Published unsigned as a leading article in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 4937, February 14, 1857, p. 4; attributed to Karl Marx by MEW (vol. 12); MEGA² I/15 not yet published. The article has no headline of its own: the title is the one given in MEW. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). Traducción al español.
To understand the policy and object of the war lately undertaken by the British against Persia, and which, according to the most recent accounts, has been so energetically pushed as to lead to submission on the part of the Shah, it is necessary to take a slight retrospect of Persian affairs. The Persian dynasty, founded in 1502 by Ismael, who claimed to be descended from the ancient Persian kings, after maintaining for more than two centuries the power and dignity of a great State, received, about 1720, a severe shock in the rebellion of the Affghans inhabiting its eastern provinces. Western Persia was invaded by them, and two Affghan princes succeeded in keeping themselves for a few years on the Persian throne. They were, however, speedily expelled by the famous Nadir, acting at first in the capacity of General to the Persian claimant. Afterward he assumed the crown himself, and not only reduced the rebellious Affghans, but by his famous invasion of India contributed much to that disorganization of the declining Mogul empire, which opened the way for the rise of the British power in India.
Amid the anarchy that ensued in Persia after the death of Nadir Shah in 1747, there sprang up, under the rule of Ahmed Duranee, an independent Affghan kingdom comprising the Principalities of Herat, Cabul, Candahar, Peshawur, and the whole of the territories afterward owned by the Sikhs. This kingdom, only superficially cemented, collapsed at the death of its founder, and was again broken up into its constituent parts, the independent Affghan tribes with separate chiefs, divided by interminable feuds and only exceptionally rallied under the common pressure of a collision with Persia. This political antagonism between the Affghans and Persians, founded on diversity of race, blended with historical reminiscences, kept alive by frontier quarrels and rival claims, is also, as it were, sanctioned by religious antagonism, the Affghans being Mahometans of the Suni sect, that is to say, of the orthodox Mahometan faith, while Persia forms the stronghold of the heretical Shiites.
In spite of this intense and universal antagonism, there existed one point of contact between the Persians and Affghans—their common hostility to Russia. Russia invaded Persia for the first time under Peter the Great, but without much advantage. Alexander I., more successful, deprived Persia by the treaty of Ghulistan, of twelve provinces—the greater part of them south of the Caucasus. Nicholas, by the war of 1826-27, ending in the treaty of Turkmanchai, stripped Persia of several additional districts, and interdicted her from the navigation on her own shores along the Caspian Sea. The memory of past spoliations, the endurance of present restrictions, and the fear of future encroachments, alike concurred to spur Persia into deadly opposition to Russia. The Affghans, on their part, although never involved in actual quarrels with Russia, were used to consider her as the eternal foe of their religion, and a giant which was to swallow Asia. From considering Russia as their natural foe, both races—Persians and Affghans—were induced to consider England as their natural ally. Thus, to maintain her supremacy, England had but to play the benevolent mediator between Persia and Affghanistan, and to prove the decided adversary of Russian encroachments. A show of amity on the one hand, and an earnest of resistance on the other—nothing else was required.
It cannot be said, however, that the advantages of this position have been very successfully improved. In 1834, in the matter of the selection of an heir to the Shah of Persia, the English were induced to coöperate in favor of the prince proposed by Russia, and the next year to aid that prince with money and the active assistance of British military officers in maintaining his claim by arms against his rival. The English Embassadors dispatched to Persia were charged to warn the Persian Government against allowing itself to be pushed on to make war against the Affghans, which could only result in a waste of resources; but when these Embassadors earnestly called for authority to prevent a threatened war of this sort, they were put in mind by the Ministry at home of an article in an old treaty of 1814, by which, in case of war between Persia and the Affghans, the English were not to interfere unless their mediation should be solicited. The idea of the British envoys and of the British Indian authorities was that this war was planned by Russia, which power desired to employ the extension of Persian authority eastward as the means of opening a road by which at some time or other a Russian army might enter India. These representations seem, however, to have made little or no impression on Lord Palmerston, then at the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and in September, 1837, a Persian army invaded Affghanistan. Various small successes carried it to Herat, before which town it encamped and began siege operations under the personal direction of Count Simonich, the Russian Embassador at the Persian Court. During the progress of these warlike acts, McNeil, the British Embassador, found himself paralyzed by contradictory instructions. On the one hand, Lord Palmerston enjoined him “to refrain from making the relations of Persia with Herat a subject of discussion,” as England had nothing to say between Persia and Herat. On the other hand, Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India, wanted him to dissuade the Shah from pushing on his operations. At the very outset of the expedition Mr. Ellis had recalled the British officers serving in the Persian army, but Palmerston had them reinstated. So, again, the Indian Governor-General instructing McNeil to withdraw the British officers, Palmerston again reversed that decision. On March 8, 1838, McNeil proceeded to the Persian camp and offered his mediation, not in the name of England, but of India.
Toward the end of May, 1838, the siege having now lasted about nine months, Palmerston sent a menacing dispatch to the Persian Court, for the first time making the affair of Herat a subject of remonstrance, and for the first time inveighing against “Persia’s connection with Russia.” Simultaneously, a hostile expedition was ordered by the Indian Government to sail to the Persian Gulf and seize upon the Island of Karak—the same lately occupied by the English. At a still later epoch the English Envoy withdrew from Teheran to Erzeroum, and the Persian Embassador sent to England was refused admission. In the mean time, in spite of a very protracted blockade, Herat had held out, the Persian assaults were beaten back, and on Aug. 15, 1838, the Shah was forced to raise the siege and to retreat in hurried marches from Affghanistan. Here one would have supposed the operations of the English might have ended; but so far from that, matters took a most extraordinary turn. Not content with repelling the attempts of Persia, made, it was alleged, at the instigation and in the interest of Russia, to seize a part of Affghanistan, the English undertook to occupy the whole of it for themselves. Hence the famous Affghan war, the ultimate result of which was so disastrous to the English, and the real responsibility for which still remains so much a mystery.
The present war against Persia has been undertaken on grounds very similar to that which preceded the Affghan war, namely, an attack upon Herat by the Persians, resulting, on the present occasion, in the capture of that city. A striking circumstance, however, is that the English have now been acting as the allies and defenders of the same Dost Mahomed, whom, in the Affghan struggle, they so unsuccessfully undertook to dethrone. It remains to be seen whether this war is to have sequences as extraordinary and unexpected as those which attended the former one.