Sir William Macnaghten

Sir William Hay Macnaghten was an East India Company official and orientalist whose mission to Lahore in 1838 produced the Tripartite Treaty. He is a British actor in this record, not a figure of the Panth. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born in August 1793, was educated at Charterhouse and joined the Company in 1809. His diplomatic career began towards the close of 1830, when he went as secretary with Lord William Bentinck on his tour of the upper provinces, and he was present at the Governor-General's meeting with Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Ropar in October 1831.

The Tripartite Treaty. The Encyclopaedia says Auckland had to choose between Dost Muhammad and Ranjit Singh, because Dost Muhammad made Peshawar the price of his help, and he chose Ranjit Singh. In May 1838 Macnaghten was sent to Lahore, and Ranjit Singh signed the Tripartite Treaty on 26 June 1838. Ranjit Singh laid down conditions: an annual payment of 200,000 rupees from Afghanistan, compensation for giving up the Sikh claims on Shikarpur and Sindh, and the cession of Jalalabad. Macnaghten agreed to everything except Jalalabad. The treaty confirmed Sikh control, in perpetuity, over Kashmir, Attock, Hazara, Peshawar, Multan and other former Afghan possessions. The Encyclopaedia adds that it has been said the real British purpose was to thwart Sikh designs on Sindh.

After Ranjit Singh. After Shah Shuja was restored in 1839, with the Sikh forces taking no part beyond the Khyber, Macnaghten became the British minister and envoy at Kabul. The Encyclopaedia says that, amid mounting disagreements over the Sikh-Afghan border and the territories of Swat and Buner, he made wild accusations against the Sikh Darbar. He demanded the recall of General Avitabile, the Sikh governor of Peshawar, whom he accused of coercing the Khyber tribes. He complained that the Barakzai tributaries at Peshawar sheltered the rebel Ghilzai chiefs, and he argued that the treaty had lapsed with Ranjit Singh's death, proposing that the Sikhs give back to the Afghans their former territories on the Indus, Peshawar among them.

Death. On 23 December 1841 he was lured into a conference outside Kabul and killed by Akbar Khan, the deposed Amir's son (the Encyclopaedia). The Dictionary of National Biography says that on 22 December he had accepted terms from Akbar Khan that contradicted his earlier arrangement with the rebel chiefs, and that Akbar Khan shot him on the Seeah Sung plain with a pistol he had given him the day before. Wikipedia says the exact circumstances are unclear.

Key moments

• 26 June 1838: the Tripartite Treaty is signed at Lahore.
• 1839 to 1841: envoy at Kabul; presses the Lahore Darbar over Peshawar and Avitabile.
• 23 December 1841: killed at Kabul.

What he is remembered for. He is remembered for the Tripartite Treaty and for the Afghan policy that ended with his killing at Kabul. In the Panth's record he is the envoy through whom the Company secured Ranjit Singh's signature for its Afghan plans.