Description

In the 1860s and 1870s, Russia annexed the khanates of Central Asia, extending its control to the borders of Afghanistan and greatly alarming British India, which at that time effectively controlled Afghanistan’s foreign policy. Great Britain and Russia first attempted to delimit their spheres of influence in the region in the Granville-Gorchakov Agreement of 1873 (also called the Anglo-Russian Agreement). However, the agreement was vague and Russia almost immediately expanded farther to the south. In the early 1880s, the two empires opened negotiations on defining Afghanistan’s northern border ...