000			02008 a2200217 4500
008			240506b 2013|||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9781408862872 (PB)
041			_aeng
080			_a94(5) _bDAL
100			_aDalrymple, William
245			_aReturn of a King _b: An Indian Army in Afghanistan
260			_bBloomsburry Publishing _c2013 _aLondon
300			_axl, 567p. _bcol. ill.
505			_a1. No easy place to rule 2. An unsettled mind 3. The great game begins 4. The mouth of hell 5. The flag of holy war 6. We fail from our ignorance 7. All order is at an end 8. The wail of bugles 9. The death of a king 10. A war for no wise purpose
520			_aIn the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and 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 and 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 and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen.Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2013, Return of a King is the definitive analysis of the First Afghan War, told through the lives of unforgettable characters on all sides and using for the first time contemporary Afghan accounts of the conflict. Prize-winning and bestselling historian William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful and important parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris, for our times
650			_aEast India company
650			_aImperial Disaster
650			_aMilitary Humiliation
690			_aGeneral
942			_cBK
999			_c60238 _d60238