outcome: “ The calamity of 1842 was retribution sufficient … to stamp in indelible characters upon the page of history, the great truth that the policy which was pursued in Afghanistan was unjust, and that, therefore, it was signally disastrous. It was … an unrighteous usurpation, and the curse of God was on it from the first. Our successes at the outset were a part of the curse. They lapped us in false security, and deluded us to our overthrow. This is the great lesson … ‘The Lord God of recompenses shall surely requite.’ ”
Henry Lushington , another commentator, wrote in a book-long analysis of the conflict in 1844: “We entered Afghanistan to effect a change of dynasty—we withdrew from it professing our readiness to acknowledge any government which the Afghans may themselves think fit to establish. We entered it above all to establish a government friendly to ourselves. Are the Afghans our friends now?… Except for the anarchy we have left in the place of order, the hatred in the place of kindness, all is as it was before … The received code of international morality is not even in the nineteenth century very strict. One principle however seems to be admitted in the theory, if not the practice of civilised men, that an aggressive war—a war undertaken against unoffending parties with a view to our own benefit only—is unjust, and conversely that a war to be just must partake the character of a defensive war. It may be defensive in various ways … either preventing an injury which it is attempted to inflict, or of exacting reparation for one inflicted, and taking the necessary security against its future infliction but in one way or other defensive it must be.” He could find no justification for the campaign being a defensive war since “the Afghans had not injured us either nationally or individually.” He believed that individuals could not place the blame for the war solely on the government: “The crime … is one of which the responsibility is shared by every Englishman. It is no new thing to say that a nation and especially a free nation is generally accountable for the conduct of its government.”
Lushington placed particular emphasis on the impact of misjudgment. “The great error of Sir William Macnaghten,” he wrote, “appears to us to have been the attempt to bestow too soon and without sufficient means of coercing those who had hitherto lived at the expense of their weaker neighbours, the unappreciated blessings of an organised and powerful government upon the people of Afghanistan … We have received a severe lesson which we may make a useful one if we choose to learn from it well, if not we shall perpetrate injustices again and again.”
A report produced while the war was still in progress by one of the committees of the East India Company, which, as Hobhouse had confessed, had been largely ignored in the conduct of the war, stated, “ This war of robbery is waged by the English government through the intervention of the government of India without the knowledge of England or of Parliament … and therefore evading the check placed by the constitution on the exercise of the prerogative of the crown in declaring war. It presents, therefore, a new crime in the annals of nations—a secret war. It had been made by a people without their knowledge, against another people who had committed no offence. Effects …: loss of England’s character for fair dealing; loss of her character of success; the Mussulman population is rendered hostile. ” The Times in May 1842 commented, “This nation spent £15 million on a less than profitable effort after self-aggrandisement in Afghanistan, and spends £30,000 a year on a system of education satisfactory to nobody.” However, calls for a full parliamentary inquiry into the background to the war and into the doctoring of the government papers, led by, among others, a newly elected Tory member of Parliament named Benjamin Disraeli, came
Henry Lushington , another commentator, wrote in a book-long analysis of the conflict in 1844: “We entered Afghanistan to effect a change of dynasty—we withdrew from it professing our readiness to acknowledge any government which the Afghans may themselves think fit to establish. We entered it above all to establish a government friendly to ourselves. Are the Afghans our friends now?… Except for the anarchy we have left in the place of order, the hatred in the place of kindness, all is as it was before … The received code of international morality is not even in the nineteenth century very strict. One principle however seems to be admitted in the theory, if not the practice of civilised men, that an aggressive war—a war undertaken against unoffending parties with a view to our own benefit only—is unjust, and conversely that a war to be just must partake the character of a defensive war. It may be defensive in various ways … either preventing an injury which it is attempted to inflict, or of exacting reparation for one inflicted, and taking the necessary security against its future infliction but in one way or other defensive it must be.” He could find no justification for the campaign being a defensive war since “the Afghans had not injured us either nationally or individually.” He believed that individuals could not place the blame for the war solely on the government: “The crime … is one of which the responsibility is shared by every Englishman. It is no new thing to say that a nation and especially a free nation is generally accountable for the conduct of its government.”
Lushington placed particular emphasis on the impact of misjudgment. “The great error of Sir William Macnaghten,” he wrote, “appears to us to have been the attempt to bestow too soon and without sufficient means of coercing those who had hitherto lived at the expense of their weaker neighbours, the unappreciated blessings of an organised and powerful government upon the people of Afghanistan … We have received a severe lesson which we may make a useful one if we choose to learn from it well, if not we shall perpetrate injustices again and again.”
A report produced while the war was still in progress by one of the committees of the East India Company, which, as Hobhouse had confessed, had been largely ignored in the conduct of the war, stated, “ This war of robbery is waged by the English government through the intervention of the government of India without the knowledge of England or of Parliament … and therefore evading the check placed by the constitution on the exercise of the prerogative of the crown in declaring war. It presents, therefore, a new crime in the annals of nations—a secret war. It had been made by a people without their knowledge, against another people who had committed no offence. Effects …: loss of England’s character for fair dealing; loss of her character of success; the Mussulman population is rendered hostile. ” The Times in May 1842 commented, “This nation spent £15 million on a less than profitable effort after self-aggrandisement in Afghanistan, and spends £30,000 a year on a system of education satisfactory to nobody.” However, calls for a full parliamentary inquiry into the background to the war and into the doctoring of the government papers, led by, among others, a newly elected Tory member of Parliament named Benjamin Disraeli, came
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