CHAPTER III
FROM ROADS TO RAIDS
In 1849 after Lord Dalhousie's formal annexation of
the Punjab, the North-Western Frontier districts came
under the East India Company's administration. It
brought British India into direct contact with several in-
dependent and warlike Pathan tribes occupying the so-
called " tribal territory7' and opened a new phase in
Frontier policy. The foreign relations of India with
Afghanistan during British rule passed through several
phases at different times, but running through consistently
was the policy of maintaining the independence of the
ruling house so long as it remained in friendly relations
with England and entirely free from the subversive in-
fluences of other rival powers, particularly Russia, whose
moves in Central Asia were Britain's constant headache
from the middle of the last century. There was the
" alarmist policy " when Mount Stuart Elphinstone was
sent out on his " Kabul Mission " in 1809. Then came the
" meddling policy " in 1832 when A. Burns passed through
on his " commercial mission " and again in 1838, when
General Keene advanced into Afghanistan to dethrone the
popular Barakzai chief, Dost Mohammad, and to place on
the throne a friendly king, Shah Shujah, thus giving rise
to the first Afghan War (1839-42). The first phase ended
disastrously for the British with the assassination of Sir
William Macnaughten, the British envoy, and Sir William
Burns, the Political Agent, and the loss of all but one of
the British troops garrisoned at Kabul. An " avenging
army" was then sent. It swept on to Kabul, blew up
the Great Bazar — " an inexcusable act of vandalism ", as
General Roberts afterwards described it. British prestige
being thus " retrieved ", the British forces returned to India
leaving Afghanistan to stew in its own juice. This was
followed by the policy of "masterly inactivity" of Sir
John Lawrence when, on the death of Amir Dost Moham-
mad Khan in 1863, he refused to side with either of the
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