HANNA, Henry Bathurst. The Second Afghan War 1878-79-80. Its Causes, its Conduct and its Consequences. London: Archibald Constable & Co. 1899, 1904, 1910.
Three volumes, 8vo. Modern library buckram, gilt-stamped lettering-pieces; spines ruled in gilt; pp. x, [2], 386; vii, 372; vii, 583, 14 folding maps; volume three internally with lightly toned edges, short marginal tear to title-page, this re-inserted during re-binding; a very good, complete set.
~b~First edition, presentation copy, extensively inscribed by the author to the Royal United Services Institution for distribution in 1912. Colonel Henry Bathurst Hanna (1839-1914) started his military career in India in 1857 and retired in 1889 devoting himself to collecting Indian paintings and writing on the Great Game and his military experience. He describes in detail the disastrous developments and decisions taken during the Afghan War, harshly criticizing the British Imperial and expansionist policy of the Great Game. His detailed and fluently written blow-by-blow account is 'exhaustive and elaborately documented' (Wilber).
Hanna (1839-1914), colonel in the Punjab Frontier Force, was outspoken in his criticism of British forward policy in India. In the preface he writes that when working on this impressive book together with his wife, that both 'had the conviction forced upon us that the war of 1878 had sprung out of no change of attitude on the part of the Amir of Afghanistan, but out of a change of policy on the part of the British Government - a change due to fears which experience of the country beyond the Indus had shown me to be ill-founded - and that, instead of having been reluctantly undertaken by an insulted and endangered State for the vindication of its honour and the protection of its frontiers, it had been deliberately led up to by a series of steps, some diplomatic, some military, which, in the end, had left Shere Ali no choice but to consent to the diminution of his own authority and his country's independence, or to accept a contest in which his fortunes, at least, were certain to suffer' (volume I, p. vii).
Wilber, Annotated Bibliography of Afghanistan 466; Shaista Wahab, Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection Bibliography II, 1562 (knowing only about two volumes, one volume only in the collection)
Provenance: Volumes two and three with identical inscriptions in ink on title-versos. This Book was presented to the Royal United Service Institution by the Author. March 1912. One of twenty copies purchased by Field-Marshal Sir Charles H. Brownlow, G. C. B. to be distributed "with a view to guarding our rulers against a repetition of such another suicidal war".~i~ The Sir Charles Brownlow (1831–1916) was an officer of the British East India Company, and during the Afghan War Assistant Military Secretary for India. The Royal United Service Institute (as it is nowadays called) is a think tank on geopolitics, international defence and security, set up by the Duke of Wellington. Title-pages with stamped and pencilled numbers; 1980s label of J. B. Hayward and Son, military publishers and book collectors active between 1974 and 1994 inside front covers.
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