In 1878 there were two great events that made the Imperial Government happy.

One is the death of Pope Pius IX. The second thing is the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Afghan War -

Pius IX, born into an Italian aristocratic family, rose to prominence as priest in 1819, secretary to the minister of the Holy See in Chile in 1823, and archbishop of Spoleto in 1827. He was ordained a cardinal in 1840, and in 1846 Pope Gregory XVI died, when he was not very prestigious, but after a two-day conclave, the College of Cardinals decided to promote him as pope, the longest-reigning pope to date, who led the Holy See for 32 years from 1846 to 1878. He was also the last pope to serve as a secular monarch. He was embattled, insisting on his feudal privileges and the secular power of the pope. For such a pope, even Lin Hong not only sighed about his life, but unlike history, the pope at that time also lost the fiefdom of the Papal States, but at least in Italy, the Pope still has his own privileges, and when the empire supported the establishment of Italy, it ensured a certain degree of ** in the Papal States. The Pope also helped the empire to colonize the cause in order to open up the missionary market in China (the Pope has expressed in public that China is also allowed by God to participate in the colonization of Africa) -

Afghanistan is strategically important as the UK's gateway to India, Iran and Central Asia. In particular, India is now sandwiched between the East African colonies of the Chinese Empire and the mainland (Burma, ** and North Indian Province), while to the west of India is the weakened feudal dynasty of the Persian Empire, and to the west is China's many colonial strongholds in Central Asia, including Kuwait, Doha and other Persian Gulf, which is basically China's world. So Afghanistan is even more important for Britain at this time.

Of course, since it's the second time, there's the first time! The First Anglo-Afghan War (also known as the Auckland Folly) was a war between British India and Afghanistan that broke out in 1839 and ended in 1842. The First Anglo-Afghan War was the first major Anglo-Russian conflict in Central Asia in the 19th century. One of the unnoticed facts of the war was that the majority of the British troops involved in the war were Indians, and most of the British casualties were Indians. When the first Anglo-Afghan war broke out, the empire's hand had not yet reached West Asia, and it was more focused on domestic construction, so the first Anglo-Afghan war was indeed a struggle between Britain and Russia.

In 1837, the British had firmly controlled India, but they became concerned about the expansion of their empire by invading India from the Khyber and Bolun Passes. The British sent envoys to Kabul in the hope of forming an alliance with the Afghan king Dost Muhammad Khan against Russia. At that time, the Sikh Empire had just taken Peshawar, an important city in Afghanistan, and Dost Mohammed wanted the support of the British to regain the city, but the British refused to support him. Russia then sent envoys to Kabul and expressed support for Dost Mohammed's reconquest of Peshawar. Advisers to the Viceroy of India, George Eden, exaggerated the impact of the matter. In 1838, negotiations between Russia and Afghanistan broke down, and the Persian-Russian coalition besieged the western Afghan city of Herat. In order to increase its influence in Asia, Russia allied itself with Persia, which had a long-standing territorial dispute with Afghanistan - Herat remained in the Persian Empire until 1750, when Afghanistan regained Herat. Lord Auckland's plan was to first relieve the Afghans and then install a pro-British monarch to replace Dost Mohammed. The British later chose Shujashah Durrani as the new king.

In October 1838, Lord Auckland issued the Simlamao Declaration, which gave four reasons for the British invasion of Afghanistan. The declaration stated that Britain was to have a reliable ally in western India to ensure India's security. The British invaded Afghanistan only to help Shuya Shah regain the throne. Britain does not deny that it invaded Afghanistan, but has stated that it is only intended to help Afghans establish a legitimate government against foreign interference and internal disorder. In fact, Shuya Shah's rule was maintained entirely by the British army to suppress the rebels, and the funds for the purchase of the chieftains were also provided by the British, who invaded Afghanistan in order to establish a pro-British regime in Afghanistan against the pro-Russian Persia, weaken Russia's influence, and protect India from the Russian threat.

In December 1838, a force of 21,000 British troops (both British and Indians), under the command of Sir John Keane, left Punjab. He was accompanied by William Hay Macnaghten, Chief Secretary of Calcuttabu, who will be the new British ambassador to Kabul.

At the end of March 1839, British troops arrived in Quetta, crossed the Pollon Pass, and set sail for Kabul. The army marched through rugged mountainous terrain, through desert and over mountain passes up to 4,000 meters above sea level, but the progress was still rapid. On April 25, 11839, the English army had arrived in Kandahar. On July 22 of the same year, the British launched a surprise attack and captured the impregnable fortress of Ghazni, which monitored a plain to the west leading to the North-West Frontier Province.

In August 1839, after losing the throne for nearly 30 years, Shuya Shah returned to the throne in Kabul.

Britain had effectively taken control of Afghanistan, but there was a constant insurgency in Afghanistan, and Britain needed a large presence in Afghanistan to maintain Shuya Shah's rule. In order to boost the morale of the garrison, William Hai McNaughten allowed the families of the soldiers to be stationed in Afghanistan with the army. Afghans saw it as a sign of a permanent presence and became even angrier. The ensuing result was obvious: the angry Afghan people and a number of disgruntled Afghan sheikhs threw themselves on Dost Mohammed's son, Akbarkhan.

On January 1, 1842, Elphinstone reached an agreement with the rebels, under which the rebels guaranteed the safe withdrawal of the garrison and their families from Afghanistan. Five days later, the British army began to retreat. The total number of troops is 16,000, including 4,500 military personnel and 12,000 civilians.

For the next three decades, Tsarist Russia made steady advances into Afghanistan. In 1842, Russia's borders were still on the other side of the Aral Sea, across the sea from Afghanistan. Five years later, Tsarist Russia had set up an outpost in the Amu Darya River. Historically, in 1865, Tsarist Russia formally annexed Tashkent, and three years later annexed Samarkand. In 1873, Tsarist Russia signed a treaty with the emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (Alim Khan), which effectively stripped him of his power. Russia almost completely occupied the lands north of the Amu Darya River. But now that Russia has completely retreated to Europe, and the Chinese Empire has taken over everything in Central Asia, coupled with the fact that China did not continue to maintain the existence of the Central Asian khanates like Russia did after annexing them, but directly turned them into centrally controlled provinces, and even built the Trans-Siberian Railway, which had two important branch lines in Central Asia, which made Britain very sad.

In particular, after Dost Muhammad's son Hill Ali succeeded to the throne, he adopted a policy of approaching China and alienating Britain, and not long ago, on March 2, 1878, Hill Ali proposed to Li Hongzhang's cabinet through a special envoy the tendency to sign a treaty of alliance and the position of dependence on China, but the cabinet was too divided, especially the members of the parliament believed that Afghanistan was useless to the empire, resulting in Li Hongzhang's delay in making a clear decision.

But the British won't wait! In the mid-70s of the 19th century, when the Conservative Cabinet of Disraeli was in power, it actively planned the conquest of Afghanistan. Between 1875 and 1878, Britain forced Afghanistan to sign treaties recognizing itself as a British protectorate. However, the slavish conditions proposed by the British were rejected by the Afghan government. In order to realize its ambition of invasion, Britain dispatched troops and sent heavy troops into the Afghan border, just waiting to find an excuse to drive the army into Afghanistan. On March 10, Britain forced its troops into Afghanistan under the pretext of searching for missing soldiers. The Second Anglo-Afghan War officially broke out -

The history of Afghanistan can be traced back to the ancient Persian Empire, which was incorporated into Persia during the expedition of Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC. Alexander's expedition in the 4th century BC was annexed to his empire. After Alexander's death, the empire was divided into parts, and Afghanistan was transferred to the Seleucid kingdom in the east. About 250 BC, Theodotus, the governor of Bactria, located between the Amu Darya River and the Hindu Kush Mountains (including northern Afghanistan), broke away from Seleucus and established the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria (known as Bactria and Tocharian in Chinese historical books), which was strongest in the first half of the second century BC and expanded to the upper reaches of the Indus Valley, and then declined due to civil strife.

In the first half of the 2nd century BC, the Dayue clan, which was originally stationed in the Hexi Corridor, was defeated by the Xiongnu and moved west to the Amu Darya territory, conquering Bactria around 140-130 BC and driving the Greek dynasty to the south. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Da Yue clan was divided into five parts: Xiumi, Shuangmi, Guishuang, Dumi, and Dun. In the first century, the Kushan unified the tribes and expanded into a powerful Kushan kingdom, which stretched from the Aral Sea in the west to the Green Mountains in the east, across Central Asia and the northwestern part of the Indian Peninsula, and advocated Mahayana Buddhism. After the third century, it gradually declined and divided into several small states. In the first half of the fifth century, it was destroyed by the Bada that came from the north.

The Bada is a nomadic people, originally living in the Golden Mountain (Altai Mountains), and belongs to Rouran, and the Romans called it the "White Huns". At the beginning of the fifth century, it moved westward, and later conquered the Ili River Valley, the Transoxiana region, Tocharo, and northwestern India, and defeated Sassanid Persia, killing its king, and became a formidable power, with its center of rule in present-day Afghanistan, and its professing religion. Around 567, Sassanid Persia and the Western Turks jointly defeated the Sada and divided their territory with the Amu River as the boundary. Tocharian was assigned to Persia, but was soon captured by the Western Turks.

In 627, the Western Turkic Yehu Khan sent his eldest son to establish a Turkic dynasty in Tocharia. After the Tang army destroyed the Western Turks, the Turkic dynasty of Tocharian declared itself a vassal to the Tang, and the Tang placed the Yue Clan's governor's mansion here. In addition, there were a number of small states belonging to Tochar in and around present-day Afghanistan: Humi, Hushiqian (Tang Zhisha Prefecture), Zobin (Xiuxian Prefecture), Fanyan (Wufeng Prefecture), Khataro Branch (Tiaozhi Prefecture), and Gulu (Gaofu Prefecture). In addition, from 662 to 674, the Tang Dynasty also appointed Belus, the son of the last king of Persia who had come to the Tang Dynasty in exile, as the king of Persia, and placed the Persian governorate in eastern Persia and Afghanistan.

At the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs conquered Afghanistan and took control of Tochar. After the Battle of Talas in 751, all the countries of the Western Regions west of the Green Mountains were subsumed to the Arabs, and since then Central Asia has been gradually Islamized until today.

In 821, the Arab Abbasid dynasty (black-clothed) Khorasan governor Tahir established the Tahir dynasty, which owned Central Asia, Transoxiana, and Afghanistan, nominally recognizing the sovereignty of the caliphate, but in the form of **. In 867, the commander of the army of Sistan Province, Yakub (nicknamed Safar), raised troops to establish the Safarid dynasty, and in 873 destroyed the Tahir dynasty, and took over most of Iran, Transoxian, Afghanistan, and western India, with its center in Khorasan, and once made an expedition to Baghdad. Soon, the Samanid dynasty established by local generals arose in the Transoxianan region, and the Safarid dynasty was destroyed in 900. In 962, the governor of Khorasan, Alp, ruled the Ghaznavid Dynasty according to the city of Ghaznavid**, established the Ghaznavid Dynasty, occupied Afghanistan, destroyed the Samanid Dynasty at the end of the 10th century, and successively obtained Central Asia and Iran, the northern part of the Indus River region, and was attacked by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century and declined, losing the territory of Iran and Central Asia. In the middle of the 12th century in Afghanistan, the Gord dynasty rose in the Gorish mountains between Herat and Ghaznavid, and soon possessed the whole territory of Afghanistan, and then destroyed the Ghaznavid dynasty, accounting for Iran and India, and the Gur dynasty was destroyed by the Khwarazm Sultanate that arose in the river around 1215.

After the fall of Khorezm to the Mongols in 1220, Afghanistan was ruled by the Mongol Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and a number of minor states attached to the Mongols, and then returned to Timur after the rise of the Mongols. After Timur's death, Afghanistan became a battlefield for the descendants of Timur and the Turkmen Black Sheep Dynasty in Central Asia, and after the 16th century, it was transferred to the Mughal Empire and the hands of Persia.

In 1747, Ahmed, the Abu Dari chief of Afghanistan, took advantage of the decline of Persia to establish the Kingdom of Afghanistan, which officially formed a unified Afghan state. It has gone through two dynasties: the Abu Darid dynasty (1747-1826) and the Barakzai (1826-1973). From 1839 to 1842, the British launched the first war of aggression against Afghanistan, but suffered a crushing defeat