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Book/Printed Material The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, Contained in a Personal Narrative during the Campaign of 1839 & 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan.

About this Item

Title

  • The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, Contained in a Personal Narrative during the Campaign of 1839 & 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan.

Summary

  • James Atkinson (1780--1852) was a man of many talents, best known for his early translations into English of Persian poetry and prose. He was born in England and studied medicine in London and Edinburgh. He was appointed an assistant surgeon in the Bengal service of the East India Company in 1805, and spent most of the rest of his life in India. In his spare time he mastered Persian, and by 1814 he had published a translation of part of the Shahnamah (Book of kings), the first time the Persian epic was made accessible to an English audience. In 1838 Atkinson was appointed chief surgeon of the Army of the Indus, and in that capacity he accompanied the army on its march to Kabul in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839--42). The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, published in London in 1842, is Atkinson's account of the war. It begins with a chapter on the causes of the expedition (the perceived Russian threat to Afghanistan and by extension to India), which is followed by a history of Shah Shujaʻ and of the Durrani dynasty. Subsequent chapters describe the advance of the army to the Indus, to Kandahar, the march from Kandahar to Ghazni, the capture of Kabul, and the march to Jalalabad. Atkinson returned to Bengal in 1841 and thus escaped the disaster that befell the Anglo-Indian army of occupation the following year, when Afghan tribesmen annihilated the Kabul garrison, a British and Indian force of 4,500 men. Atkinson was a talented artist who, in the same year in which this book appeared, published a book of lithographs entitled Sketches in Afghaunistan, based on drawings he made in Afghanistan. Atkinson also published translations of Italian verse and wrote a medical treatise on the bladder. He is regarded as a pioneer of oriental research who helped to make Persian and Afghan culture better known in Britain and beyond.

Names

  • Atkinson, James, 1780-1852 Author.

Created / Published

  • London : W.H. Allen and Company, 1842.

Headings

  • -  Afghanistan--Ghaznī--Ghazni
  • -  Afghanistan--Kābul--Kābul
  • -  Afghanistan--Nangarhār--Jalālābād
  • -  Afghanistan--Qandahār--Kandahar
  • -  India--Punjab--Ferozepore
  • -  1839 to 1840
  • -  Afghan Wars
  • -  Atkinson, James, 1780-1852
  • -  Description and travel
  • -  Dōst Moḥammad Khān, Amir of Afghanistan, 1793-1863
  • -  Durrani Empire
  • -  Eastern question (Central Asia)
  • -  Exploration and encounters
  • -  Foreign relations
  • -  Great Britain. Army of the Indus
  • -  Great Game (South Asia)
  • -  Library of Congress Afghanistan Project
  • -  Military campaigns
  • -  Shāh Shujāʻ, Amir of Afghanistan, 1780?-1842

Notes

  • -  Title devised, in English, by Library staff.
  • -  Original resource extent: 428 pages : maps ; 20 centimeters.
  • -  Reference extracted from World Digital Library: Stanley Lane-Poole, revised by Parvin Loloi, "Atkinson, James (1780--1852)," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2004).
  • -  Original resource at: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries.
  • -  Content in English.
  • -  Description based on data extracted from World Digital Library, which may be extracted from partner institutions.

Medium

  • 1 online resource.

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2021667053

Online Format

  • compressed data
  • pdf
  • image

Additional Metadata Formats

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Atkinson, James, Author. The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, Contained in a Personal Narrative during the Campaign of& 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan. London: W.H. Allen and Company, 1842. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667053/.

APA citation style:

Atkinson, J. (1842) The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, Contained in a Personal Narrative during the Campaign of& 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan. London: W.H. Allen and Company. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667053/.

MLA citation style:

Atkinson, James, Author. The Expedition into Affghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country, Contained in a Personal Narrative during the Campaign of& 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan. London: W.H. Allen and Company, 1842. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2021667053/>.