A History of the British Conquest of Afghanistan and Western India, 1838-1849.(Book review)

A History of the British Conquest of Afghanistan and Western India, 1838-1849, by Frank H. Wallis; pp. xxii + 358. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009, $119.95, 74.95 [pounds sterling].

Frank Wallis's A History of the British Conquest of Afghanistan and Western India offers a detailed narrative of the westward expansion of the East India Company's empire on the South Asian subcontinent in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Relying on the voluminous holdings of the India Office Records, Wallis's work provides a high-politics perspective on the workings of British imperialism during this tumultuous time. Starting with the First Afghan War, Wallis paints a portrait of an imperial juggernaut let loose that would not come to rest until it had swallowed up Sind and the Punjab (most of present-day Pakistan) and consolidated its rule in central India through the annexation of Gwalior. All this would be accomplished by 1849, making the decade between Lord Auckland's …