Return Of A King

Product Description

In the spring of 1839 the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks & plumed shakos nearly 20 000 British & East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes & re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad & the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat & utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen. Return of a King is the definitive analysis of the First Afghan War told through the lives of unforgettable characters on all sides & using for the first time contemporary Afghan accounts of the conflict. Prize-winning & bestselling historian William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful & important parable of colonial ambition & cultural collision folly & hubris for our times.