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438 ference with them. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, the British government was watching, with redoubled attention, the approach of Russia in the direction of the Oxus River and the northwestern provinces of the Afghan kingdom.

By the subjugation of Khiva the Russian outposts had been brought much nearer to the Afghan frontier, and the attempt of the English Cabinet to check this movement by negotiations had elicited little more than vague assurances from St. Petersburg. In 1873, however, the Russian emperor declared Afghanistan to be completely outside the sphere within which Russian influence might be exercised; and the boundary-line of that kingdom had been partially defined by diplomatic agreement. The whole policy, therefore, of British statesmen at this time was directed upon the object of securing the independence and integrity of Afghanistan. And the record of Indian foreign affairs during the period with which we are now concerned exhibits a series of discussions and ineffectual negotiations, until out of the gathering cloud of misunderstandings and the pressure of events, an Afghan war was suddenly precipitated in 1878. When, in 1868, the Amir of Afghanistan, Sher Ali, had mastered the whole of this country after a long and fiercely contested war for succession to the throne, the situation of his state between two powerful European empires filled him with anxiety, and he turned to India for alliance and material support. In 1869 he paid a visit to Lord Mayo, then Viceroy, at Umballa, where he was received with much ceremony,