Untold lives blog

Today we have a guest blogger, author Bijan Omrani.  Read on to discover the part that treacle pudding has played in Anglo-Afghan relations!

The many western entrepreneurs who, over the last ten years, have been drawn to do business in Afghanistan are by no means pioneers. Records in the British Library describe the first wave of western business travellers who reached Kabul well over a century ago.

Amir Abdur Rahman condemning Hazara prisoners of war to death © UIG/The British Library Board  Images Online

In 1880, after the Second Afghan War, Amir Abdur Rahman – the “Iron Amir” – came to the Afghan throne.  Determined to reunify a fragmented country, he ruthlessly imposed a regime of conscription. He intended to develop a large modern army as an instrument to impose central control throughout Afghanistan.  Realising that this new army needed large amounts of military materiel, he was eager to establish up-to-date factories in Kabul to supply it. Lacking the necessary expertise in Kabul, he turned to Europe for help. In 1887, a British engineer, Salter Pyne, was appointed to construct the Amir’s mashin khaneh, or workshop complex. The steam-powered workshop soon began to turn out rifles, artillery and ammunition, and later boots, soap, carpets, blankets, needles, paper, agricultural gear, and even musical instruments for military bands.

Over the following 20 years, Salter Pyne was followed to Kabul by over a dozen western specialists, many hoping to make their fortunes in Afghanistan. There were experts in mining, munitions, geology, tanning, and even a piano tuner. Many of them vividly describe the difficulties of developing western-style industry in Afghanistan. All of the factories were under the close supervision of the Amir, who retained control of pay and often press-ganged poor Afghans into work. The workforce was chronically underpaid, demotivated, and frequently resorted to corruption and petty theft just to survive. The Amir responded with floggings and executions, and the western managers with punishments not much less harsh. These conditions frequently generated resentment against the European outsiders, exacerbated by memories of the recent Second Afghan War. Sabotage was a regular occurrence. Nails were put in machines, glue substituted for lubricating oil in valves, and even flint mixed into a gunpowder grinding machine – Frank Martin, Pyne’s successor from 1895, realised the danger just in time.

Amir Habibullah © UIG/The British Library Board Images Online

Although life in Kabul for these westerners could be tense, there were frequent moments of light relief combined with important cultural diplomacy. Annie Thornton, the wife of Ernest Thornton who ran the state tanneries in Kabul for periods between 1893-1909, organised a tamasha, or entertainment, for their Afghan workforce in their Kabul garden, combining an Afghan pilau with games from an English village fete such as sack racing and pillow fights. Whilst her husband was at the tannery, Annie spent time in the court of the Amir Habibullah, Abdur Rahman’s successor, a passionate gardener and gourmand. The Amir shared his horticultural interests with her; she is credited with introducing the daffodil to Kabul in 1908. She also taught his chefs a number of English recipes, amongst which treacle pudding became his favourite. It is said that Habibullah kept Afghanistan out of the First World War because of his good sense and political wisdom, but I wonder whether it was really his fondness for Annie Thornton’s English cooking which saved the British Empire from fighting on a second front.

Bijan Omrani

Further Reading:
IOR/L/PS/11/31 and 11/38, Interviews of British commercial travellers with political agents
IOPP/Mss Eur F111/56 Lord Curzon’s diary of a trip to Kabul in 1894
“Making Money in Afghanistan: The first Western Entrepreneurs 1880-1919”, Bijan Omrani, Asian Affairs Journal, vol. 43 no 3, November 2012.

In September 1804, John Reeves, the head of the Aliens Office responsible for foreigners within Britain approached the Home Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury seeking direction on an unusual problem. Nine Chinese sailors had been employed by the Königlich Preußische Asiatische Compagnie in Emden nach Canton und China on board one of their ships from Canton to Emden. On their arrival they were discharged from the vessel and unsuccessfully attempted to find an outward bound vessel for China.

View of Emden from the sea, 1845 ©De Agostini/The British Library Board  Images Online

Stranded in Europe during the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars, the Chinese men made their way to England in the hope of obtaining employment on an outward bound East Indiaman to Canton. However arriving at Gravesend, the East India Company’s Agent for the Indian mariners employed on the ships refused to take charge of them and the nine sailors consequently fell under the cognisance of the Aliens Office as refugees. With no resources to get them home, the Home Secretary recommended that John Reeves seek assistance from the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, the government department then responsible for overseeing the East India Company’s territorial, revenue, military and political activities in India.

The President of the Board, Viscount Castlereagh, took the case up, instructing the Board’s Secretary to approach the Company and suggest that the men should be provided with support in returning home. As the British Government was also keen on establishing formal diplomatic relations with the Emperor of China in this period, Castlereagh also recommended that the case “should be fully stated to the Chinese Government in order that they may justly appreciate the attention which the British East India Company pay to subjects of the Chinese Empire who have sought asylum in England after being abandoned by States in whose employment they have been drawn from their Native Country.” The Directors referred the case to their Committee of Shipping but as these records don’t survive it is not possible to find out what happened.  

Richard Scott Morel
Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
IOR/E/2/30 pp. 216-217: Letter from George Holford in Whitehall to William Ramsay, 9 Oct 1804.
IOR/F/1/3 pp. 43-44: Minutes of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, 9 Oct 1804.
IOR/B/139 pp. 869-870: Minutes of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, 10 Oct 1804.

Many peoples from across the globe fought in the trenches during the First World War, and one of the largest groups were South Asians of the British Indian Army. Some 1.5 million soldiers and non-combatants from the subcontinent served alongside the British on the Western Front in Northern France and Belgium, the Middle East, East Africa and Gallipoli. For the first time Indian Army contingents were deployed in a European war, and this marked an important watershed. Wounded soldiers were cared for in special hospitals on Britain’s southern coast, including the Brighton Royal Pavilion, built in an oriental style for George IV. The War Office went to great lengths to ensure that the facilities on the front and in the hospitals respected their religious and caste sensibilities, though these concerns disguised some of the ingrained racism they experienced.

The Indian Army arrived in Europe initially with two infantry divisions to shore up the British Expeditionary Force which had been decimated in the first weeks of the war. Ill equipped for trench and increasingly mechanised warfare, some 7,700 Indian Army soldiers lost their lives on the Western Front alone. South Asians fought in many of the major battles of the First World War, including Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Festubert and Loos. The Indian Army suffered some of its heaviest casualties at Neuve Chapelle – some 4,700 men – and the war memorial to Indian soldiers is located in this Northern French town.

English and Indian soldiers of the Signal Troop of the Lucknow Cavalry Brigade relaxing in a farmyard at Brigade Headquarters, 28 July 1915, Photo 24/(158)

Translated excerpts of the censored mails in the India Office Records, housed at the British Library, are an important account of South Asian soldiers’ involvement in the war and document their fears, concerns and harrowing experiences.  For example, Khan Muhammad, 40th Pathans, Brighton Hospital, writes to Niyaz Ali 74th Punjabis, Hong Kong (Urdu, 17/05/1915):
“And there is an expenditure, too great for words, in this country, of black and red pepper (i.e. Hindustani and British troops). You are wise and for the rest you will reply without fail to this letter. […] The black pepper which has come from India has all been used up, and to carry on with I will (i.e., they will) now send for more men, otherwise there would be very little red pepper remaining, because the black is hard and there is plenty of it. And the black pepper (here) is somewhat less than the red, and this water is not right without black pepper. Now you must understand, and what you can see with the eye, is written; you must multiply it all by 45.”

Aware of censorship, a soldier would often use coded or euphemistic language. Here he conveys his shock at the large number of casualties, which led him (and many others) to believe that they were used as ‘cannon fodder’.

 
Extract from Papers of Sir Walter Lawrence, Indian Civil Service, Punjab 1879-95, Private Secretary to Viceroy 1899-1903, Commissioner for sick and wounded Indian soldiers in France and England 1914-16, IOPP/Mss Eur F143/83

At the end of 1915 the majority of Indian contingents were redeployed to the Middle East, but two Indian cavalry divisions remained and would participate in the Battle of the Somme. South Asian soldiers won many awards for bravery, a total of 12,908, including eleven Victoria Crosses.

Florian Stadtler


Discover more about South Asian experiences and contributions in two world wars.

To read the censored mails, visit the Asian and African Studies reading room at the British Library and look at the India Office Records, IOR/L/MIL/5/825-828.

Dr Florian Stadtler is a research fellow at The Open University, and has been working in partnership with the British Library on the OU-led AHRC-funded projects ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad’ and ‘Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections’.

New! Digitised India Office Records First World War files now available via the Europeana website.

The charismatic Sir Victor Sassoon was heir to a great fortune of a banking dynasty which originated from Iraq and later expanded from Bagdad to Bombay and Shanghai.  Like the Rothschild family, the Sassoons moved their headquarters to London in the 19th century and within a few decades they became members of the British establishment.

 Portraits of Sassoon and his wife inside his former residence

Sir Victor, however, decided to spend the second half of his life in Asia.  In the 1920s, he had several titles to his name: Chairman of E.D. Sassoon Banking Co. Ltd; Member of the Indian Legislative Assembly; and Member of Royal Commission for Investigation of Labour Conditions in India.  Apparently his official position conflicted sometimes with his private interests.  As a result, he ran into some trouble with the tax collectors in India and he decided to transfer the bulk of his capital to Shanghai.

 
 Former residence of Victor Sassoon in Peace Hotel, Shanghai (or Cathay Hotel)

Shanghai in the 1930s was a thriving commercial centre and a “tax haven” for Western adventurers.  Sassoon came to cosmopolitan Shanghai as a serious investor in real estate with an estimated capital of around (US) $85 million.  In less than a decade, Sassoon transformed the face of the city with a series of luxury hotels and apartment buildings which are to this day still the most important landmarks of Shanghai. 

Despite his huge commercial success and his privileged life, Sassoon was a worried man.  His busy social life with numerous lady friends hid a deep-seated anxiety because he was a stateless person living at the mercy of a foreign land.  The impending possibility of war and widespread anti-Semitism dashed his hopes of returning to Europe.  In Asia, the Japanese threatened to take over all of China and to establish a Pan-Asia-Pacific empire.  As far as Sassoon was concerned, the only option was to protract his stay in Shanghai as long as it remained in a state of anarchy.  Fans of J. G. Ballard may remember the scene of 1930’s Shanghai in his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun.  The British were seized with panic when Japanese invaded the city.

IOPP/Mss Eur E312/4, f.69
Letter from Sassoon to Yvonne FitzRoy dated Shanghai 3 May 1939

From his letters to Yvonne FitzRoy in the 1930s, Sassoon emerges as an intermediary between Britain and Japan, although he had no official title at that time.  In one letter he laughed off the rumour that he was involved in arranging secret loans to the Japanese government for the development of northern China as a defence against Russia.  In a memorandum written in 1939, however, Sassoon portrays himself as a shrewd operator engaged in direct talk with the Japanese Emperor, Finance Minister, and other important members of the National Diet (the Japanese Parliament), proposing to turn a district of Shanghai into a Japanese settlement.  In order to ensure the extraterritorial rights of other foreign settlers in Shanghai, he had to sell part of China to the Japanese without the consent of the Chinese government. That revelation may come as a shock to the people of Shanghai, who always considered Sassoon as their trusted friend. 

Sassoon eventually left Shanghai in 1948 before the communist takeover of China.  He transferred his assets (except real estate) to the Bahamas.  Wary of the scourge of anti-Semitism, he converted to Buddhism and devoted his later years to philanthropy.

Xiao Wei Bond
Curator, India Office Private Papers

We left our group of refugees on their way to be interrogated by Polish Consul Banasinski…

IOR/L/PS/12/318


After detailed interviews in August 1940 Banasinski came to the conclusion that
• Stolyhwo and Backer were in the clear
• Bakermann was a Polish Jew after all
• Ukrainian Bazylewski was not a spy
• Boguszewicz was a citizen of Lithuania and should be sent to the Central Internment Camp in Ahmednagar. (In March 1941 Boguszewicz was about to be granted a Polish passport when the Consul discovered that he had been spreading anti-Polish propaganda and complaints about the consular services.)

Tatiana Czynnowa applied to the Government of India for a release in an unusual manner:
‘…From my childhood I have been dreaming of abroad – I imagined a light and happy world and came here, or rather to Iran, yearning for theatres, cinemas, beautiful clothes, restaurants and dances but not in order to be locked up in jail or in a camp. I did not mean to exchange a bad freedom for a good jail…I have already spent 5 long months in prisons and yet for me every month, no every day is precious as the experiences I have to go through are wrinkling my face and I want to live while youth is not completely gone…’
This did not help her and she was placed in the camp at Satara.

Olgierd Stolyhwo went back to Poland to fight the Nazis and according to the Polish Dictionary of National Biography was shot in Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.

Adam Backer survived the war and left Europe.

Jozef Bakermann was released from prison and was given a Polish passport. He was helped by the Jewish Relief Association. With Stolyhwo and Backer he was allotted a passage to the Middle East in order to join the Polish Legion attached to the British Forces.

The whereabouts of the others remain unknown as yet, but maybe Untold Lives readers can reveal the rest of the story?

Dorota Walker
Reference Specialist, Asian and African Studies

Further reading:

IOR/L/PS/12/380A Polish subjects evicted from Persia into British Indian territory, 21 May 1940-21 Oct 1940.
IOR/L/PS/12/318 Polish volunteers, 30 Nov 1939-19 Mar 1941.
Polski Słownik Biograficzny, Tom XLIV/1, Warszawa-Kraków 2006.
‘Ucieczka prawdziwych niepokonanych’ by Rafał Zasuń, Gazeta Wyborcza 5/04/2011.

Here is a story which could become a blockbuster if put on screen! A fascinating account of escapes from Soviet Russia during World War II has lain buried in the files of the India Office Records. Four Poles, one Ukrainian and a Russian woman give their statements, full of discrepancies.

IOR/L/PS/12/380A

Olgierd Stołyhwo and Adam Backer were at school together and fought in the Polish Army after the German invasion in 1939. Taken prisoner, they escaped hoping to join the newly formed Polish Army in France. Their chosen route through Hungary was blocked, so they made their way eastwards. They were employed as helmsmen on the M.S. “Armenia” and M.S. “Gruzja“, plying between Odessa and Batum.

They met Tatiana Czynnowa, who left the Black Sea coast with them having fallen madly in love with Olgierd. She helped the men, buying train tickets or food and trading their possessions without raising suspicion. The trio travelled from Odessa to Moscow, then on to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. When their plans of crossing the Chinese border fell through, they went via Novosibirsk and Tashkent to Ashabad on the Persian border where they gave themselves up to the Iranian authorities. Olgierd and Adam became separated from Tatiana, who quickly fell in love with an official!

The Iranians also held three other men escaping from Russia. Jozef Bakermann, a Polish Jew, and Bronislaw Boguszewicz, a Lithuanian with Polish connections, were travelling together. The third man was Iwan Bazylewski, a Ukrainian peasant. All five men were conveyed towards the border with British India and left with directions. The group crossed over and were captured at Juzzak on 6 May 1940.

Tatiana had also become a refugee in India and the British authorities wrote to Mozzafar A’lam, Iranian Foreign Minister, threatening to send the girl back. Tatiana possessed ‘a Lux advertisement on the back of which a series of dots and dashes were written’ and a postcard to her Iranian boyfriend starting with “Greetings from England…”. She explained the dots and dashes were a fortune telling game, not a cipher!

The men were lodged in the dak bungalow in Quetta and a month later Tatiana joined them. The group caught the attention of the local press. Polish Consul Eugene Banasinski accused the British of mistreating the citizens of an allied country. Mrs Vernon-Smith, the American wife of the officer stationed in Baluchistan, could speak a little Polish having been employed as a transport driver for the Red Cross in Poland in 1939. She confirmed rumours that Jozef Bakermann was a German Jew. The local authorities, terrified of espionage, immediately locked him up. The Poles staged a short hunger strike as a protest against ‘being detained in idleness’.

Olgierd Stolyhwo told Mrs Vernon-Smith that he had been in the Polish diplomatic service before the war. In reality he had been expelled from the Marine Academy in Gdynia twice, first for running away and secondly for propagating communism. When confronted by the Consul he denied it all.

The whole group was sent under guard by train to be interrogated by Consul Banasinski. He promised to report back but that is where the story ends in file IOR/L/PS/12/380A. However I have managed to trace the rest of the story in IOR/L/PS/12/318, unhelpfully entitled ‘Polish volunteers’….

Part 2 will appear later this week

Dorota Walker
Reference Specialist, Asian and African Studies

To commemorate VE Day on 8 May 1945, we have a story from guest blogger Dr Florian Stadtler -

The contribution made by South Asians living in Britain to the war effort on the Home Front in World War II remains little known. One organisation, run by South Asian and British women, played a particular important function. An entirely voluntary organisation, the Indian Comforts Fund (ICF) worked in close cooperation with the Indian Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance Service.

Founded in 1939 by the Dowager Viscountess Chelmsford, it was a registered war charity approved by the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry to provide for the war needs of Indian troops in Europe and lascar seamen, often stranded for long periods of time in Britain as sea routes became increasingly disrupted. During the war years, an estimated 30,000 Indian seamen arrived in British ports annually. The Fund was headquartered at India House Aldwych, where the Indian High Commissioner had made available space as a depot and accommodation for the working parties, including the food parcel packing centre.

Inspection of the food packing centre for Indian POWs by Queen Elizabeth, February 1942 [IOR/L/MIL/17/5/2327]

The Fund acted officially as next-of-kin for all Indian prisoners of war and civilian internees in Europe. It coordinated the packing of over 1.6 million food parcels, which were regularly shipped to the International Red Cross in Geneva, from where they would be distributed to the internment camps. The work of the Fund reached its peak in 1943 when the number of Indian internees in Europe had risen to 14,000. The parcels contained special Indian foodstuffs, including dhal, curry powder, ghee, atta and rice. The ICF also sent over 75,400 parcels with warm clothing, which were produced by some 100,000 knitters in the UK who the ICF supplied with wool and whose work it oversaw.

In Britain, the ICF also supported the entertainment of Indian troops and seamen, providing gifts such as gramophone records, books and sporting equipment. The Fund organised weekly leave parties for Indian soldiers to visit London, and introduced a hospital visiting scheme. The Fund’s workload grew exponentially through the war years, until it was wound up at the end of 1945.

Florian Stadtler
Research Associate, 'Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections' project, The Open University

Find out more about the Indian Comforts Fund:

Asians in Britain and Making Britain

IOR/L/MIL/17/5/2327 Indian Comforts Fund Progress Report October 1941 to March 1942

ORW.1986.a.189 War record of the Indian Comforts Fund December 1939 to December 1945

Captain Michael Anthony Shrapnel Biddulph was posted to Turkey in 1854, and shortly afterwards to the Crimea, where he served with distinction as assistant engineer of the Royal Artillery, and later as director of submarine telegraphs in the Black Sea. Decorated by the French and Turkish governments, in 1856 he was promoted Brevet Lieutenant Colonel. In 1858 he was appointed Chief Engineer of the Ottoman Telegraph, overseeing the construction of telegraph cable lines in Turkey-in-Asia.

 
Vignette taken from Plan of a Portion of the Constantinople and Bussorah [Basra] Line of Telegraph. War Office, 1860. Maps R.U.S.I. A20.4.

 His frequent absence from this work may have been a factor in his departure after the Ottoman government failed to renew his contract in 1859. Although pleading illness, it seems that he was in fact visiting Lady Katherine Stamati, who he had met during his service in the Crimean War, and had subsequently married. Lady Katherine was the daughter of the second-in-command of Russian forces at Balaklava, following which battle her father had been imprisoned by the Allies, first at Constantinople and later at Malta. His eventual release at Odessa, after the war, was arranged by his son-in-law.

Vignette taken from Plan of a Portion of the Constantinople and Bussorah [Basra] Line of Telegraph. War Office, 1860. Maps R.U.S.I. A20.4.

Colonel Biddulph later served in a command role during the 2nd Afghan War in 1879. After his active military career he held various posts at Court, receiving the G.C.B. in 1895, and was appointed Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod in 1896.

Biddulph was also an accomplished artist, as can be seen from these examples of his work. His views of the Crimea were published by Colnaghi following the war, and three of his watercolours of the Bosphorus are in the Victoria & Albert Museum, together with a fine view of Ali Masjid Fort, Afghanistan, done in 1890.        

Crispin Jewitt
Specialist Advisor
British Library Cartographic and Topographic Materials

Sources:
Dictionary of national biography.

Bektas, Yakup. The Sultan's Messenger: Cultural Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy, 1847-1880. Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 2000).

Biographical information about the Stamati and Biddulph families 

British Library items:

Plan of a Portion of the Constantinople and Bussorah Line of Telegraph Laid under the Direction of Lt Col. Biddulph, R.A. Drawn by Lt Holdsworth, R.A. Lithographed at the Topographical Department, War Office, Col. Sir H. James, R.E. F.R.S. M.R.I.A. &c. Director. 1860. 1:63,360.  103 × 67cm.
BL Maps 43995.(15.)
BL Maps R.U.S.I. A20.4.

View of the Country in front of Balaklava Representing the scene of the memorable Light Cavalry Charge, 25th October, 1854; with the Russian Outposts at Kamara. From a Sketch by Major Biddulph, R.A. Lithographed & Printed at the Topographical & Statistical Depôt, War Department, Lt Col. T.B. Jervis, Director, 25th October, 1856. 92 × 38cm. BL 1781.d.7.(9.) BL Maps C.49.f.25.(5.)