Conclusion

Abstract

Before it was a palpable reality, ‘Afghanistan’ was a conceptual construct of the East India Company’s (EIC) colonial imagination. That construct proved extremely important as the Company projected its understanding of the Afghan political universe onto a kingdom in profound crisis. The dissolution of the neighbouring Mughal and Safavid Empires, combined with the expansion of European empires in the area, set in motion the disintegration of regional patterns of trade and economic intercourse which the Afghan lands had formerly been central to. The Afghan political entity was thrown into crisis with the collapse of the Islamic political order which had formerly incubated it.