First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842): The Retreat from Kabul

The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842) was Britain’s first invasion of Afghanistan. British and Indian troops of the East India Company deposed the ruler Dost Mohammad Khan and installed Shah Shuja in his place, but an uprising in Kabul in late 1841 led to the near-total destruction of the British garrison during its retreat in January 1842. It was one of the worst defeats suffered by British arms in the nineteenth century.

Background: the Great Game

In the 1830s British officials in India grew alarmed at Russia’s advance into Central Asia. The rivalry between the two empires was later called the “Great Game”. When Persia, encouraged by Russia, besieged the western Afghan city of Herat from 1837 to 1838, British policymakers feared that Afghanistan might fall under hostile influence on the north-western approaches to India.

Afghanistan’s ruler in Kabul, Dost Mohammad Khan, was willing to cooperate with Britain but wanted help in recovering Peshawar, which had been taken by the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh, Britain’s ally. A British envoy, Alexander Burnes, negotiated with him in Kabul in 1837-1838, while a Russian agent also visited the city.

Causes of the invasion

The Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, decided against Burnes’s advice to replace Dost Mohammad with Shah Shuja, a member of the older Durrani dynasty who had been driven from the throne in 1809 and lived in exile in British India. In June 1838 Britain, Ranjit Singh and Shah Shuja agreed the Tripartite Treaty. On 1 October 1838 Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto justifying the war.

The Persian siege of Herat ended in September 1838, removing the main justification, but the invasion went ahead. Critics then and since have argued that Auckland and his advisers, especially his chief secretary William Macnaghten, misread both the Russian threat and Afghan politics. Shah Shuja had already failed in an attempt to regain his throne in 1834, which suggested how little support he enjoyed.

The invasion, 1839

The Army of the Indus, about 20,000 British and Indian troops under Sir John Keane, with tens of thousands of camp followers and huge numbers of camels, marched through the Bolan Pass in early 1839. It entered Kandahar in April, stormed the fortress of Ghazni on 23 July after blowing in one of its gates, and reached Kabul on 7 August 1839. Shah Shuja was restored to the throne. Many British observers noted that his entry into Kabul was met with silence rather than celebration.

The campaign was a logistical ordeal. Supplies ran short in the barren country of Baluchistan, many thousands of baggage camels died, and the troops were put on reduced rations before they reached Kandahar. The capture of Ghazni, a fortress thought impregnable, was nevertheless seen in Britain as a brilliant success, and Keane was made a peer.

Dost Mohammad fled north and fought on, but surrendered to the British in November 1840 and was sent into comfortable exile in India.

Occupation and uprising

A British force stayed to support Shah Shuja, who had little popular support. The garrison settled into cantonments outside Kabul on poorly defended ground, and officers brought their families. The British envoy, Sir William Macnaghten, faced rising costs and reduced the subsidies paid to tribal leaders who kept the passes open, which caused deep resentment. Afghans also resented the behaviour of some foreign soldiers and officials in the city, the rising price of food caused by the army’s purchases, and the sense that their king was a British puppet. Macnaghten’s reports to Calcutta, however, continued to describe the country as calm.

On 2 November 1841 a crowd in Kabul attacked the house of Alexander Burnes and killed him. The elderly and ailing commander, Major-General William Elphinstone, failed to act decisively. The cantonments were soon cut off from supplies. On 23 December Macnaghten was killed at a meeting with Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammad, during negotiations.

The retreat from Kabul, January 1842

Elphinstone agreed to withdraw to Jalalabad, about 140 kilometres away, in return for promises of safe passage. On 6 January 1842 a column of about 4,500 soldiers, most of them Indian sepoys, and some 12,000 camp followers left Kabul in deep snow.

The promises were not kept, or could not be enforced on the many groups along the route. Afghan fighters attacked the column in the Khord Kabul pass and at Jagdalak, while cold and hunger killed thousands. Akbar Khan took Elphinstone, several officers and the British women and children as hostages. The last organised group, mostly men of the 44th Regiment of Foot, was overwhelmed near Gandamak on 13 January.

That afternoon an army surgeon, Dr William Brydon, reached the British garrison at Jalalabad, wounded and on an exhausted pony. He became famous as the “sole survivor”, although more than 100 hostages and some Indian soldiers and camp followers also survived.

The Army of Retribution

Lord Ellenborough, who replaced Auckland as Governor-General in 1842, at first favoured withdrawal but allowed a punitive campaign. Major-General George Pollock forced the Khyber Pass in April 1842 and relieved Jalalabad, whose garrison under Sir Robert Sale had held out. Shah Shuja was assassinated in Kabul the same month, and Elphinstone died in captivity.

Pollock and Major-General William Nott, advancing from Kandahar, reoccupied Kabul in September 1842 and freed the hostages. In reprisal they destroyed Kabul’s great covered bazaar, and troops looted parts of the city and nearby Istalif. The British then withdrew from Afghanistan entirely, and Dost Mohammad returned to rule until his death in 1863.

Key people

• Dost Mohammad Khan (1793-1863): Emir of Afghanistan, deposed in 1839 and restored after the war.
• Shah Shuja Durrani (c. 1785-1842): former king restored by the British and killed in April 1842.
• Lord Auckland (1784-1849): Governor-General of India who launched the invasion.
• Wazir Akbar Khan (1816-1847): son of Dost Mohammad and leader during the uprising.
• William Elphinstone (1782-1842): commander at Kabul during the uprising and retreat.

Timeline

• 1838, 1 October: Lord Auckland issues the Simla Manifesto.
• 1839, 23 July: British forces storm Ghazni.
• 1839, 7 August: Shah Shuja enters Kabul.
• 1840, November: Dost Mohammad surrenders to the British.
• 1841, 2 November: Uprising in Kabul; Alexander Burnes is killed.
• 1841, 23 December: Macnaghten is killed by Akbar Khan.
• 1842, 6 January: The retreat from Kabul begins.
• 1842, 13 January: Last stand near Gandamak; Dr Brydon reaches Jalalabad.
• 1842, September: British forces reoccupy Kabul, then withdraw.

Legacy

The disaster shook British confidence in India and showed the limits of military force in Afghanistan. It was followed within a few years by the Anglo-Sikh Wars, which brought British rule to the Afghan frontier, and decades later by the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Elizabeth Butler’s painting Remnants of an Army (1879) fixed the image of Brydon’s arrival in Victorian memory.

In Afghanistan the defeat of the British became a source of pride and part of national tradition, celebrated in poetry and popular memory. Akbar Khan in particular is remembered as a hero of the resistance. The total human cost of the war is uncertain, but many thousands of Indian soldiers and camp followers died, along with large numbers of Afghans, both fighters and civilians caught up in the campaigns of 1839 and 1842.

Why it matters

The war turned a strategic gamble into a catastrophe, and the retreat from Kabul became a byword for imperial overreach. Its lessons about the cost of installing an unpopular ruler in Afghanistan were cited again by commentators during later foreign interventions there.