This comprehensive history of Kandahar uses unpublished and fugitive sources to provide a detailed picture of the geographical layout and political, social, ethnic, religious, and economic life in Afghanistan’s second largest city throughout the nineteenth century.

The story of the British commander who led a three-hundred-mile march from Kabul to Kandahar and became the toast of Victorian England. This book examines the role of Frederick Roberts in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, culminating in his famous march in 1880 with ten thousand British and Indian soldiers, covering three hundred miles in twenty-three days, from Kabul to Kandahar to defeat the Afghan army of Ayub Khan, pretender to the Amirship of Kabul. The march made Roberts one of late Victorian England’s great military heroes, partly because of the achievement itself, partly because the victory restored British prestige after defeat, and finally because of Roberts’ astute use of the press to puff his victory. This overcame the earlier damage done to his reputation by the political storm that followed his hanging of over eighty Afghans in revenge for the massacre of a British envoy and his escort. It enabled the liberal Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon, to extract his forces from an Afghan imbroglio with prestige restored and an emir on the Afghan throne who for thirty-nine years maintained friendship with British India. Roberts (or Bobs as he was known) subsequently advanced to command the Indian Army, working closely with future viceroys to influence Indian defense policy on the North-West Frontier, and being hymned by Rudyard Kipling, poet of empire. His bestselling autobiography, Forty-One Years in India, established his image before the British public and he remains one of Britain’s best known, if least understood, military figures

October 6, 1879. The roar of guns and the shout of men reached a heightened pitch as the Highlanders and Gurkhas crested the ridgeline and attacked the Afghani trenches. Khaki and green uniforms mixed with the scarlet of the Afghans as the battle sea-sawed for a few minutes. Then the line of scarlet-clad Afghani troops wavered and broke. British Army lieutenant Robert Burton watched as thousands of Afghani troops fled in headlong retreat. The British had seized the first line. The Road to Kandahar is an historical fiction novel about a forgotten period of history when Britain and Russia fought the very first Cold War in the heart of Asia. In this book, a British political officer, Robert Burton, and his friends, Richard Leary and Ali Masheed, fight a battle of wits against a cunning Russian political officer, Count Nikolai Kuragin. Against a backdrop of the high passes and deserts of Afghanistan, Burton, Leary and Ali must stop a potential Russian invasion during the Second Afghan War (1878-80) and fight against treachery and injustice within their own ranks.

The Afghan War of 1879-80 is a detailed account of the final phase of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80), consisting of a reprinting in book form of letters originally written from the field and published in an Indian newspaper. The author, Howard Hensman, was a special correspondent of the Allahabad Pioneer. He was the only journalist to accompany the Anglo-Indian Kurram Valley Field Force that marched from Ali Kheyl, Afghanistan, to Kabul in the fall of 1879 following the uprising of Afghan forces in Kabul in September of that year and the massacre of the British envoy, Sir Louis Cavagnari, and other British officials in the city. The first letter is dated September 28, 1879, the last September 20, 1880. Brief explanatory texts are used to introduce some of the letters and provide context. Each letter runs to several pages, and collectively they offer a vivid first-hand account of the war as seen from a British perspective. Hensman describes, for example, the courageous charge by Afghan Ghazis at the Battle of Ahmed Khel (April 19, 1880) and the desperate, hand-to-hand fighting with British, Sikh, and Gurkha troops that ensued; the Battle of Maiwand (July 27, 1880), in which a force of 2,500 British and Indian troops was routed by a much larger Afghan force; and many other engagements. The book contains ten detailed foldout maps of the major military operations and battles of the war. A short appendix provides information about the heights above sea level of places in Afghanistan, distances by road between key points, and transportation in the Indian army.