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  SIKUNDER BURNES

  There Was Something about Alexander Burnes

  ‘The most unaffected, gentlemanlike, pleasant and amusing man that I have had the good fortune to meet.’ Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain

  ‘He is one of the most agreeable persons I ever met with; and the banks of the river, dull at all times, are doubly so now that he has left us.’ General Sir Henry Fane

  ‘The winning smile, and frank and courteous manner appeared to have gained for him a degree of consideration which no other European could boast of.’ Lieutenant William Taylor

  ‘Of the great minds which I have been allowed to study, the distinguishing characteristic was their simplicity and naked truth; and in this essentiality of greatness Sir Alexander is most especially modelled.’ Surgeon General Dr Richard Kennedy

  ‘I confess I shall be confident of any plan he undertakes in this quarter of India.’ General Sir John Malcolm

  ‘From long personal acquaintance and experience of his habits, there is no officer of whatever standing or rank in the Bombay Army who is so peculiarly qualified.’ Colonel Sir Henry Pottinger

  ‘In all his changes of fortune, he was never known to overlook a kindness, or forget his early friendships.’ Major T. B. Jervis

  ‘Really Sir, you are a wonderful man.’ King William IV

  First published in Great Britain 2016 by

  Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  ISBN: 978 1 78027 317 4

  Copyright © Craig Murray 2016

  The right of Craig Murray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  Typeset in Adobe Arno by

  Koinonia, Manchester

  Printed in Malta by

  Gutenberg Press Ltd

  Contents

  List of Illustration

  Preface: Historian, Interrupted

  Acknowledgements

  1 Montrose

  2 A Rape in Herat

  3 Scottish Patronage, Indian Career

  4 A Griffin in India

  5 Dawn of the North-West Frontier

  6 The Indus Scheme

  7 The Shipwreck of Young Hopes

  8 The Dray Horse Mission

  9 The Dazzling Sikhs

  10 Rupar, The Field of the Cloth of Cashmere

  11 Journey through Afghanistan

  12 To Bokhara and Back

  13 The Object of Adulation

  14 Castles – and Knights Templar – in the Air

  15 To Meet upon the Level

  16 Imperial Rivalry in Asia

  17 While Alex was Away

  18 Return to the Indus

  19 The Gathering Storm

  20 Peshawar Perverted

  21 The Kabul Negotiations

  22 Stand-off

  23 ‘Izzat wa Ikram’

  24 Regime Change

  25 Securing Sind

  26 The Dodgy Dossier

  27 Kelat

  28 A King in Kandahar

  29 Death in St Petersburg

  30 Ghazni

  31 Mission Accomplished

  32 Kabul in Winter

  33 Dost Mohammed

  34 Discontent

  35 Dissent and Dysfunction

  36 Death in Kabul

  37 Aftermath

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  List of Illustrations

  Many of the Mandvi boatbuilders still know of Burnes, and claim their ancestors sailed with him.

  Large wooden boats are still built in Mandvi, where Burnes’ flotilla was specially constructed.

  The British military cemetery at Bhuj consists predominantly of graves from the Burnes’ period, and reflects the unhealthy climate reported by James.

  The Rao of Cutch’s bedchamber.

  The hall of mirrors in the palace at Bhuj, where Burnes was frequently received by the Rao of Cutch.

  The irascible Sir Henry Pottinger, who came to hate Burnes. Painted here as the first Governor of Hong Kong after satisfying his bellicosity in the Opium War. Copyright the Government Art Collection

  Sans Pareil, the Governor’s Residence and seat of administration at Bombay, now the Cholera Institute.

  An eighteenth-century painting of Sans Pareil still on the wall of the Cholera Institute, Mumbai.

  Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the brilliant creator of the Sikh Empire, which Burnes foresaw could not outlive him. Wikimedia licence

  The hall of audience in the Red Fort at Delhi where Burnes met the Moghul Emperor.

  The accepted ‘image’ of Burnes is not him at all. The engraving was expressly altered so it is not his face.

  This portrait of Burnes by William Brockedon shows him in the act of removing his red-lined Bokharan robe, and revealing the British uniform underneath. Copyright Mumbai Asiatic Society

  Lodge Canongate Kilwinning, the oldest purpose-built Masonic building in the world. Adjoining is the Scottish HQ of the Order of St John. Copyright Historic Environment Scotland

  Inset top left. The Order of the Dourrani Empire, a St John’s Cross.

  The Man Who Would Be King. Alex claimed to have found the masonic inscription of the square and compasses on ruins in Central Asia. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING © 1975, renewed 2003 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

  The Russian Trade Fair at Nizhni Novgorod by Augustin de Betancourt 1824. Burnes and Auckland planned to replicate on the Indus this great mart for Central Asian goods.

  The Chinese Pavilions at the Nizhni Novgorod Trade Fair.

  The fortress of Baikhar on the Indus sketched by James Atkinson, 1839, from the British camp just after Burnes negotiated its surrender.

  James Rattray 1841, Kabul Women in Indoor and Outdoor Dress.

  James Rattray 1841, Kohistani Warriors.

  Emily Eden’s sketch of Dost Mohammed in exile surrounded by three of his sons. Haidar Khan, Governor of Ghazni, is top left.

  Three sketched portraits by Dr James Atkinson on the expedition, which show how the British leaders dressed in Afghanistan. Copyright the National Portrait Gallery.

  (a) William Hay Macnaghten, Burnes’ pompous and overbearing boss

  (b) Macnaghten’s nephew Arthur Conolly, whom Burnes considered a Christian fanatic

  (c) Burnes’ friend the highly clubbable General Sir Willoughby Cotton

  Mohan Lal journeyed to Scotland in 1843 to return Burnes’ papers to his family. This calotype, or early photograph, was taken in Edinburgh. Copyright Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

  Bow Butts, Montrose, the now derelict Burnes house.

  James Burnes senior, Alex’ father and Provost of Montrose.

  By permission of Angus Council.

  Montrose Academy, where Burnes was schooled.

  Eighteenth-century masonic sign over the Royal Arch bar, Montrose.

  Map of Montrose 1824 with the Burnes house clearly marked, just south of the Bowling Green.

  Joseph Hume of Montrose, radical MP and Burnes’ assiduous patron. Copyright National Portrait Gallery

  Mumbai Old Town Hall, centre of the social and intellectual life of the community. Here Burn
es presented papers to the Asiatic, Geographical and Geological Societies.

  The Governor’s ballroom at Sans Pareil is a pale reflection of its former glory.

  Burnes’ official journal of his flotilla’s damage by storm, in the National Archive of India.

  Two of Burnes’ loyal Arab bodyguards, drawn by Emily Eden in Simla August 1838. Courtesy of National Library of Scotland.

  Charles Masson 1838, The Bala Hissar of Kabul

  The Hooghly, the Calcutta-built ship on the Australian convict run, on which Burnes returned to Britain. Copyright City of Sydney Library

  Kabul 1841 by Vincent Eyre (pub 1843) with Burnes house (W) clearly marked at centre top. This shows its position relative to the British cantonment.

  Preface: Historian, Interrupted

  To anticipate the critics, this is history written by a bureaucrat. The story is told not just of Burnes’ adventures, but of the accounts and reports he had to file. The Byzantine jealousies and turf battles of British officials are uncovered. For this was the very stuff of Burnes’ life in India, what pre-occupied him day to day, and what is missing from romantic accounts of the Great Game. Equally I have tried to give full weight to two major aspects of the lives of British rulers in India – sex and freemasonry – to which most histories turn a blind eye.

  It is thirty years since I graduated from the University of Dundee with a First in Modern History. I had a place for a PhD. Then, to my intense surprise, I won a position in the Diplomatic Service. Being about to get married, I needed the money. Whether history suffered any loss you can judge from this book.

  I had already encountered Alexander Burnes as the star among the real life characters of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman. Burnes ranked with Burton and Livingstone in his fame as a nineteenth-century explorer. His books were best-sellers. He was received by kings. He won the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and its continental counterparts. He was knighted for his services and made a Companion of the Bath and Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a colourful and controversial character, a major figure in the First Afghan War, whose opinions could still cause a full parliamentary debate twenty years after his death. And he was the great-nephew of Robert Burns.

  Yet there is no recent biography of Burnes. In 1969 Philip Lunt produced the slim Bokhara Burnes, mostly a précis of Burnes’ travel writing. There has never been a study of Burnes’ origins and motivations. Crucial questions, such as why he changed his views to support the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, have been given only cursory consideration. Burnes’ sex life is widely cited as a contributing factor in sparking the 1841 Kabul uprising against the British, but this claim has never been properly examined.

  Burnes has been treated more kindly by fiction than biography. Flashman brought him to a wide audience. He is compellingly imagined as the hero of Philip Hensher’s The Mulberry Empire, while in John C Griffiths’ The Queen of Spades, a direct descendant named Alexander Burnes fights off the 1980s Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Burnes was the major influence for Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, not least in its Masonic themes. At least four other novels feature Alexander Burnes.

  Burnes naturally is very prominent in accounts of the Great Game, but these rehearse the same limited sources. Burnes is a major figure in William Dalrymple’s beautifully written history of the First Afghan War, Return of a King.

  I became conscious during months of transcribing manuscripts, particularly in India, that nobody had looked at them for decades, sometimes over a century. One vital folder of Burnes’ letters in the National Archive of India had crumbled beyond reading. This influenced a decision to include much direct quotation.

  I admit I identify with Burnes to a considerable degree. We were both East Coast Scots, from similar social backgrounds, who sought a living abroad primarily for economic reasons. When offered the Ambassadorship in Tashkent, following in the footsteps of Burnes was directly on my mind.

  Both Burnes and I met career disaster when policy changed radically between our being appointed as Envoy and taking up our posts. Burnes was sent to Kabul to increase British influence with his friend, the Emir Dost Mohammed, as a buffer against Russian encroachment. After Burnes’ mission was under way, the Governor General had undergone a complete change of mind, and had decided Dost Mohammed needed to be replaced, not allied. Burnes’ mission was thus doomed to failure.

  In summer 2001 I was appointed British Ambassador to Tashkent, based on my work in promoting human rights and democracy in Africa. Uzbekistan was seen as a tyranny in need of being shoved towards reform. But in the year between my appointment and my arrival in Tashkent in August 2002 came the 9/11 attack and our most recent invasion of Afghanistan. President Karimov of Uzbekistan went, in the official view, from being a tyrant to being our indispensable ally in the ‘War on Terror’. My job changed from pushing for human rights to facilitating Karimov’s clampdown on opposition. Like Burnes, I was completely unsuited by belief and temperament to the new policy.

  Burnes has been much criticised by historians for backing down and switching to support the invasion. I know the pressures on you to conform, particularly in time of war, and do the ‘patriotic’ thing. Burnes and I made opposite decisions in the same dilemma. Burnes is criticised for not sticking to his principles against his government; I am criticised for deserting my government for my principles. You can’t win.

  There are continuities in British social attitudes and institutional practices. Future historians will find the survival of British class and social attitudes more remarkable than their mutation, and I worked as a fairly direct institutional descendant of Burnes. The Diplomatic Service of my time retained some of the feel and style of the India Office from which it in part descended; several of the despatches and arguments of Burnes and his colleagues could have been written in my period, right down to the phraseology. I especially recognise the intra-institutional relationships and turf battles.

  If it were a novel this story would be in danger of being deemed too fanciful. It is the tale of a hero rising from obscurity to fame via fabulous adventures involving shipwreck, a thousand-mile river journey through India on a spying mission improbably disguised as the transport of English carthorses, secret agents and exploration through the oriental extravagances of Central Asia, the seduction of numerous women, and finally overreach, hubris, a terrible death and the annihilation of an entire British army. Burnes is an extraordinarily gifted hero of this tale.

  There are of course striking parallels between the disastrous British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, and the latest occupation of that country. In 1840 we sought to prop up a puppet Pashtun ruler, from the Popalzai khail of the Dourani tribe, promoting pro-western policies inimical to most Afghans. This led to revolt by major elements of the Pashtun tribal structures and Sunni religious leaderships, as opposed to indifference or support for the invaders from parts of the Tajik and Hazara minorities. That precisely described the situation in 1840 or 2010. Will we never learn?

  Craig Murray

  Edinburgh

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful thanks are due to the staff of the Montrose Museum, Montrose Library and the Montrose Review archive in Forfar, and the archives and pictures staff of Angus Council, for their enthusiastic and unstinting support.

  In India the National Archives staff in Delhi and the Maharastra State Archive were unfailingly attentive and helpful. The curators of the Rao’s Palace Museum in Bhuj were a mine of information joyously shared. In Mumbai, the officers and staff of the Mumbai Asiatic Society show great dedication to an astonishing institution. At Freemason’s Hall, Mumbai, the access and unlimited tea given to a non-Mason was most kind.

  The National Library of Scotland was a joy to work in. The National Archive of Scotland gets the prize for fast production of manuscripts. Bob Cooper of the Grand Lodge in Edinburgh was enthusiastic, and thanks to Louise Yeoman for information and advice. Bruce Gorie of the Lyon Office was courteous
and efficient.

  Worcester College Library, Oxford, was very welcoming and showed a genuine interest. The British Library building at St Pancras is a marvel.

  Many thanks to the toilers in the same vineyard who advised and swapped transcriptions, particularly William Dalrymple, Farrukh Hussain, Alexander Morrison and the late Christopher Bayly.

  Researching this book has been a labour of love which has taken half my working time for six years, unfunded, and cost a lot of money in travel and accommodation. There has been a huge impact on the finances of my family. So I owe them much more than just the run-of-the-mill thanks for their support and understanding.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Montrose

  Alexander Burnes has no grave and no memorial. When hacked to death in the Residence garden in Kabul, the bodies of Alexander and his younger brother Charles disappeared. Unlike other victims of the uprising, no severed body parts were hung in the bazaar by triumphant Afghans or paraded on spears to taunt British prisoners. Burnes’ boss, William Macnaghten, was to be displayed in parts through the city, but somehow, a year of vicious war later, enough bits of him were reassembled by the British for a burial ceremony. There is no definite evidence of what happened to the remains of Alex and Charlie, and nobody in the British army tried to collect them.

  Nor did their family put a plaque in the local kirk of Montrose. This is something of a mystery. The churches of the United Kingdom are replete with memorial tablets to those who fell in the Empire’s wars, many very much less distinguished than Lieutenant Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes KCB, FRS, FRGS, Légion d’Honneur, Knight Commander of the Royal Dourani Empire. Not to mention, a greater honour than all that in Alex’s own estimation, great-nephew of Robert Burns.

  Montrose is a bustling and handsome market town on the East Coast of Scotland, with the county of Angus as its hinterland. Services to the North Sea oil industry have attracted corporate outposts and a technical training industry and given new life to its port. It is neither sleepy nor backward looking, and retains virtually no memory of Alexander Burnes.