Opening of the Russian Consulate General in Khorasan in 1889. The Afghan Aspect

By the mid-1880s, Russia took over Central Asia and approached closely to the borders of Afghanistan. As a result of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), Russia's southern neighbour assumed the status of a British protectorate and lost the right to an independent foreign policy. Against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian-British confrontation in Central Asia, Russian authorities felt an urgent need to obtain the reliable information on Afghanistan, but did not have an opportunity to send an envoy there and had to develop semi-legal intelligence activities and rely on the information obtained largely from local dwellers. Between 1882 and 1900, Russian Government opened four diplomatic offices to the north and west of the Afghan border: the Consulate in Kashgar (1882), the Political Agency in Bukhara (1885), the Consulate General in Khorasan (1889) and the Vice-Consulate in Sistan (1900). The aforementioned missions are united by the fact that their duties in addition to the issues related to the host territories, included information gathering about Afghanistan. However, the Afghan aspect of these diplomatic missions’ activities has not yet been reflected in any historical studies. The author has a plan for a thorough study of the issue and this article on the opening of the Russian Consulate General in the Iranian city of Mashhad being the first step on this way. On the basis of this research were the documents of the Foreign Policy Archive of Imperial Russia, the Russian State Historical Archive, as well as the source entitled “Siraj al-Tawarikh” in Dari

Afghan · Ancient history · Central asia · Diplomacy · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Protectorate · Social science · Sociology · Central Asia Education and Culture · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East