DANA VISALLI: By 1770 Britain had a monopoly on opium production in
India and saw to it that cultivation spread into Afghanistan as well
(the boundary between the two was ill-defined until 1893). Anxious to
protect their drug trade and concerned the Afghan king Dost Mohammad was
too friendly with the Russians, the British sent an expeditionary force
of 12,000 soldiers into Afghanistan in 1839 to dethrone him and set up
their own hand-picked king, Shah Shoja.
