Does this sound familiar? Afghanistan is invaded by the army of a superpower keen to reinforce its power and prestige within the region. An easy victory is achieved, a puppet ruler is installed and at first things seem to go relatively well. However, resistance to the occupation force grows over time. Serious and humiliating defeats are suffered and the occupier eventually withdraws. This could describe the past thirteen years of Afghan history following the invasion by coalition forces in 2001....

Not a bad book. Good for understanding the early history of Afghanistan.

“When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before.”- Rudyard Kipling, Kim “Only eighty survivors from the [British] column managed to make it alive over the Jagdalak holly-oak barrier…Most of these – some twenty officers and forty-five privates of Shelton’s 44th Foot, and a couple of artillerymen and sepoys – were exposed and surrounded at dawn as they stood, uncertain of the correct road, at the top of the hill of Grandamak…Overwhelmingly outnumbered…and with only twenty muskets an...

I know so little about life in central Asia, its history, culture, language, or anything else. Dalrymple's book was revelatory in many ways. I had no idea that British interests in the region were inspired by a desire to counter Russian activities, and ultimately protect the British money-making colonies in India. The characters Dalrymple paints are fascinating: from the Russian and British agents tasked with bending the ears of kings and tribal rulers, to the Afghan nobility themselves. There i...

This is the story of one of Britain's greatest military defeats,the First Anglo-Afghan War of the nineteenth century.Afghanistan has never been an easy place for foreign invaders to occupy or govern as one invader after another has discovered.It has aptly been called,"the graveyard of empires". The invading British force,also comprising a large Indian contingent,suffered a staggering number of casualties and had to retreat. The "Great Game" for control of Central Asia,was on between Britain and

"You have brought an army into the country, but how do you propose to take it out?" - An Afghan Tribal Chief"I cannot understand why the rulers of so vast an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country." - Dost Mohammad Khan, Deposed and Restored Ruler of Afghanistan************William Dalrymple begins this account of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1808 as the British approach Kabul offering gifts and alliance with Shah Shuja, the ruler of Afghanistan. The...

This is a fine, fine book. Dalrymple understands the tribal and cultural intricacies that elude most western historian writing about Afghanistan or the sub-continent. The story is a rather simple one, The British, obsessed with the idea of expanding their imperial control to the whole of world, invaded Afghanistan to reinstall a puppet regime. It didn’t end well.The story begins with the power struggle between two powerful tribes. The Sadozais, the descendants of Ahmed Shah Abdali, the ruler and...

Interesting background to the present situation. It's the same tribes still fighting the same enemies. It was a good history but only an average read. 3.5 stars.

Between a timeless subject, a world recounted in the raw, a skilled historian and a brilliant writer, what can you get but a book you can't put down...all 2000 grams of it! I don't do 600 page hardbacks for the love of my aging wrists, and I don't do 600 page hardbacks when I've already read three previous versions of the same story (Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game" and "On Secret Service", James Perry's "Arrogant Armies" and of course, J.A.Norris's "The First Afgan War" to say nothing about TV

This is the second Dalrymple book I have read in a short space of time. With that I now consider that he is a extraordinarily good writer. He has had the ability to enthral, enrage and leave me wanting for more with each read. With that I have grabbed a couple more of his tomes and will be looking forward to reading them. Return Of a King is riveting narrative history. In fact lets just say that in my opinion, narrative history that is as good as it gets. There is no need to tell the story here,...

My first book by William Dalrymple, who is a noted historian and mainstay of the Indian literary scene. Napoleon wanted to steal India from the British by marching through Afghanistan (along with Russian troops) in the first half of the 19th century. The British sent an embassy to the Afghans. They decided to place their puppet ruler Shah Shuja in Afghanistan after invading it. But a dispute over an Afghan woman (who was a harem girl of a powerful Afghan warlord) who was seduced by a British off...

I have read a lot of Dalrymple's books - most before I reviewed on GR, and have enjoyed them. There is no risk of criticism of his research, as it is always thorough, and in depth. This is even more the case here, in this great tome of a book.Here Dalrymple presents a tale of such incompetency, ego and mismanagement that he really needed to be accurate to avoid any backlash. Auckland and Macnaghten in particular are shown to make decisions against advice, to the point where reports are simply la...

The pattern of the story is familiar to students of contemporary history. A Western power invades Afghanistan. Their army easily overcomes the forces of the local government and occupies the country. The victory soon turns sour, however, as missteps in dealing with the complex tribal politics of the region soon engender an uprising in the mountainous countryside. Eventually, exhausted by the drain on their resources, the army withdraws, leaving the victorious survivors to squabble over the remai...

Using both British/Indian and Afghani sources the author has written a superb look at the fiasco that was the first British incursion into Afghanistan in 1839-42, known to history as the 1st Anglo-Afghani War. To explain why Britain decided to go into that country, the author starts his narrative with the first meetings of the British with the Afghani gov’t in the early 1800s and with that traces the beginnings of the “Great Game” and how it affected the decisions in Calcutta and London to “Inva...

William Dalrymple is the definitive modern historian of the East India company's reign in India during the 18th and 19th centuries. With already two brilliant books – 'The White Mughals' and 'The Last Mughal' – on the subject, he has now written this masterly chronicle on the disastrous British misadventure in Afghanistan during the years 1839-1842. In his words, this first British war in Afghanistan was one of colonial arrogance, hubris, folly and cultural collision. What else can you call a fo...

The timing of the book is impeccable.Impeccable because there are a lot of similarities between what is Afghanistan now and what it was then.The book describes the history of Afghanistan from 1839-1842.The similarities..World's super-power : Then Britain , now USA.The reasons for the battle for Afghanistan are also similar.The Brits wanted to secure India's borders and feared(wrongly) Russian influence in the region.The present situation has arised from what was a cold war skirmish between USSR

Peerless account of the First Anglo-Afghan War, besting extant volumes by Patrick Macrory and Peter Hopkirk. Dalrymple presents fresh primary research, tapping Afghan, Indian and Russian archives to provide a more rounded portrait. Dalrymple counterpoints the Anglo-Russian "Great Game" with ongoing Afghan tribal rivalries. Ousted Shah Shujah manipulates the British into placing him on the Afghan throne, as more compliant than the cagey Dost Mohammed. Dalrymple fleshes out the familiar story of E...

Before I read this book I was wondering why the U.S. still had troops in Afghanistan. The people of this country hate having foreign soldiers in their country. Their presence probably strengthens the Taliban more than it weakens them because at least they are natives and Muslim. Some Afghans believe that the Chinese will occupy their country after the Americans leave.

The work of William Darymple is a treat to read. This is the second book work of Darymple’s that I have read (the first being The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857). The author does an excellent job providing context and details of the times, characters, and decisions surrounding Britain’s first Afghan war as well as a cautionary tale (largely ignored) for NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.