Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The nervous British authorities in Lahore had proposed
withdrawing forces from the frontier to concentrate them in the
Punjab in case the rebellion spread, and the viceroy in Calcutta
only vetoed the proposal at the eleventh hour. As it turned out, the
attempted revolt hardly touched the frontier. In any case, the Pathans
considered it none of their business. The rebels were crushed - two
hundred of their ranks fired from the mouths of British cannons, in
a typically humane symbolic gesture - and the only casualty the
imperialists suffered was the colonel of the Fifty-fifth Bengal Native
Infantry, who blew his head off with a pistol out of shame.
The British feared the consequences of the Sepoy Rebellion on
the frontier. Specifically, they expected the Afghans to take advantage
of the chaos by occupying the British down in the plains while they
themselves retook the territories the Sikhs had captured from them.
To the colonisers' surprise, the Afghan king remained quietly in
Kabul. Uncharacteristic as this was, the Pathans took up their own
squabble with the British as soon as the rebellion simmered down.
Over the next fifty years, more than forty British expeditions were
mounted to deal with tribal uprisings, ranging from the 280 troops
deployed against the Utaman Khel in 1878, to the 40,000 dispatched
to deal with the Afridis and Orakzais in 1897.
As these numbers suggest, the British gradually increased their
control of the frontier area during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, spreading out from Peshawar up into the passes and beyond.
During the Second Afghan War in 1878-1880, they even briefly
occupied Kabul, Jelalabad, Gazni, and Kandahar. Pathan guerrilla
forces responded almost on whim, killing the odd tax collector,
kidnapping the occasional Hindu merchant, and even ambushing
British patrols. The colonists left their havens of safety in the towns
only at their peril. Certainly, during these years, the Peshawar Valley
prospered, with caravans richer than any before them regularly
passing through the Khyber, even with the Pathans still swooping
down and exacting their own and ancient form of toll tax.
By the end of the century, Tsarist Russia had extended its influence
deep into Central Asia, overtaking the ancient khanates of Khiva,
Samarkand, and Bokhara. Thus began what Kipling called 'The
Great Game,' a frenzied struggle for advantage between two great
