Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/34

 there might have been of Bráhmans or of Rájputs, but there was no wave of conquest to the east of the Bay of Bengal. Up to the time when Lord Amherst reluctantly accepted the necessity of organizing military measures for the protection of our own soil and the effectual chastisement of Burmese insolence, the basin of the Irawadi was a region beyond the thoughts and almost beyond the knowledge of Anglo-Indian statesmen. We were aware of our neighbours on the west. The progress of Russian arms against Persia, the intrigues which were set on foot, and the combinations which were devised by Napoleon Bonaparte in his palmy days had suggested to the immediate predecessors of Lord Amherst the necessity of cultivating friendly relations with the Court of Teheran and with the great Sikh State on the Indus, which was in the eyes of the diplomatists of the East India Company very much what Afghanistan is at present to the Foreign Office. But with the races and politics beyond our eastern border we had little concern. Missions, indeed, of the most modest character had been sent to Ava with a view to settling