Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

Lord Mayo's next object was to open conciliatory relations with Russia by honestly explaining the real nature of the change which had taken place. He accepted Russia's splendid vitality in Central Asia as a fact neither to be shirked nor condemned, but as one which, by vigilant firmness, might be rendered harmless to ourselves. The formal relations between the Courts of St. James and St. Petersburg are of course conducted by the Foreign Office in England. But Lord Mayo's travels in Russia had given him an insight into the strong personal element in the working of the Russian official system, and had made several of the Russian Ministers his warm friends for life. Without interfering, therefore, with the regular relations between the two Courts, he thought it might be advantageous that an unofficial interchange of views should take place between the high officers connected with the actual administration of Asiatic affairs.

He therefore took the opportunity of a distinguished Bengal Civilian going home on leave, to authorise him, if it met with the concurrence of Her Majesty's Ministers, to give assurances to the leading Russian officials of his peaceful policy, and to enter into frank and friendly explanations on Central Asian affairs. Sir Douglas (then Mr.) Forsyth reached St. Petersburg in October 1869. The result of the confidential interchange of opinions which followed was the acceptance of Lord Mayo's view that the best security for peace in Central Asia consisted in maintaining the great States on the Indian frontier in a position of effective independence. Efforts were also made to prevent the recurrence of those unauthorised aggressions by Russian frontier officers, which had kept Central Asia in perpetual turmoil. Of these efforts it may be briefly said that they were successful during the term of Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty.

In the interviews of Sir Douglas Forsyth with the Russian Minister of War and the Minister of the Asiatic Department it was agreed that Russia should respect as Afghánistán all the Provinces which Sher Alí then held, that the Oxus should be the boundary line of Sher Alí's dominions on the north, and that both England and Russia should do their best to prevent aggressions by the Asiatic States under their control. Lord Mayo lost no time in securing for Sher Alí the guarantee of a recognised boundary against the Amír's neighbours in Central Asia. In 1871 the Russians, however, raised grave objections to Badakshán being included within the Afghán line. This question was settled by friendly negotiations in 1872. In January, 1873, Count Schouvaloff arrived in London to personally express the Emperor's sanction to the disputed territories being recognised as part of Afghánistán. Subsequent delimitations have given precision to the frontier. But practically it may be said that Afghánistán, as territorially defined by Lord Mayo in 1869, remained substantially the Afghánistán of the following twenty years.

Having thus placed the affairs of Afghánistán on a satisfactory footing, Lord Mayo turned his attention to the great territories which stretch southward from it along our Sind Frontier and eastwards to Persia. He found that our relations with these territories, loosely named Balúchistán or Khelát, were perplexed by two distinct sets of complications—one external, the other internal. The first referred to the frontier between Balúchistán and Persia. This had never been settled, and had for generations formed the arena of mutual aggressions and sanguinary raids. The internal complication arose from the ill-defined position of the Khán or Ruler towards his nobility. According to one party in Khelát, the Khán is the Sovereign of the State; according to another, he is the head of a confederacy of Chiefs. The net result was, that what between wars of extermination on the Persian Frontier, and the internecine struggle between the royalist and oligarchic parties within the State, Balúchistán knew no rest, and might at any moment prove a troublesome neighbour. Her internal rebellions and her border feuds rendered it very hard to discover with whom the actual authority rested, or how far it extended, and made it difficult for the British Government to take measures for the consolidation of the titular ruler's power.

Lord Mayo vigorously addressed himself to the solution of both the external and the internal problem of Balúchistán. His action led to the demarcation of a political boundary between Afghánistán and Persia; which practically put an end to the aggressions of the latter. He displayed not less vigour in trying to help Balúchistán to evolve from her conflicting factions a stable and permanent central power. The task proved a most difficult one. Each of the great parties in Balúchistán had a real basis of right on which to found its claims. The nobles could show that they had frequently controlled the Khán, and compelled him to act as the head of a confederacy of Chiefs rather than as a supreme ruler. The Khán could prove that although he had from time to time succumbed to his rebellious barons, yet that he had only done so after a struggle, and that he had exercised his royal authority whenever he again found himself strong enough.

The question resembled the worn-out discussion as to whether England was or was not a limited monarchy under the Plantagenets. The constitutional difficulties in Balúchistán were embittered by wrongs both great and recent on both sides; and at the time of Lord Mayo's death, its consolidation into a well-governed kingdom yet remained to be accomplished. He lived, however, to see his efforts bear fruit in a period of unwonted rest to its unhappy population, and to place the whole problem in a fair train for settlement. Before his sudden end, he had the satisfaction of being able to authorise a high British officer to act as arbitrator between the Khán and the tribal Chiefs.

Due north of India, beyond Kashmír and the Himálayas, another State made pressing claims on Lord Mayo's attention. This State was known as Eastern Turkestán. It owed its origin to one of those revivals, partly religious, partly political, which at that time threatened to dismember the Chinese Empire. The Panthays had proved the efficacy of such a revival by the establishment of an independent Muhammadan State in the south-west of China. The Chinese Musalmáns of the Desert of Gobi on the far north-western frontier followed their example, and ended by raising their rebellion to the dignity of a holy war. The Chinese authorities were expelled and all who supported them were massacred. In 1864 the new Musalmán Power, composed of very heterogeneous elements, found itself in possession of Eastern Turkestán. After a further struggle among the victors, Yákúb Kushbegí, a brave soldier of fortune, emerged in 1869 as the Ruler of the vast central territory which stretched eastwards from the Pamír Steppe to the Chinese Frontier, and from the British-protected State of Kashmír on the south to the Russian outposts on the Shan and Muzart ranges on the north.

In January, 1870, an envoy from the new Ruler arrived in India to solicit, inter alia, that a British officer might accompany him back on a friendly visit to his master. Lord Mayo consented to send Mr. Douglas Forsyth on one express condition—that in no sense was the visit to be a mission, nor was it to have a diplomatic object.

Mr. Forsyth was to abstain from taking part in any political questions, or in any internal disputes, further than repeating the general advice already given to Yákúb's envoy by Lord Mayo: namely, that Yákúb would best consult the interests of his kingdom by a watchful, just, and vigorous government; by strengthening the defences of his frontier; and above all, by not interfering in the political affairs of other States, or in the quarrels of Chiefs or tribes that did not directly concern his own interests. Mr. Forsyth was to limit his stay in the country, so as to run no risk of finding the Himálayan passes closed by the winter's snow, and of thus being detained in Yárkand till the following year. He was to collect full and trustworthy information concerning the nature and resources of Eastern Turkestán and the neighbouring countries, their recent history, their present political condition, their capabilities for trade, the Indian staples most in demand, their price in the Yárkand market, and the articles which could be most profitably brought to India in exchange.