Return of a King
There鈥檚 a gripping war story in Return of a King, William Dalrymple鈥檚 epic recounting of Britain鈥檚 farcical attempt to invade Afghanistan in the first half of the 19th century. Unfortunately, general readers will have to work to find it. It is obscured beneath the author鈥檚 prodigious but specialized original research and also behind his suspect thesis that 21st-century Western misadventures in Afghanistan result from little more than modern leaders鈥� ignorance of the past. 聽
聽鈥淭he closer I looked, the more the west鈥檚 first disastrous entanglement in Afghanistan seemed to contain distinct echoes of the neocolonial adventures of our own day,鈥� writes Dalrymple, a Delhi-based author who has written many books about India. 鈥淭he same tribal rivalries and the same battles were continuing to be fought out in the same places 170 years later under the guise of new flags, new ideologies and new political puppeteers.鈥�
Superficially, this idea is compelling. We know Afghanistan as the fabled graveyard of empires, but is the War of Terror and the US invasion of Taliban-controlled central Asia just an extension of 19th-century colonialism?
Under scrutiny, the connection proves facile. Yes, many of the players in Afghanistan, Western and Eastern, are the same as they were 200 years ago. Yes, Afghanistan鈥檚 bickering tribes and brutal geography make the nation unsuited to foreign domination. But George W. Bush was the United States to invade Afghanistan little more than a week after al-Qaeda鈥檚 Sept. 11 attacks. Would he have behaved differently had his administration focused on how dismally Britain failed to return Shuja ul-Mulk, an exiled shah, to power in the 1840s in response to a nonexistent Russian invasion of Kabul? For that matter, did colonial lessons give the Soviet Union pause before it invaded Afghanistan in 1979?
When powerful nations want to subjugate weaker countries 鈥� whether it鈥檚 the Philippines, Vietnam, or Iraq 鈥� they do it. Anger, politics, or ego forces leaders鈥� hands. History does not. 聽
Dalrymple may be misguided in his attempt to use "Return of a King" to teach overreaching empires a lesson, but that doesn鈥檛 mean his scholarship is wanting. Like a 21st-century Indiana Jones, the author braved sniper shots and IEDs to uncover original Afghan sources on a forgotten conflict. "Return of a King" should establish him as the foremost historian of 鈥渢he Great Game鈥� 鈥� 鈥渢hat grand contest of imperial competition, espionage and conquest that engaged Britain and Russia until the collapse of their respective Asian empires鈥�, all played out as ordinary Afghans suffered. 聽聽聽
Even the Great Game鈥檚 masterminds didn鈥檛 have much fun at the game. Shah Shuja, roused out of exile by the British in 1838, was later abandoned by his retreating protectors and assassinated by his godson. Alexander Burnes, a Scottish linguist and explorer of Afghanistan who tried to prevent war, was run through with a sword, hacked to pieces, or torn apart by a mob. William Hay Macnaghten, the civil servant who designed the invasion, was beheaded during, ahem, peace negotiations. By 1842, much of Britain鈥檚 army and its entourage 鈥� about 60,000 people, many of them Indian sepoys or friendly Afghans 鈥� were dead.
鈥淎t the very height of the British Empire, at a point when the British controlled more of the world economy than they would ever do again,鈥� Dalrymple writes, 鈥渁nd at a time when traditional forces were everywhere being massacred by industrialized colonial armies, it was a rare moment of complete colonial humiliation.鈥� Riled, Britain exacted murderous revenge. The terrifyingly-named 鈥淎rmy of Retribution鈥� returned to Afghanistan in 1842 to free hostages, destroy Kabul, and rape and plunder.
For better and worse, Dalrymple鈥檚 history of Afghan violence is the most compelling part of "Return of a King." Those willing to wade through his 20-page 鈥淒ramatis Personae鈥� and slow narrative buildup to the conflict will be rewarded with stories like that of Dr. William Brydon, one of the few survivors of an Afghan ambush who stumbled over corpses to flee on a dying cavalryman鈥檚 pony. Such gruesome tales are perhaps more like Cormac McCarthy鈥檚 "Blood Meridian" than the weighty tome Dalrymple envisioned, but, for voyeurs, they鈥檙e also more entertaining than his scholarship.
After the Army of Retribution left Afghanistan 鈥� less than a year after it arrived 鈥� the country continued to see bloodshed. With Shah Shuja dead, his rival, Dost Mohammad Khan, consolidated power over a much-diminished emerging nation. The new boss was the same as the old boss, and Britain would invade again in 1878.
鈥淭he only man who clearly gained from the First Anglo-Afghan War was the very man whom the war was designed to depose,鈥� Dalrymple writes. 鈥淭he more coherent Afghanistan now ruled by Dost Mohammad was also a more impoverished and isolated country that it had ever been before in its history. No longer was it the rich and cultured crossroads of the Silk Route.... Afghanistan would become to some extent a backwater.鈥�
"Return of a King" ably shows how this backwater came to attract the attention of the globe. The book will prove invaluable to Afghan historians and compelling for anyone willing to tough out its author鈥檚 windy prose. But as the learned scold of adventurers in the troubled region, Dalrymple is less successful. Aren鈥檛 the disastrous results of the West鈥檚 most recent invasion as self-evident as they were predictable? 聽聽
Justin Moyer is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.
