Abdul Rahman becomes Ameer--Withdrawal of British Army from Afghanistan,
1881.


For a few years subsequent to the war, our frontier policy happily
remained free from complications, and it will be desirable now to refer
shortly to the progress of Russia in Central Asia, and of her conquests
of the decaying Principalities of Khiva, Bokhara and Kokand.

Previous to 1847 the old boundary line of Russia south of Orenburg
abutted on the great Kirghis Steppe, a zone [Footnote: Parliamentary
Papers: _Afghanistan_, 1878.] (as the late Sir H. Rawlinson told
us) of almost uninhabited desert, stretching 2,000 miles from west to
east, and nearly 1,000 from north to south, which had hitherto acted as
a buffer between Russia and the Mahomedan Principalities below the Aral.

[Footnote: Extract from _Quarterly Review_, October 1865.]'It was
in 1847, contemporaneously with our final conquest of the Punjaub, that
the curtain rose on the aggressive Russian drama in Central Asia which
is not yet played out. Russia had enjoyed the nominal dependency of the
Kirghis-Kozzacks of the little horde who inhabited the western division
of the great Steppe since 1730; but, except in the immediate vicinity of
the Orenburg line, she had little real control over the tribes. In 1847
-48, however, she erected three important fortresses in the very heart of
the Steppe. These important works--the only permanent constructions
which had hitherto been attempted south of the line--enabled Russia, for
the first time, to dominate the western portion of the Steppe and to
command the great routes of communication with Central Asia. But the
Steppe forts were after all a mere means to an end; they formed the
connecting link between the old frontiers of the empire and the long