LUMSDEN, Henry Burnett.

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The Mission to Kandahar. with Appendices. First edition, rare. This is the official account of Lumsden's perilous 1857 mission to Kandahar, undertaken to ensure that subsidies paid by the government of India to the amir were used for the payment of troops employed to defend Afghanistan. We trace just one appearance on auction records and 11 locations among institutional libraries. Born aboard an East India Company ship in the Bay of Bengal, Lumsden (1821-1896) is best known for the corps of guides that he raised from among the tough and resourceful tribes of the North-West Frontier - and his pioneering use of khaki as a uniform. He developed an intimate knowledge of the language and ways of local peoples, demonstrating his ability "both as an administrator and as a skilled frontier soldier during repeated skirmishes and punitive campaigns" (ODNB).Munawwar Khan remarks that Lumsden and his party "appear to have had little or no opportunity of seeing how the [Indian government] subsidy was spent" and that "even if it was a bribe rather than a subsidy, by that time [the outbreak of the Indian Rebellion] it was a bribe very well worth paying since it assisted Dost Mohammad [the amir] to maintain his resolve … not to support the rebels in India or to invade the Punjab". Lumsden took the opportunity afforded to carry out a fact-finding mission, giving detail on the Afghan army, thumbnail sketches of the amir's sons and feudal nobility, revenue, taxation, populations, and foreign po

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