scholarly journals Durand Line Agreement 1893: Myths and Reality

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-376
Author(s):  
Salman Anwar ◽  
Asiya Bibi ◽  
Nouman Khan

This paper attempts to analyse the myths about the Durand Line Agreement between the British India and Afghanistan in 1893. Nineteenth century is considered as the century of imperialism. The two great powers i.e Great Britain and Russia were in competition to fulfill their imperialistic designs. Great Britain succeeded in taking full control of India and Russia annexed Khiva, Bokhara and Khokand currently Central Asian republics until 1870. Afghanistan was the only state left between the two giants. The British India tested its muscles in Afghanistan in 1839 and 1878 but failed to consolidate. The fear of Russian advancement during the Great Game compelled the British India to declare Afghanistan a buffer state and demarcate its boundaries. They started working on it immediately after the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1885. Resultantly the western boundaries of India were secured through the famous Durand Line Agreement in 1893 between Afghanistan and British India. After the independence of Pakistan in 1947 a lot of myths emerged related to this agreement. This paper focuses on those myths and its reality in order to clarify the misunderstanding related to this much debated agreement.

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-675
Author(s):  
L. P. Morris

When great powers quarrel their lesser neighbours are often worst affected. Cajoled and wooed, they are drawn into conflicts they would prefer to avoid. Such involvement may exacerbate internal weaknesses and end by damaging them long after the causes of the original dispute have faded. Nineteenth-century Iran became drawn into Anglo-Russian rivalries in Central Asia as each sought to secure her assistance. Spectators of the so-called ‘Great Game’ were not allowed: the boxes were part of the field of play.


Author(s):  
JOHN BOARDMAN

This chapter discusses the interest of the west in the history of Central Asia. It explains that central Asia has been studied by many western scholars and explorers, including British archaeologist Aurel Stein and traveller Sir John de Maundeville. Central Asia figured prominently in the days of political concerns about the safety of British India in the nineteenth century and this generated the interest of scholars. Today, the boom in Central Asian studies is further encouraged by the presence in Britain of those who have worked in this field and the source of many new publications on both prehistoric and historic periods.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-243
Author(s):  
M. H. Glantz

The region historically referred to as Soviet Central Asia includes the 5 Central Asian Republics (CARs) of the Former Soviet Union (FSU): Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Their political status changed drastically when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and they became independent republics. Since the early 1990s, Central Asian leaders have referred on occasion to neighboring Afghanistan as the sixth CAR. In fact, it does occupy 14% of the Aral Sea Basin and its mountains supply about 15% of streamflow to the region’s mighty Amu Darya River that used to flow into Central Asia’s Aral Sea.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER MORRISON

AbstractDrawing on published documents and research in Russian, Uzbek, British, and Indian archives, this article explains how a hasty attempt by Russia to put pressure on the British in Central Asia unintentionally triggered the second Anglo–Afghan War of 1878–80. This conflict is usually interpreted within the framework of the so-called ‘Great Game’, which assumes that only the European ‘Great Powers’ had any agency in Central Asia, pursuing a coherent strategy with a clearly defined set of goals and mutually understood rules. The outbreak of the Second Anglo–Afghan war is usually seen as a deliberate attempt by the Russians to embroil the British disastrously in Afghan affairs, leading to the eventual installation of ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, hosted for many years by the Russians in Samarkand, on the Afghan throne. In fact, the Russians did not foresee any of this. ‘Abd al-Rahman's ascent to the Afghan throne owed nothing to Russian support, and everything to British desperation. What at first seems like a classic ‘Great Game’ episode was a tale of blundering and unintended consequences on both sides. Central Asian rulers were not merely passive bystanders who provided a picturesque backdrop for Anglo–Russian relations, but important actors in their own right.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER MORRISON

AbstractThis paper examines two linked cases of abortive Imperial expansion. The British invasion of Afghanistan and the Russian winter expedition to Khiva both took place in 1839, and both ended in disaster. These events were linked, not merely by coincidence, but by mutual reactions to intelligence received in Orenburg, St Petersburg, Calcutta, London, and Tehran. British and Russian officials shared similar fears about each other's ambitions in Central Asia, similar patterns of prejudice, arrogance and ignorance, and a similar sense of entitlement as the self-conscious agents of two ‘Great Powers’. By examining the decision-making process which preceded these twin cases of expansion, and the British and Russian attitudes to Central Asian rulers and informants, the paper provides not only a deeper understanding of what provoked these particular disasters, but also of the wider process of European imperial expansion in the early nineteenth century.


1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Frolova-Walker

The present article examines the Soviet project of developing national musical cultures within the Caucasian and Central Asian republics of the USSR. This undertaking effectively required the transplanting of the Russian nineteenth-century model of musical nationalism to the republics, under the guidance of composers sent from Moscow and Leningrad. The article investigates the relationship between this model and its imitations, using examples from Caucasian and Asian operas, and touching upon the connected discourses of orientalism and socialist realism.


Author(s):  
Mary S. Barton

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN WEINSTEIN

AbstractThis article attempts to shed new light on the character of late Victorian Liberalism by investigating its political priorities in British India. It takes as its particular focus the debates which raged between 1881 and 1883 over the Government of India Resolution on Local Self-Government. Along with the Ilbert Bill, the Resolution comprised the centrepiece of the marquis of Ripon's self-consciously Liberal programme for dismantling Lytton's Raj. When analysed in conjunction with contemporaneous Liberal discourse on English local government reform, the debates surrounding the Resolution help to clarify many of the central principles of late Victorian Liberalism. In particular, these debates emphasize the profound importance of local government reform to what one might call the Liberal project. Beyond its utility in effecting retrenchment, efficiency, and ‘sound finance’, local government reform was valued by Liberals as the best and safest means of effecting ‘political education’ among populations, in both Britain and India, with increasingly strong claims to inclusion within the body politic.


Author(s):  
I. Labinskaya

The session of IMEMO academic council in December 2010 discussed the problems of Central Asia in the context of the Afghan situation. In her keynote report D. Malysheva, doctor of political sciences, pointed at the increased attention to Central Asia by regional and international players. This is explained by the new and extremely worrying situation in neighboring Afghanistan. There is a prospect that NATO will lose the war in Afghanistan and that the coalition troops will be withdrawn from that country. In its turn, this generates a threat of Taliban’s return to power in this country. Thus, we cannot exclude the political upheavals in the Central Asian republics that will inevitably affect Russia's interests. The discussion highlighted Russia’s stable interest to Afghanistan both politically and economically.


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