Untold lives blog

In 1937 the Government of Afghanistan purchased 24 aircraft from Italy.  Provision was made for an Italian Air Mission to be deputed to Kabul for the purpose of assembling and maintaining the aircraft, and for training Afghan personnel.  The Political (External) Department of the India Office maintained a file to keep track of the situation.

This development placed the Italians in direct competition with Britain and caused concern amongst British policy makers.  Hawker Aircraft Limited had recently negotiated the sale of eight Hind aircraft to the Afghan Air Force, and was similarly engaged with supplying its own instructors for the same purpose.

Hawker Hind - British official photographer: Imperial War Museum © IWM (ATP 8882B)

British policy favoured the maintenance of a stable, independent, and friendly Afghanistan as the best means of securing its Indian Empire.  Meanwhile, Afghan officials feared being outclassed in the event of war by a larger Iranian Air Force, but lacked the resources and expertise to compete with their neighbour.  British policy makers were therefore in favour of the development of a small but efficient air force in Afghanistan for internal security purposes, being both within Afghan means and no threat to India.  Their strategy for achieving this lay with encouraging the Afghans to develop their air force along the lines of the Royal Air Force using supplies from British sources.

The Afghan authorities had expressed an interest in purchasing British aircraft as far back as 1935.  However, the demands of Britain's own re-armament programme limited the number of aircraft which could be supplied to Afghanistan.  Restrictions over the credit which could be provided to Afghanistan by the Government of India provided a further limitation.  Thus the British were hardly in a position to object when the Afghans turned to the Italians to fulfil their requirements.

The British feared that the Italians would send out an imposing mission to Kabul in view of the larger number of aircraft being supplied, and considered sending out a senior British officer to bolster the British mission.  Such fears turned out to be unfounded, the maximum size of the Italian mission being seven personnel to Hawker’s four.

The result was a scene at Kabul’s aerodrome described as peculiar by William Kerr Fraser-Tytler, Britain's Minister at Kabul.  An Italian delegation was assembling and testing aircraft next to a similarly engaged British contingent, while two German mechanics were busy restoring Junkers aircraft supplied in previous years to serviceable condition.

1938 would however turn the situation entirely to Britain's advantage.  The Italian aircraft sold to the Afghans were powered by engines entirely unsuitable for use at high altitude, and were easily outperformed by Hawker’s Hinds which were much more suited to Afghan conditions.  The Italian supplied aircraft experienced difficulties taking off, and were not able to carry a full load.  As a result, crashes and forced landings were common, and the aircraft became unpopular with Afghan pilots.

Hawker Hind - Afghanistan Air Force. Image via Wikimedia (copyright Alan D R  Brown)

The Italian Mission was withdrawn in 1939, following the German instructors who had been withdrawn the previous year.  Thus Britain was left as the only nation maintaining an air mission at Kabul during the Second World War.  Fraser-Tytler was entirely happy with developments and claimed in a dispatch dated 10 May 1938 to the Foreign Office that ‘This practical demonstration of British superiority could not have been achieved had we been alone in the field’.

Britain had thus achieved an advantageous position in Afghanistan. However the outbreak of the Second World War, and subsequent restrictions on Britain’s ability to supply aircraft and equipment, meant this position could not be fully capitalised on.

Robert Astin
Content Specialist, Archivist
British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, Coll 5/48 ‘Afghanistan: Supply of military aircraft to the Afghan Government; Supply of maps etc. to the Afghan Govt.’ IOR/L/PS/12/2001
British Library, Coll 5/53 ‘Afghanistan: Employment of British nationals in various branches of the Afghan air services; Air instructors’ contracts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2006
British Library, Coll 5/53(2) ‘Afghanistan: Employment of British nationals in various branches of Afghan air services; Air instructors’ contracts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2007
British Library, Coll 5/55 ‘Afghanistan: Supply of Aircraft to Afghan Govt: Contract between Air Ministry & Hawker Aircraft Ltd’ IOR/L/PS/12/2009
British Library, Coll 5/55(2) ‘Afghanistan: Supply of aircraft to the Afghan Govt. Supply of spare parts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2010 IOR/L/PS/12/2010
British Library, Coll 5/55(2) ‘‘Afghanistan: Supply of aircraft to the Afghan Govnt. Supply of spare parts’ IOR/L/PS/12/2011
British Library, Coll 5/60(1) ‘Afghanistan: Purchase of aircraft from foreign sources (1) Italy (2) Germany’ IOR/L/PS/12/2020
 
 

The British did everything in their power to thwart the journey of a young Danish explorer into the heart of Arabia in 1912 – but ended up helping him by mistake.

The Danes had a history of exploration in the Arabian Peninsula going back to Carsten Niebuhr in the 18th century. In 1911 the Royal Danish Geographical Society decided to revive that tradition by mounting a new expedition.  One of the members was a young Danish student, Barclay Raunkiær, whose father, the botanist Christen Raunkiær, gives his name to a system of plant categorisation still in use today.

The Society duly informed the British Government of their intentions. However, the British viewed the expedition as an unwelcome intrusion into their imperial sphere of influence, and decided that it should be prevented.  The British claimed that as they could not guarantee the safety of their own officers and travellers in the region, they could not offer any assistance or protection to the Danes either.

As a result, the Society abandoned the scheme, despite the fact that money had been raised and plans were well advanced. Nevertheless, Raunkiær decided to make the journey himself, and after passing through Ottoman territory, he arrived at Kuwait in January 1912.

Telegram from the Government of India to the Political Resident dated 1 March 1912 asking the Resident to give ‘a hint’ to the Sheikh of Kuwait
IOR/L/PS/10/259, f 75. 

The British Government of India responded by giving instructions to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf  that ‘a hint’ should be given to the Sheikh of Kuwait that no assistance should be given to Raunkiær. Without the Sheikh’s support the expedition would be impossible. British officials also monitored the Dane’s movements in the region and passed on information.

It came then as a considerable surprise to the British some months later to learn that the expedition had been a complete success. Raunkiær had made his way from Kuwait to Riyadh and back to the coast at Bahrain, ‘in a somewhat dilapidated condition’, collecting important geographical, ethnographic and botanical information on the way.

India Office minute: the Royal Danish Geographical Society’s gratitude was ‘a little embarrassing’ - IOR/L/PS/10/259, f 48. 

Worse, the Royal Danish Geographical Society sent a letter thanking the British Government, particularly mentioning the valuable assistance given to Raunkiær by two British Political Agents, Shakespear at Kuwait, and Lorimer at Bahrain. An India Office minute records that after all the obstacles the British had placed in the way of the Danes it was ‘a little embarrassing’ to be thanked in that way, and in the circumstances there seemed to be nothing for it but ‘to put on the best face we can’.

Part of Captain Shakespear’s report on Barclay Raunkiær, 9 March 1912. It was ‘regrettable’ that the Government of India had not made their objections known sooner - IOR/L/PS/10/259, f 42.

The British Government wanted to know what help, exactly, Lorimer and Shakespear had given the expedition. Lorimer was quickly exonerated, but Shakespear was forced to explain that he had given the Dane his ‘good offices’ and permitted the Sheikh of Kuwait to assist the expedition because instructions to the contrary had not arrived in time. He had also thought that Raunkiær’s limited mapping skills showed he was more of a botanist than a geographer, and he had satisfied himself that Raunkiær was not acting on behalf of either the Turks or the Germans.

Raunkiær himself, weakened by his exertions, died in Copenhagen in 1915. He was 25.

Martin Woodward
Content Specialist, Archivist British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Sources:
London, British Library, File 1202/1912 'Arabia:- Travellers. Capt. F. F Hunter. Herr Runkiar (Danish Expedition). Capt Shakespear.'. IOR/L/PS/10/259.
Barclay Raunkiaer, Through Wahhabiland on Camelback (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1969).
See also: Desert Encounter: Knud Holmboe 

The British Legion was founded on 15 May 1921 with a mission, in its own words, ‘to care for those who had suffered as a result of service in the Armed Forces during the [First World] war, whether through their own service or through that of a husband, father or son.’  The first Poppy Day was held on this day, ninety-five years ago, on 11 November 1921.

Detail of the British Legion’s letterhead in use in the 1930s.

Then, as now, poppies were made by war veterans, for sale to the general public in both Britain and across the British Empire (and later, the Commonwealth).  In its formative years, the Legion’s work was solely preoccupied with those that had served in the First World War.  Money raised by the sale of poppies was spent on a variety of programmes, including towards the relief of distress, the provision of employment and housing for ex-servicemen, tuberculosis treatment, pensions, and financial assistance toward the migration of ex-servicemen to Britain’s ‘dominions’.

 

Poppy Day supplies order form, 1934. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 17.

A number of files in the India Office Records, held at the British Library and presently being digitised as part of the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership, give a flavour of the British Legion’s global reach and fundraising efforts between the First and Second World Wars. The records show how the organisation tapped into Britain’s network of colonial administrators to extend their activities to the furthest flung corners of Britain’s empire, including to the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Legion designated administrators such as the Political Agent at Bahrain as Organisers, who were responsible for coordinating the mail order and sale of poppy merchandising in areas under their jurisdiction.

As an Organiser, the Bahrain Political Agent received regular correspondence from the British Legion throughout the 1930s, enclosing, amongst other things: gramophone records containing a personal appeal by the Legion’s then patron, the Prince of Wales; ‘talkie’ films featuring footage of the Cenotaph and war cemeteries in France; brochures; magazines; and mail order forms for leaflets, poppies, wreaths, badges, posters, and poppy ‘mascots’ for cars and motorcycles. The British Legion also sent forms to administrators requesting details of local towns and villages, and ‘any districts where a Poppy Day is not organised’, so that further British communities might be reached.

 
‘Poppy Day World Map’, 1947. IOR/R/15/2/1559, ff 78-79.

Correspondence between the British Legion and Britain’s Political Agent at Bahrain reveals that, prior to 1938, poppies were not sold on the islands, the Political Agent explaining that ‘their sale would not be appropriate in the circumstances in Bahrain.’ Collections were, however, raised amongst the islands’ expatriate community, which had grown in size significantly by the late 1930s, thanks to the large numbers of American and Indian employees working for the Bahrain Petroleum Company.

 
Haig Fund (British Legion) poppy wreaths for order, 1938. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 98.

The start of the Second World War in 1939 marked the point at which the British Legion began to raise funds for those affected by present, as well as historic conflicts. As its letterheads in the first years of the new war made clear, ‘war increases our responsibilities.’ The ‘time is rapidly approaching’ wrote the Legion’s secretary in March 1940, ‘when the claims from this new category of Ex-Service man will assume serious proportions'.

 
Extract from a British Legion letter, dated December 1939. IOR/R/15/2/1558, f 132.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project

British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, London, ‘File 16/48 I Corr. re: Earl Haig’s Appeal Fund (Poppy Day)’ (IOR/R/15/2/1558)
British Library, London, ‘File 16/48 II Correspondence regarding Earl Haig’s appeal fund (poppy day )’ (IOR/R/15/2/1559)
British Library, London, ‘File No 20/7 Ceremonials and Honours. Armistice day’ (IOR/R/15/2/1672)
James Fox “Poppy Politics: Remembrance of Things Present” in Constantine Sandis (ed) Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice (Cambridge Open Book Publishers, 2014) Google Books

After the Japanese invasion of Thailand in 1941, just before the Thai Government declared war on Britain and the United States on 25 January 1942, 22 cases containing the archives of the British Legation in Bangkok were removed. A similar thing happened to the 84 boxes containing the archives of the British Embassy in China for the years 1931-1939, which went from Beijing to Nanjing and, in 1941, were also removed for safe custody during the war.

Japanese troops at Singapore 1942 Wikimedia Commons

Confidential documents were said to have been destroyed, and then the boxes containing the two archives were carefully sent to Singapore in 1941. 

IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 34

But this wasn’t a safe choice. Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and the two archives were shipped to India shortly afterwards. The archives remained in Calcutta until the end of the war and, after Indian Independence in 1947, they were sent to the Foreign Office Library in London, in 1948, as part of the process of transferring records to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British government.

 
IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 29 

The file IOR/L/PS/12/716, part of the India Office Records and digitised for the Qatar Foundation Partnership, contains the correspondence telling the story of these two archives. Arrangements for the shipping and costs of the transport and storage are described in the file.

The exact content of the cases wasn’t known at the time.
There is a letter from the Foreign Office Librarian in 1948, saying that the content of the boxes was unknown to him and, at the purpose of shipping back to Bangkok the files which were less than 20 years old and were therefore considered current, he should have opened the boxes, or shipped the entire archives back to Thailand instead.

 
IOR/L/PS/12/716, f 33

We can guess that these archives ended up staying in London. The archives of the HM Legation in Bangkok and of the HM Embassy in China should now be available for public consultation at The National Archives in Kew.

Valentina Mirabella
Archival Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

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On 17 August 1932, the Italian Fascist newspaper, Il Lavoro Fascista, reported that a special envoy to ‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd, King of the Hejaz (and soon to be proclaimed King of Saudi Arabia), had arrived in Turin for a special visit. Such a visit might have been expected, given the fact that treaties of friendship and commerce between the two countries had been signed earlier that year.

IOR/L/PS/12/2062

However, all was not as it seemed. A translation of the article had been sent by the Foreign Office to His Majesty’s Chargé d’Affaires to Jeddah, Cecil Gervase Hope Gill, who replied some weeks later with a few details that appeared to contradict Il Lavoro Fascista’s version of events. According to Hope Gill, the purported special envoy, named as Mohamed Rafaat El Ahdale in the translated article, was in fact a Syrian chauffeur who had formerly been employed by the ex-King of the Hejaz, ‘Alī bin Ḥusayn al-Hāshimī, and had more recently been engaged to drive the Mecca Municipality’s water sprinkler.  He had since gone on to open his own repair shop, concentrating on ‘worn-out Fiats’.

Fiat 508 Ballila 1932 Wikimedia Commons

Hope Gill’s letter continued by reporting that the Hejazi Government, which owned a number of Fiat cars, had contracted the former chauffeur for the maintenance of its vehicles, and had later assisted him financially so that he could visit Italy in search for spare parts.

Either Il Lavoro Fascista was misinformed, or it was determined not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
IOR/L/PS/12/2062, ff 141-143

Sir Trenchard Craven William Fowle spent twenty-four years working as a British colonial administrator in the Persian Gulf before retiring in the summer of 1939. During that time he amassed a collection of thirteen Persian carpets.

Extract of an advert from the journal The Nineteenth Century, dated 1892. Mss Eur F126/28, f 16 

Prior to returning to England, Fowle put the carpets up for sale at the Political Agency in Bahrain. A list in an Agency file offers details of Fowle’s carpets. Five of the cheapest were described as Baluchi (i.e. made in Baluchistan), their price likely reflecting their small size. Four further carpets originated from Turkmenistan, while the two most expensive items were manufactured in the city of Kashan, renowned for its superior carpets of intricate design.

 List of carpets for sale at the Bahrain Political Agency. IOR/R/15/2/1531, f 26.

Europe’s affluent middle-classes became avid collectors of Persian carpets in the nineteenth century. Letters from the East India Company Resident in the Persian port of Bushire indicate that carpets were being sourced for European markets as early as 1813. In the meantime, a succession of European travellers to Persia, including the novelist James Morier and colonial administrators Henry Pottinger and John Johnson, penned narratives in which richly decorated carpets were closely associated with the opulence of the Persian court.

Extract of a letter from William Bruce, Acting Resident at Bushire to Francis Warden, Chief Secretary to the Government, Bombay, 17 January 1813.

IOR/R/15/1/12, ff 156-157 

The European (and American) market for carpets had grown to such an extent that by the 1880s, demand outstripped supply. ‘Very old carpets are now extremely rare,’ reported Robert Murdoch Smith in 1883, while sourcing Persian carpets for the South Kensington (now V&A) Museum. In response to a diminishing supply of carpets, commercial companies, including manufacturers from England, set up carpet-making factories in Persia, with the intention of catering specifically to their domestic markets.

In 1883 the Manchester firm Zielger & Company established premises at Sultanabad (now Arak) consisting of houses for their employees, offices, stores and dyeing rooms. This was no factory though; carpets continued to be hand-woven by women and children in the home, although now according to orders and designs stipulated by the Company. Between 1894 and 1914 the number of looms in Sultanabad increased thirty-fold, from 40 to 1,200 (equating to one loom for every 5.8 persons in the town).

 Nineteenth century Kashan carpet. Source: ArtDaily.com (Public Domain) 

Although one British colonial administrator reported that the firm was ‘much liked by the villagers’, evidence of the exploitation of weavers elsewhere was reported. The impressions of other visitors to Persia suggest that some carpet production had shifted to grim karkhanas (or manufactories), described as ‘low, dark, miserable rooms’, often with a ‘sour and sickening atmosphere’, in which ‘weakly children of ten or twelve years’ laboured on carpets, under pressure to complete ‘a certain allotted portion per diem’. In 1913 the British Resident at Bushire noted there was ‘no doubt that the industry as carried on is responsible for a great deal of human misery, in deforming and arresting the development of children, especially the girls’.

Of Fowle’s carpets, the expensive Kashanis remained unsold. They were returned to Fowle’s widow after the War (Fowle himself having died suddenly in 1940), but not before being lost by staff of the Southern Railway Company, and spending two months in the lost property office at Waterloo Station.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project

British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, London, Volume 12: Letters outward. IOR/R/15/1/12  – East India Company correspondence dated 1811 to 1813.
British Library London, ‘Gazetteer of Persia. Volume II’ (IOR/L/MIL/17/15/3/1) – for a description of the Ziegler & Co.’s activities at Sultanabad.
British Library, London, ‘Administration Report of the Persian Gulf Political Residency for the Years 1911-1914' (IOR/R/15/1/711) – reporting attempts to reform conditions in carpet-weaving factories at Kerman, 1913.
British Library, London, ‘File 16/32-II Miscellaneous. Correspondence with the Residency, Bushire.’ (IOR/R/15/2/1531) – correspondence relating to Trenchard Fowle’s carpets.
George Nathaniel Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1892), 523-525.
Frederic John Goldsmid, Telegraph and Travel (London: MacMillan & Co., 1874), 586-587.
Edward Stack, Six Months in Persia Vol. 1 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882), 209.
Leonard Helfgott, “Carpet Collecting in Iran, 1873-1883: Robert Murdoch Smith and the Formation of the Modern Persian Carpet Industry” Muqarnas Vol.7 (1990), 171-181.

On 13 June 1938 Shaikh Abdul Husain Al-Hilli, originally from Hilla in Iraq, arrived in Bahrain to act as the Head Shia Qadi (judge) at the Shia Court in Bahrain.  The appointment begs the question: given that Shias were a majority in Bahrain at the time, why was a Qadi brought all the way from Iraq and not appointed locally?

 Shaikh Abdul Husain Al-Hilli from Al-Wasat News, No 1628, 20 Feb 2007.

The India Office Records provide the answer to this question, in correspondence exchanged between Charles Dalrymple Belgrave, the Adviser to the Bahrain Government, Shaikh Hamad bin ‘Isa al-Khalifa, the Ruler of Bahrain, and the Political Agent in Bahrain. Between 1935 and 1937 enquiries were raised regarding the recruitment of a third Shia Qadi in Bahrain’s Shia Court. However, the possibility of this Qadi being a Bahraini subject was dismissed due to a number of cases involving the misappropriation of money by local Qadis. The Bahrain Government raised concerns about the local Qadis, who had been quarrelling amongst each other and allowing their personal animosities to influence their legal decisions.
 

IOR/R/15/2/1941, f 27. The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Applications for the job were subsequently opened to foreigners. Shaikh Hamad was very keen for the candidate to be from one of the Shia holy cities of Najaf or Karbala’ in Iraq. He asked Mr. Belgrave to pass his request to the Political Agent in Bahrain to enquire from the Government of Iraq whether they could recommend a candidate. The job description drawn up by Shaikh Hamad stated that the candidate must have been educated in Sharia law either from a Waqf Department (responsible for the donation of land for charitable purposes) or from one of the schools in the Shia holy cities. The new Qadi was to be paid a larger stipend than the 100 Rupees paid per month to the local Qadis. This was to cover his travel expenses.
 

IOR/R/15/2/1941, f 10. The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Amongst the four candidates for the job, Shaikh Abdul Husain Al-Hilli (1883- 1956), a Najaf graduate, proved to be an authority in the field. Soon afterwards, Al-Hilli was appointed to act as Qadi and teacher of religious law in Bahrain. Upon moving to Bahrain, Al-Hilli opened a religious school in Manama near the Al-Khawaja Mosque. The school was mainly established to teach the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Many of Bahrain’s religious scholars, including Shaikh Ahmad Al-‘Usfoor and Al-Sayid Muhammad Saleh al-Adnani, benefited from Shaikh Al-Hilli’s school. A man of letters, Al-Hilli became known for his literary contributions in various Bahraini based magazines, literary clubs, and cultural institutions. He died in 1956 and was buried in Bahrain, the country which became a second home to him for nearly two decades. Interestingly, his place of burial is disputed. Some religiously affiliated online sources claim that Al-Hilli was buried in the holy city of Najaf, which reflects his significance and acclaim.  

IOR/R/15/2/1941, f 51. The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.
 

Ula Zeir
Content Specialist/ Arabic Language
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
Al-Wasat News, No 1628, 20 Feb 2007.
Al-Wasat News, No 4028, 17 Sep 2013.
IRIB World Service http://arabic.irib.ir/programs/item/2339
Belgrave, Sir Charles Dalrymple. Personal Column. London: Hutchinson, 1960.
IOR/R/15/2/1941 File No. G/6 V. O. Appointment of Qadhis.

From 4 December 1944 to 30 January 1945 an Afghan Military Mission to India toured the country, visiting army and air force divisions, witnessing weapon demonstrations and training events, and meeting military and civil functionaries.

A stable, independent Afghanistan on friendly terms with India was seen as vital to the defence of India and the Empire.  Led by Lieutenant General Muhammad Umar Khan, Chief of the Afghan General Staff, the tour was an opportunity to strengthen military and political ties between the Government of Afghanistan, the Government of India, and the British Government.

The Military Attaché at Kabul, Colonel Alexander Stalker Lancaster, had been heavily involved in the preparation of the tour programme, and accompanied the Mission group throughout their stay.  He submitted an incredibly detailed report following its completion, which makes for interesting reading.

 

IOR/L/PS/12/2217, f 37r

The report consisted of a tour summary, notes on Lancaster’s impressions of the Mission delegates, and a fully annotated tour programme, providing a timeline of events and visits alongside Lancaster’s comments.

 
IOR/L/PS/12/2217, f 58r 

As might be expected, the report contains details of weapon demonstrations, tours of barracks and ammunition factories, and includes details of the scale of the preparations for war against Japan.  According to Lancaster the Afghan Mission were suitably impressed, although the report does provide information on one hair-raising incident at a firing demonstration for the 4.2” mortar:

 
IOR/L/PS/12/2217, f 82r

Interestingly, the report also provides details of the entertainments laid on for the Mission.  These included regular dinner engagements with army and air force personnel, diplomats and Government Officials, and even a number of cinema trips.

On 20 December, following a day of weapons demonstrations, the Mission were shown “Training films on Camoflage [sic] and Use of Compass, War News Reels and an entertainment film”.  On 4 January “[the] Mission attended Dinapur Cinema. By chance a colour film of Afghan scenes taken by the Thaw Caravan expedition in 1939 was shown.  The commentary was given by Lowell Thomas in his well known [sic] style. Fortunately the Afghans treated it as a joke”.  During their trip the Mission saw several other films, including Kismet, Get Cracking (starring George Formby), Lady in the Dark, and the play adaptations Bhagwan Buddha and Charlie’s Aunt.

 

Cover of a promotional leaflet for the film Kismet, digitised as part of the Endangered Archives Programme project ‘Collection of books and periodicals at the Bali Sadharan Granthagar, Howarh’, reference EAP/341/5/473

Lancaster judged that the Mission had been “an unqualified success”, and positive reports appeared in the Afghan publication Islah.  In the years that followed the Mission, the Government of India agreed to supply arms, equipment and training at a discounted rate to Afghanistan, in what became known as ‘Scheme Lancaster’.

The file containing the report, IOR/L/PS/12/2217, is part of a series of records compiled by the India Office Political (External) Department related to arms, ammunition and arms traffic.  These records are currently being catalogued and digitised, and should be available for access through the Qatar Digital Library portal later in the year.

Alex Hailey
Content Specialist / Archivist
British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
British Library, IOR/L/PS/12/2217
British Library, IOR/L/PS/12/2218
British Library, IOR/L/PS/12/2204