Mastung, 14 May 1854: Kalat and the British sign a treaty

Pages from history: this account describes a day before the launch of Roznama Atemad (October 1970). It has been compiled from available historical sources.

Sunday, 14 May 1854. Mastung, in the Sarawan valley, is the Khan of Kalat’s summer residence between Kalat and Quetta. Major John Jacob, the British Political Superintendent on the Upper Sind Frontier, had arrived two days earlier after travelling through the heat of Kachhi. According to his biographer H. T. Lambrick, Khan Mir Nasir Khan II and Jacob signed and sealed a new treaty today. In Aitchison’s collection of treaties it is Treaty No. 3, and its last line says it was concluded at Mastung on 14 May 1854.

From 1839 to 1841

According to Aitchison, during the First Afghan War the British were led to believe that the Khan of Kalat, Mir Mehrab Khan, was their enemy. In November 1839 a detachment of the British army returning from Kabul attacked Kalat, and Mehrab Khan was killed in the fighting. Shah Nawaz Khan was made Khan in his place, and Sarawan and Kachhi were added to the Kabul kingdom.

Soon a revolt broke out under Mehrab Khan’s son, Nasir Khan. Shah Nawaz Khan was deposed and the British representative, Lieutenant Loveday, was killed. In Aitchison’s words, the British government reversed its policy for the sake of peace in the country and "tardy justice to the memory of the unfortunate Mehrab Khan". According to the 1907 Sarawan Gazetteer, Major James Outram placed Nasir Khan on the throne of Kalat in October 1841.

In the treaty signed at Kalat on 6 October 1841, Nasir Khan acknowledged himself a vassal of Shah Shuja and his successors, as his forefathers had been. Kachhi and Mastung were returned to him, and he promised always to follow the advice of the British officer posted at his court. But after the British army withdrew from Kabul, the treaty became a "dead letter", according to both Aitchison and the Gazetteer.

The road to Mastung

According to the Imperial Gazetteer (1908), Jacob was in charge of the Upper Sind Frontier and Baluchistan affairs from the start of 1847 until his death in 1858, and his influence at Kalat was "very great". According to Lambrick, Jacob and the Commissioner in Sind, Bartle Frere, had long been recommending that the Khan be paid Rs50,000 a year. Governor General Lord Dalhousie accepted the proposal after Outram backed it. In late April 1854 Dalhousie ordered Jacob to conclude a treaty.

Aitchison and the Gazetteer give the same reason: the danger of war between England and Russia, and the need to strengthen British influence on the western frontier.

What the treaty said

According to the text printed in Aitchison’s collection, the treaty had seven articles:

1. Outram’s treaty of 6 October 1841 was cancelled.
2. There would be "perpetual friendship" between the British government and the Khan, his heirs and successors.
3. The Khan would oppose the enemies of the British government with all his power, would give it "subordinate cooperation" in every matter, and would not negotiate with any state without its consent. Ordinary correspondence with neighbours would continue.
4. If it was thought necessary to station British troops in any part of Kalat, they would stay at places the British authorities considered suitable.
5. The Khan would stop his subjects from plundering in or near British territory, protect merchants travelling to and from Afghanistan through Sind or the ports of Sonmiani and Makran, and levy nothing beyond the fixed duty.
6. On condition that these obligations were faithfully met every year, the British government would pay the Khan an annual allowance of Rs50,000 in Company rupees.
7. No allowance would be paid for any year in which these terms were not met.

The attached schedule fixed the duty: Rs6 per camel load from the northern frontier to Karachi or any other port, and Rs5 to Shikarpur. The same rates applied to goods going the other way. The Governor General in Council ratified the treaty at Fort William, Calcutta, in June 1854, and it bears Dalhousie’s signature.

Two views

The British-era account. According to Lambrick, Dalhousie wrote to Jacob in a private letter that "you have far surpassed all our expectations", and the rest of 1854 passed without caravans being plundered. The Kachhi Gazetteer says the treaty placed relations between the Khan and the British government "on a sound footing". Another biographer of Jacob, Alexander Innes Shand (1900), writes that in Jacob’s eyes paying an allowance to the young Khan was only the "thin end of a wedge". He wanted British troops at Quetta.

The critical account. According to Muhammad Naeem and Nasreen Afzal (The Dialogue, 2025), the treaties of 1838 to 1876 turned the Khanate of Kalat from an independent state into a British "vassal state". They say the British helped the Khan strengthen central authority but distanced him from the tribes and made him dependent on them, so that the Khan became more answerable to the British than to the chiefs.

According to the Sarawan Gazetteer, the state had no standing army until 1854. That year Nasir Khan II raised the "Fateh Jang" infantry regiment, a body of cavalry and artillery for the first time. The chiefs saw this as a serious intrusion on their authority.

In the world at the time

• The Crimean War: On 28 March 1854 Britain and France declared war on Russia. According to Lambrick, Jacob hoped to be sent to Turkey with his cavalry.

What happened next

• 1857: Nasir Khan II died. According to Aitchison, it was widely believed that he had been poisoned. His half-brother Mir Khudadad Khan became Khan by the chiefs’ choice. According to the Sarawan Gazetteer, he was sixteen at the time.
• 1863–1864: The chiefs made Khudadad Khan’s cousin Sherdil Khan the Khan. In 1864 Sherdil Khan was murdered, Khudadad Khan became Khan again, and the suspended allowance under the 1854 treaty was restored.
• 1873: The British Political Agent left Kalat and the allowance under the 1854 treaty was withheld. The Khan was told that his duty to protect trade remained in force.
• 8 December 1876: A new treaty was concluded at Jacobabad. It renewed the 1854 treaty, raised the allowance to Rs100,000, and opened the way for British troops and officers in Kalat. According to Aitchison, this treaty became the foundation of the Baluchistan Agency.

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