Battle of Ghazni - Prelude

Prelude

In the 1830s, the British were firmly entrenched in India but by 1837, the British feared a Russian invasion of India through the Khyber and Bolan Passes as the Russian Empire had expanded towards the British dominion of India. The British sent an envoy to Kabul to form an alliance with Afghanistan's emir, Dost Muhammad against Russia. The Emir was in favour of an alliance but wanted British help in recapturing Peshawar which the Sikhs had captured in 1834. The British refused to help. Dost Muhammad then started negotiating with the Russians who had also sent an envoy to Kabul. This led the Governor General of India, Lord Auckland to conclude that Dost Muhammad was anti-British. British fears of a Russian invasion of India took one step closer to becoming a reality when negotiations between the Afghans and Russians broke down in 1838. This led to Persian troops along with their Russian allies to attack the Afghan city of Herat in western Afghanistan in an attempt to annex it. Russia wanting to increase its presence in South and Central Asia had formed an alliance with Persia which had territorial disputes with Afghanistan as Herat had been part of the Persian empire and only in 1750 had it been taken over by Afghanistan. Lord Auckland's plan was to drive away the besiegers and install a ruler in Afghanistan who was pro-British in place of the current Afghan ruler. The British chose Shuja Shah Durrani to be the new leader of Afghanistan. He was the former ruler of Afghanistan and had formed a strategic alliances with Britain during the Napoleonic Wars against Russia and France but was deposed and was living in exile in Lahore.