The thesis
is the story of the formation of a frontier which was
needed by three interested parties: the new Amir of
Afghanistan, Abdurrahman, who needed it because he felt
within himself the power to weld Afghanistan into a
united whole: the Russians, who, excluding some of
their more chauvinist men of war, needed it to set a
limit to their sprawling, huge, under-manned and moneyconsuming
empire in Central Asia: and the English, who
needed it to set an internationally agreed-upon frontier
as a barrier to this same Russian advance, which had
been seen by many throughout the century as a potential
threat to British India