Imperial Britain's Afghan agony.

• Author: Jones, Seth G.
• Position: The Dark Defile: Britain's Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842 - Book review

Diana Preston, The Dark Defile: Britain's Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842 (New York: Walker & Company, 2012), 320 pp., $28.00.

For many foreigners, the history of Afghanistan reads like a morose, Shakespearean tragedy. A litany of armies ventured into the fabled "graveyard of empires," sometimes well-intentioned, only to face insurmountable challenges and withdraw in humiliating defeat. Without a doubt, the quintessential Afghan tragedy is the First Anglo-Afghan War, the subject of Diana Preston's book, The Dark Defile: Britain's Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842.

As Kabul and growing parts of the country rose up in rebellion, the British embarked on an inglorious retreat in January 1842 led by Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Britain's chief representative to Kabul, and Major General William Elphinstone, commander of the British Army in Afghanistan. The British-led force, which numbered about 4,500 soldiers and included a large contingent of Indian sepoys, was eviscerated as it battled through biting cold, knee-deep snow and apoplectic tribesmen. Dr. William Brydon, the lone European survivor to reach the British fort at Jalalabad, later recalled: "This was a terrible march, the fire of the enemy incessant, and numbers of officers and men, not knowing where they were going from snow-blindness, were cut up."

The Dark Defile, whose title comes from the lines of a Rudyard Kipling poem, is an impressive book, and Preston relies on primary sources to tell an intriguing story from the British perspective. It is not as comprehensive as the classics by such historians as John William Kaye, whose History of the War in Afghanistan remains a paradigmatic account of the British experience, but it is well sourced and well written.

Given the current war in Afghanistan, it is natural to inquire about the applicability to today of Britain's nineteenth-century experience. But its relevance is limited. Not every empire that ventured into those lands experienced the same dire fate as the British did in the nineteenth century. Still, two lessons bear close attention. The first is a virtual tenet among most Afghan anthropologists: a strategy that focuses only on creating a strong central government is unlikely to succeed in a country where power remains local. The second is perhaps more sobering: contrary to modern counterinsurgency theories, victory--and defeat--may ultimately be more a function of winning the hearts and minds of domestic constituents than of local Afghans. Both lessons become vividly apparent in The Dark Defile.

Preston tells the British tragedy in colorful prose. In the early nineteenth century, Britain was a global superpower that boasted impressive political, military and economic might. It was, to be sure, the era of Pax Britannica. The country's gross national product was $8.2 billion, and it boasted a 53 percent relative share of European wealth, had the largest iron and steel production in the world, and enjoyed a 10 percent share of world manufacturing output. The only countries that came close were Russia and France, which had large populations and similar levels of gross national product, world manufacturing output and industrial potential.

In South Asia, the British Empire was firmly entrenched in India, where the East India Company had flexed its economic and military muscles to annex or subdue much of the subcontinent. Britain's chief rival in the region was Russia, and the two engaged in a growing balance-of-power struggle. The "Great Game" was alive and well. As Preston writes, "the British perceived the Russians as the greatest threat to India," either directly or by inciting others to act against British interests. Reacting to reports from British spies and diplomats across the region, including the indefatigable Alexander Burnes, the British had become increasingly edgy about Russian expansionism. Burnes's reports emphasized that Afghanistan could be a profitable trade route and help balance Russian power.

In May 1838, senior British government officials debated several options. Lord Auckland, the governor-general of India, wrote to Sir John...