal he may be said to have
created a frontier, by means of the Lushai Expedition, and to have
given to those long distracted regions a period of quiet and peace.
Proceeding farther south, we find him equally busy in Burma,
restraining the warlike propensities of the king, developing trade
relations, and enforcing respect for the British Power. But the hard
work of his foreign policy lay on the western and north-western
frontier, and I have given so much space to its narration, that I
must close this chapter without branching out into less essential
details.
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