Josiah the Great: The True Story of The Man Who Would Be King

Josiah the Great: The True Story of The Man Who Would Be King
Ben Macintyre

In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great.Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would be King’, but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company’s army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region.As commander of the Afghan army, he became the first general since Alexander the Great to lead an army across the Hindu Kush. There, in a crowning act of imperial hubris, he declared himself a prince. But a year later he was on his way back to America, unceremoniously ousted by an invading British army. He would die in obscurity in San Francisco, still boasting to sceptical listeners that he had once been an Afghan king.Harlan was an extraordinary mixture of parts: eccentric, inquisitive and brave to the point of lunacy, he was also an acute observer who understood the Afghan people as no foreigner had done before. His warnings of the dangers of imperialism have an uncanny echo at a time when relations between the West and Afghanistan are under intense scrutiny.Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan’s long-lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan’s footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

JOSIAH THE GREAT

The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King

BEN MACINTYRE

Copyright (#ulink_84365585-fc8e-5fa3-adac-b4b8d382af85)

Harper Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

First published in 2004 by HarperCollinsPublishers

Copyright © Ben Macintyre 2004

Q and A with Ben Macintyre/A Conqueror Gone Native © Sarah Vine 2005

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Ben Macintyre asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007151073

Ebook Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780007406852

Version: 2015-10-20

Praise (#ulink_63c3ddbb-fd71-5f80-a4ec-c7722ef5886e)

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‘Harlan is a fascinating figure, and Macintyre brings him magnificently back to life in a portrait that carries complete conviction. Josiah the Great is perhaps his most accomplished book: as compelling as it is humorous, thoughtful and well written … Ben Macintyre has succeeded in adding a completely new chapter to the tale, and one overlooked by all previous writers’

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, Times Literary Supplement

‘The saga of the first Afghan war, one of the greatest disasters ever met by the British army, has been told many times before … But Ben Macintyre has found a wholly original angle on it. A riveting book and a valuable contribution to Great Game literature’

MATTHEW LEEMING, Spectator

‘With Afghanistan already long gone from the headlines, Ben Macintyre provides a timely historical reminder of the perils of messing about in foreign lands. The entertainingly improbable Josiah the Great is the ultimate in exotic’

JUSTIN MAROZZI

‘Ben Macintyre has extricated [Harlan] from obscurity, in a book as compelling as its subject’

Daily Mail

‘Ben Macintyre tells a wonderfully compelling story. Like so many of the best biographers Macintyre has fleshed out a figure who merits only a meagre index-entry in most histories but whose experience helps to bring to life an entire period’

PHILIP MARSDEN, Sunday Telegraph

For Barney, Finn and Molly

If I want a crown I must go hunt it for myself.

RUDYARD KIPLING, ‘The Man who Would be King’

Contents

Cover Page (#u6d08af7c-20e6-5a61-bbe0-346c3d15f447)

Title Page (#u66adc338-1d5c-5004-9798-935727dcfcbe)

Copyright (#ud8e03284-07ca-502a-91f7-22f296d2e79d)

Praise (#u7fda2656-22ed-5c4f-91df-451427488507)

Epigraph (#u74811dbf-8c87-5be3-846d-eb8bdf6165d0)

Maps (#uc9a4e5ae-8898-5bee-abc4-fa0610bb2de2)

PREFACE (#uc0a9c029-52b1-5ae8-af17-f8e8a12ff506)

PROLOGUE (#u8d0fc5f9-a689-5018-a797-5239090401aa)

1 A Company Wallah (#u5353aac1-58e9-5737-a168-9d472696acf0)

2 The Quaker King-Maker (#u3a05ead1-261a-5b82-b935-75373237afb9)

3 My Sword is My Passport (#u6db7c30f-90cb-58b5-9607-1ad6dca3072c)

4 The Young Alexander (#u7584933c-cc63-5bfe-a974-4252bf6ff3df)

5 The Dervish From Chester County (#u60e4864a-6505-5a3d-a686-2cfe52388d6b)

6 From Peshwar To Kabul (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Kabul, Conspiracy And Cholera (#litres_trial_promo)

8 The Alchemist (#litres_trial_promo)