Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan is a contentious subject, yet it is often forgotten that the current conflict is in fact the fourth in a string of such wars dating back more than 170 years. Aiming to protect British India from the expanding Russian empire, the British fought a series of conflicts on Afghan territory between 1838 and 1919. The Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries were ill-conceived and led to some of the worst military disasters ever sustained by British forces in this part of the world, with poor strategy in the First Afghan War resulting in the annihilation of 16,000 soldiers and civilians in a single week. In his new book, Jules Stewart explores the potential danger of replaying Britain's military catastrophes and considers what can be learnt from revisiting the story of these earlier Afghan wars.

In 1915, at the height of World War I, the Central Powers sent a secret mission, led by Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer and Werner Otto von Hentig, to the court of the emir of Afghanistan, Habibullah Khan. Jointly operated by the governments of Germany and Turkey, the purpose of the mission was to persuade the emir to declare full independence from the British Empire, enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and attack British India. The ultimate aim was part of Hindu-German conspiracy to provoke a nationalist revolution in India which would undermine British power in the region. Britain saw this mission as a serious and credible threat - so much so that they tried to intercept the travellers in Persia, en route from Istanbul to Kabul and subsequently deployed their own intelligence and diplomatic strategies to ensure that Afghanistan would retain its neutral position. Although the Hentig-Niedermayer expedition was ultimately unsuccessful, it had lasting consequences and served as a sign of the continuing German infatuation with the Middle East and Central Asia, which had begun under Bismarck and continued through the interwar period, until World War II. Written in a narrative style, this book provides a gripping account of the expedition, highlighting a previously little-known aspect of World War I.