To understand the policy and object of the war lately
undertaken by the British against Persia, and which, according to
the most recent accounts, has been so energetically pushed as to
lead to submission on the part of the Shah, it is necessary to take a
slight retrospect of Persian affairs. The Persian dynasty, founded
in 1502 by Ismael, who claimed to be descended from the ancient
Persian kings, after maintaining for more than two centuries the
power and dignity of a great State, received, about 1720, a severe
shock in the rebellion of the Afghans inhabiting its eastern
provinces. Western Persia was invaded by them, and two Afghan
princes* succeeded in keeping themselves for a few years on the
Persian throne. They were, however, speedily expelled by the
famous Nadir, acting at first in the capacity of General to the
Persian claimant.? Afterward he assumed the crown himself, and
not only reduced the rebellious Afghans, but by his famous
invasion of India contributed much to that disorganization of the
declining Mogul empire, which opened the way for the rise of the
British power in India.

Amid the anarchy that ensued in Persia after the death cf Nadir
Shah in 1747, there sprang up, under the rule of Ahmed
Duranee, an independent Afghan kingdom comprising the Principalities of Herat, Cabul, Candahar, Pechawur, and the whole of

the territories afterward owned by the Sikhs.?!? This kingdom,
only superficially cemented, collapsed at the death of its founder,
and was again broken up into its constituent parts, the indepen-

4 Mahmud and Ashraf.— Ed.

dent Afghan tribes with separate chiefs, divided by interminable
feuds and only exceptionally rallied under the common pressure
of a collision with Persia. This political antagonism between the
Afghans and Persians, founded on diversity of race, blended with
historical reminiscences, kept alive by frontier quarrels and rival
claims, is also, as it were, sanctioned by religious antagonism, the
Afghans being Mohammedans of the Suni sect, that is to say, of
the orthodox Mahometan faith, while Persia forms the stronghold
of the heretical Shiites.

In spite of this intense and universal antagonism, there existed
one point of contact between the Persians and Afghans—their
common hostility to Russia. Russia invaded Persia for the first time
under Peter the Great, but without much advantage. Alexander I,
more successful, deprived Persia, by the treaty of Ghulistan,?” of
twelve provinces—the greater part of them south of the Caucasus.
Nicholas, by the war of 1826-27, ending in the treaty of
Turkmanchai,”"* stripped Persia of several additional districts, and
interdicted her from the navigation on her own shores along the
Caspian Sea. The memory of past spoliations, the endurance of
present restrictions, and the fear of future encroachments, alike
concurred to spur Persia into deadly opposition to Russia. The
Afghans, on their part, although never involved in actual quarrels
with Russia, were used to consider her as the eternal foe of their
religion, and a giant which was to swallow Asia. From considering
Russia as their natural foe, both races—Persians and Afghans—
were induced to consider England as their natural ally. Thus, to
maintain her supremacy, England had but to play the benevolent
mediator between Persia and Afghanistan, and to prove the
decided adversary of Russian encroachment. A show of amity on
the one hand, and an earnest of resistance on the other—nothing
else was required.

It cannot be said, however, that the advantages of this position
have been very successfully improved. In 1834, in the matter of
the selection of an heir to the Shah of Persia, the English were
induced to co-operate in favour of the prince? proposed by Russia,
and the next year to aid that prince with money and the active
assistance of British military officers in maintaining his claim by
arms against his rival.”?’? The English Ambassadors dispatched to
Persia were charged to warn the Persian Government against

4 Mohammed Mirza.— Ed.

6 Mohammed Mirza’s rivals were the three sons of his grandfather, Fath Ali
Shah.— Ed.

allowing itself to be pushed on to make war against the Afghans,
which could only result in a waste of resources; but when these
Ambassadors earnestly called for authority to prevent a threatened
war of this sort, they were put in mind by the Ministry at home of
an article in an old treaty of 1814, by which, in case of war
between Persia and the Afghans, the English were not to interfere
unless their mediation should be solicited.”° The idea of the
British envoys and of the British Indian authorities was that this
war was planned by Russia, which power desired to employ the
extension of Persian authority eastward as the means of opening a
road by which at some time or other a Russian army might enter
India. These representations seem, however, to have made little or
no impression on Lord Palmerston, then at the head of the
Department of Foreign Affairs, and in September, 1837, a Persian
army invaded Afghanistan. Various small successes carried it to
Herat, before which town it encamped and began siege operations
under the personal direction of Count Simonich, the Russian
Ambassador at the Persian Court. During the progress of these
warlike acts, McNeill, the British Ambassador, found himself
paralyzed by contradictory instructions. On the one hand, Lord
Palmerston enjoined him “to refrain from making the relations of
Persia” with Herat a “subject of discussion,” as England had
nothing to say between Persia and Herat. On the other hand,
Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, wanted him to
dissuade the Shah from pushing on his operations. At the very
outset of the expedition Mr. Ellis had recalled the British officers
serving in the Persian army, but Palmerston had them reinstated.
So, again, the Indian Governor-General instructing McNeill to
withdraw the British officers, Palmerston again reversed that
decision. On March 8, 1838, McNeill proceeded to the Persian
camp and offered his mediation, not in the name of England, but
of India.

Toward the end of May 1838, the siege having now lasted about
nine months, Palmerston sent a menacing dispatch to the Persian
Court, for the first time making the affair of Herat a subject of
remonstrance, and for the first time inveighing against “Persia’s
connection with Russia”.* Simultaneously, a hostile expedition was
ordered by the Indian Government to sail to the Persian Gulf and
seize upon the Island of Karak—the same lately occupied by the

’ Palmerston’s letter to McNeill of July 27, 1838, Correspondence Relating to Persia and
Affghanistan, pp. 81-89.— Ed.

English. At a still later epoch the English Envoy withdrew from
Teheran to Erzeroum, and the Persian Ambassador’ sent to
England was refused admission. In the mean time, in spite of a
very protracted blockade, Herat had held out, the Persian assaults
were beaten back, and on Aug. 15, 1838, the Shah” was forced to
raise the siege and to retreat in hurried marches from Afghanistan. Here one would have supposed the operations of the English

might have ended; but so far from that, matters took a most
extraordinary turn. Not content with repelling the attempts of
Persia, made, it was alleged, at the instigation and in the interest
of Russia, to seize a part of Afghanistan, the English undertook to
occupy the whole of it for themselves. Hence the famous Afghan
war,! the ultimate result of which was so disastrous to the
English, and the real responsibility for which still remains so much
a mystery.

The present war against Persia has been undertaken on grounds
very similar to that which preceded the Afghan war, namely, an
attack upon Herat by the Persians, resulting, on the present
occasion, in the capture of that city. A striking circumstance,
however, is that the English have now been acting as the allies and
defenders of the same Dost Mohammed, whom, in the Afghan
struggle, they so unsuccessfully undertook to dethrone. It remains
to be seen whether this war is to have sequences as extraordinary
and unexpected as those which attended the former one.