What possessed Britain to attempt to subordinate a primitive, desolate country that was trapped in the Middle Ages? How was it possible that a third rate force could massacre 17 000 British soldiers with only ten survivors – a surgeon and an officers wife amongst them? This defeat even exceeded that against the Zulus at Isandlwana in Natal.
The country in question is Afghanistan, a country wedged precariously between two expanding Empires – the Russian and the British. The Russians under the Tsars during the nineteenth century were rapidly expanding eastward towards Alaska whereas the British were initially content on the Indian subcontinent.
Main picture: Alexander Burnes – Scottish explorer and adventurers & fluent Persian speaker