The Napoleonic Wars by Mikaberidze Alexander;

Author:Mikaberidze, Alexander;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2019-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

The six years of Minto’s administration coincided with the height of the Napoleonic Wars. The Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and the resulting Franco-Russian alliance revived British fears of a French-sponsored Russian attack across the Central Asian steppes. At the same time, with General Gardanne arriving in Tehran to deepen Franco-Persian cooperation and the French offices engaged in military surveys of Iran, many at the BEIC believed that, in the words of British diplomat Mountstuart Elphinstone, “it appeared as if the French intended to carry the war into Asia.”26 Consequently, Lord Minto spent next seven years working steadily to counter these threats. He pursued a multipronged foreign policy that combined diplomatic overtures with forceful projection of power across much of South Asia.27 To guard against a possible French land attack, Minto dispatched several missions to secure northwestern approaches to India. Elphinstone led the first official British mission to the Afghan kingdom, where he met Shah Shuja at Peshawar in the spring of 1809. The two sides negotiated a treaty of “friendship and union” that established a defensive alliance between the British and the Afghans, with the latter pledging to block any joint French advance through their territories. The agreement proved to be short-lived; shortly thereafter the shah was overthrown and driven into exile.28 At the same time, two British missions to Iran also brought some dividends. Sir John Malcolm and Sir Harford Jones were able to counteract French influence and sign a treaty of alliance with Fath Ali Shah that formed an Anglo-Iranian alliance against Russia, involving an annual subsidy of £120,000 for as long as that war lasted. Also in 1809, another BEIC diplomat, the young Charles Metcalfe, traveled to Punjab, where he negotiated with Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire the Treaty of Amritsar, which defined British and Sikh spheres of influence, secured Sikh support against possible French attack, and settled Anglo-Sikh relations for a generation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.