272-460: The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcated by the two boundary commissions for the provinces of Punjab and Bengal during the Partition of India . It is named after Cyril Radcliffe , who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions, had the ultimate responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km) of territory with 88 million people. The term "Radcliffe Line"
544-581: A "unattractive" city that had been badly damaged by Japanese bombing . Wavell called Chiang "not a particularly impressive figure" who was only interested in grand strategy in Asia and had no interest in Burma despite the importance of the Burma Road in keeping China supplied with arms. Chiang did not speak English and his American educated wife Soong Mei-ling served as his translator. Wavell reported to London that he had
816-559: A "weekly waffle" from August 1939 onward was Sir Miles Lampson , the Ambassador to Egypt, who was regarded as the senior British official in the Middle East. Lampson described Wavell as shy and reserved, but "that when one gets to know him better, he is rather a good fellow". On 18 August 1939 in a conference held abroad the battleship HMS Warspite in Alexandria harbour, Wavell first held
1088-669: A Boundary Commission be set up consisting of two Muslim and two non-Muslim members recommended by the Punjab Legislative Assembly. He also proposed that a British judge of the High Court be appointed as the chairman of the commission. Jinnah and the Muslim League continued to oppose the idea of partitioning the provinces, and the Sikhs were disturbed about the possibility of getting only 12 districts (without Gurdaspur). In this context,
1360-813: A German offensive in Libya on the basis of Hitler's orders to Erwin Rommel of the Afrika Korps in February 1941 to only defend the Italian colony of Libya lest its loss bring down the Fascist regime in Italy. However, Rommel was determined to launch an unauthorised offensive to win himself glory. Wavell had broken up the British XIII Corps by sending the 4th Indian Division to Ethiopia and
1632-540: A German offensive. The British stopped their advance into Libya at El Agheila while the 7th Armoured Division was returned to Egypt to be replaced by the 2nd Armoured Division. In early 1941, the 6th British Division was training in Egypt for amphibious operations for an invasion of Rhodes as Churchill hoped that seizing the Italian Dodecanese islands might bring Turkey into the war. The Greeks had committed most of
1904-476: A Muslim majority and the 'West Bengal' province, with its capital at Calcutta , had a Hindu majority. However, this partition of Bengal was reversed in 1911 in an effort to mollify Bengali nationalism . Proposals for partitioning Punjab had been made starting in 1908. Its proponents included the Hindu leader Bhai Parmanand , Congress leader Lala Lajpat Rai , industrialist G. D. Birla , and various Sikh leaders. After
2176-782: A Muslim majority. It would also give Pakistan the Shakargarh, Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils of the Gurdaspur district. If the boundary went by Doabs, Pakistan could get not only the 16 districts which had already under the notional partition been put into West Punjab, including the Gurdaspur District, but also get the Kangra District in the mountains, which was about 93% Hindu and was located to the north and east of Gurdaspur. Or one could go by commissioners' divisions. Any of these units being adopted would have been more favourable to Pakistan than
2448-742: A Sikh state with Ambala , Jalandher , Lahore Divisions with some districts from the Multan Division , which, however, did not meet the Cabinet delegates' agreement. In discussions with Jinnah, the Cabinet Mission offered either a 'smaller Pakistan' with all the Muslim-majority districts except Gurdaspur or a 'larger Pakistan' under the sovereignty of the Indian Union. The Cabinet Mission came close to success with its proposal for an Indian Union under
2720-657: A South African division fighting in Egypt would win the Afrikaners over to supporting the war and told Wavell to supply the South African division out of his supplies. Wavell responded on 27 January 1941 that the main limits on his forces were logistical and he needed more transport vehicles. Wavell also complained that stockpiling supplies for the planned invasion of Rhodes was forcing him to hold back on supplies for North Africa. By February 1941, Wavell's Western Desert Force under Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor had defeated
2992-415: A battleship and an aircraft carrier had been badly damaged. The British Mediterranean fleet's losses off Crete meant that there was no immediate prospect of Britain regaining command of the central Mediterranean, and Egypt would still have to be supplied via the long route around Africa. The Germans had been outraged that the civilian population of Crete had joined in the defence as the idea of women fighting
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#17328517397243264-506: A belief in their suitability to serve in harsh conditions, Punjabi recruits were favoured as they could be paid at the local service rate, whereas soldiers serving on the frontier from more distant lands had to be paid extra foreign service allowances. By 1875, of the entire Indian army, a third of recruits hailed from the Punjab. In 1914, three fifths of the Indian army came from the Punjab, despite
3536-641: A clear strategy in London about precisely he should have been doing. On 21 June 1940 upon hearing of the French surrender, Wavell sent out an order of the day to the British and Australian troops under his command reading: "Our gallant French allies have been overwhelmed after a desperate struggle and have been compelled to ask for terms. The British Empire will of course continue the struggle until victory has been won. Dictators fade away. The British Empire never dies". Wavell had
3808-586: A convoy codenamed Tiger to once again send tanks to Egypt via the shorter, but more dangerous Mediterranean route rather the long route around Cape of Good Hope . In early June Wavell sent a force under General Wilson to invade Syria and Lebanon , responding to the help given by the Vichy France authorities there to the Iraq Government during the Anglo-Iraqi War . Initial hopes of a quick victory faded as
4080-598: A counter-insurgency campaign against the Palestinian fedayeen (guerrillas) who had risen up in 1936. Wavell refused to proclaim martial law under the grounds that he did not have enough troops to enforce it. Wavell was opposed to Zionism and thought that the Balfour Declaration had been a mistake as the promise of British support for a "Jewish national home" in Palestine led to militant anti-British feelings throughout
4352-586: A coup in Baghdad and installed the pro-Axis Rashid Ali al-Gaylani as the new prime minister of Iraq. King Farouk of Egypt leaned into a pro-Axis neutrality and because of the uncertain attitude of the Egyptian Army, Wavell was forced to keep one of the Australian divisions intended for Greece in Egypt. Wavell suspected with good reason that Farouk was in contact with German and Italian agents, and that Egypt would join
4624-446: A diplomatic mission to the Middle East in late June 1941. Harriman described Wavell to Roosevelt as "a man of true integrity and a true leader". Rommel rated Wavell highly, despite Wavell's lack of success against him. Of Wavell, Auchinleck wrote: "In no sense do I wish to infer that I found an unsatisfactory situation on my arrival – far from it. Not only was I greatly impressed by the solid foundations laid by my predecessor, but I
4896-559: A division in Iraq to take command of its principal formation, Burma Corps . Nevertheless, the pressure from the Japanese Armies was unstoppable and a withdrawal to India was ordered which was completed by the end of May before the start of the monsoon season which brought Japanese progress to a halt. On 8 March 1942, the Japanese took Rangoon. The Japanese advance into southeast Asia along with
5168-837: A division-sized force across the desert from Palestine to relieve RAF Habbaniya and to assume control of troops in Iraq. Churchill nearly sacked Wavell on 6 May 1941 when he at first refused an order to march into Iraq. During the Iraq campaign, the Vichy premier Admiral François Darlan , gave the Germans transit rights to send their forces to Iraq across Syria. When he learned of this Churchill wanted to allow Free French forces to invade Syria at once, but Wavell advised that Free French forces were too small to invade Syria without British help. On 18 May 1941, General Georges Catroux met with Wavell in Cairo to urge him to invade Syria, claiming that Darlan had signed
5440-560: A federal scheme, but it fell apart in the end because of Nehru's opposition to a heavily decentralised India. In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten arrived in India as the next viceroy, with an explicit mandate to achieve the transfer of power before June 1948. Over ten days, Mountbatten obtained the agreement of Congress to the Pakistan demand except for the 13 eastern districts of Punjab (including Amritsar and Gurdaspur). However, Jinnah held out. Through
5712-406: A few years of its annexation, the Punjab was regarded as British India's model agricultural province. From the 1860s onwards, agricultural prices and land values soared in the Punjab. This stemmed from increasing political security and improvements in infrastructure and communications. New cash crops such as wheat , tobacco , sugar cane and cotton were introduced. By the 1920s the Punjab produced
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#17328517397245984-576: A formal parade, I put on the kilt I created a veritable sensation. I was impressed from the first with the Russian soldier, with his hardihood, physique, marching powers and discipline. But the lack of education of many of the regimental officers was noticeable. After the Second Moroccan crisis of 1911, Wavell become convinced that a war with Germany was likely and that closer Anglo-Russian ties would be needed. Wavell reported to London that many elements in
6256-410: A growing crisis of indebtedness. When landowners were unable to pay down their loans, urban based moneylenders took advantage of the law to foreclose debts of mortgaged land. This led to a situation where land increasingly passed to absentee moneylenders who had little connection to the villages were the land was located. The colonial government recognised this as a potential threat to the stability of
6528-701: A lack of equipment. In addition, the " Quit India " protests launched in August 1942 overwhelmed the police forces, and Wavell was forced to send out Indian Army troops as an aid to civil power in several provinces to uphold the authority of the Raj. In order to wrest some of the initiative from the Japanese, Wavell ordered the Eastern Army in India to mount an offensive in the Arakan , starting in September 1942. After some initial success
6800-413: A link between Karachi and Lahore via Multan. The Punjab Northern State Railway linked Lahore and Peshawar in 1883. By 1886, the independent railways had amalgamated into North Western State Railway . The construction of railway lines and the network of railway workshops generated employment opportunities, which in turn led to increased immigration into cantonment towns. As connectivity increased across
7072-457: A meeting in Cairo on 19 February 1941 attended by Wavell, Dill, Eden and Donovan during which Donovan strongly stressed that American public opinion would be strongly impressed by an expedition to Greece, which Donovan stated would improve the odds of Congress passing the Lend-Lease bill. On 20 February 1941, another meeting in Cairo attended by Dill, Wavell and Eden ended with the conclusion "there
7344-727: A meeting with Admiral Andrew Cunningham , the GOC of the British Mediterranean fleet and Air Marshal William Mitchell , the GOC of RAF Middle East to discuss the plans to be executed if the Danzig crisis should turn to war. Wavell was a frequent visitor to Alexandria as Cunningham chose to command the Mediterranean fleet from the Warspite . Because of the "limited liability" doctrine which governed British defence spending, Wavell's Middle East command
7616-639: A military observer with the Russian Army to learn Russian, returning to his regiment in December of that year. In September 1911, Wavell attended the annual war games of the Imperial Russian Army. He reported to London: It was my first acquaintance with the Russian Army and practically the first acquaintance of the Russian Army with a British officer for many years...So I was quite a novelty and when for
7888-564: A month of taking charge he launched Iraqforce to invade Persia in co-operation with the Russians in order to secure the oilfields and the lines of communication to the Soviet Union . In the summer and fall of 1941, many British officials expected the Soviet Union to be defeated that year. Wavell's initial concern was that the Soviet Union would be defeated and that Germany would advance though
8160-587: A number of other responsibilities besides for reopening the Burma Road. The fact that Stilwell feuded endlessly with Chiang, whom he called "the Peanut" caused problems for Wavell as it was never entirely clearly that just how much control Stilwell actually exercised over the Chinese armies under his command. Wavell was strongly critical of Churchill's decision to give priority to the strategic bombing offensive against Germany , which he complained left his command deprived of
8432-535: A part of UNESCO 's Histories flagship project, recently disclosed documents of the history of the partition reveal British complicity with the top Indian leadership to wrest Kashmir from Pakistan. Alastair Lamb, based on the study of recently declassified documents, has convincingly proven that Mountbatten, in league with Nehru, was instrumental in pressurizing Radcliffe to award the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur in East Punjab to India which could provide India with
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8704-413: A policy to provide secular education in all government managed institutions. Privately run institutions would only receive grants-in-aid in return for providing secular instruction. By 1864 this had resulted in a situation whereby all grants-in-aid to higher education schools and colleges were received by institutions under European management, and no indigenous owned schools received government help. In
8976-457: A press conference where he told the assembled British and Australian journalists: Gentleman, I asked you to come here this morning to let you know that we have attacked in the Western Desert. This is not an offensive and I do not think you ought to describe it as an offensive. You might call it an important raid. The attack was made early this morning and I had word a hour ago that the first of
9248-654: A quick and dignified British withdrawal". "Many of the seeds of postcolonial disorder in South Asia were sown much earlier, in a century and half of direct and indirect British control of large part of the region, but, as book after book has demonstrated, nothing in the complex tragedy of partition was inevitable." Radcliffe justified the casual division with the truism that no matter what he did, people would suffer. The thinking behind this justification may never be known since Radcliffe "destroyed all his papers before he left India". He departed on Independence Day itself, before even
9520-521: A rather pompous, long-winded, old-fashioned" entry in the war as he was surprised that the United Kingdom had not declared war on the Reich the previous day. On 3 September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany and Wavell immediately put the British forces in the Middle East on the highest state of alert. Wavell's first action was to order General Richard O'Connor , the GOC of the 7th British Division (which
9792-509: A request that was granted by Menzies, who insisted for domestic political reasons that the three Australian divisions be kept together. Menzies argued that the Australian people needed to see their forces fighting together for Australia and keeping the Australian divisions apart would make it seem like Australia was only serving British interests. The British had broken the Luftwaffe codes and both Wavell and Churchill believed that there would not be
10064-474: A road link to Jammu and Kashmir." As per the 'notional' award that had already been put into effect for purposes of administration ad interim, all of Gurdaspur district, owing to its Muslim majority, was assigned to Pakistan. From 14 to 17 August, Mushtaq Ahmed Cheema acted as the Deputy Commissioner of the Gurdaspur District, but when, after a delay of two days, it was announced that the major portion of
10336-517: A secret agreement with Hitler for the Reich to occupy Syria and that Vichy forces were withdrawing into Lebanon as the prelude for the hand-over. Besides de Gaulle and Catroux, Major-General Edward Spears , with whom Churchill enjoyed warmer personal relations than de Gaulle, was also lobbying Wavell for an invasion of Syria. In the Battle of Crete German airborne forces attacked on 20 May and as in Greece,
10608-491: A series of German attacks between 11 and 18 April 1941. With the Germans stopped outside Tobruk, Wavell returned to Greece on 19 April 1941, where he found a chaotic situation as Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis had committed suicide on 18 April. On 20 April 1941, Wavell met with King George II of Greece and gained his approval for the evacuation. Wavell ruled that Piraeus could not be used because of Luftwaffe air superiority and instead Force W would have to leave via
10880-505: A series of six meetings with Mountbatten, he continued to maintain that his demand was for six full provinces. He "bitterly complained" that the Viceroy was ruining his Pakistan by cutting Punjab and Bengal in half as this would mean a 'moth-eaten Pakistan'. The Gurdaspur district remained a key contentious issue for the non-Muslims. Their members of the Punjab legislature made representations to Mountbatten's chief of staff Lord Ismay as well as
11152-524: A spy in the staff of the Afrika Korps , and that Wavell was amiss in not using the intelligence from the alleged spy better. The British historian David Reynolds wrote that Churchill "seems not to have understood" that the British had the advantage in strategic intelligence as they could read some of the German codes, but that the Germans had better tactical intelligence as the Afrika Korps made better maps and
Radcliffe Line - Misplaced Pages Continue
11424-758: A staff officer (GSO1), as liaison officer with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force headquarters. In January 1918 Wavell received a further staff appointment as an assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general (AA&QMG) working at the Supreme War Council in Versailles . In late March Wavell was made a temporary brigadier general although this only lasted for a few days before reverting to his previous rank, only to be promoted once again to temporary brigadier general in April, making him, at just 34, one of
11696-399: A steady decline in the number of schools across the province since annexation. He noted in particular how Punjabi Muslim's avoided government run schools due to the lack of religious subjects taught in them, observing how at least 120,000 Punjabis attended schools unsupported by the state and describing it as 'a protest by the people against our system of education.' Leitner had long advocated
11968-704: A strong German offensive down the Monastir gap could outflank both the Metaxas line and the Aliakmon line, but he concluded that the 16 divisions of the Yugoslav Royal Army should be able to delay the Germans in Yugoslav Macedonia (modern North Macedonia ) for some time. Wavell's staff officers led by Freddie de Guingand stated that Britain did not have sufficient troops to defend Greece, and favoured an advance to drive
12240-572: A strong belief in the British Empire, and throughout his career he made references to serving the empire as the motivating force for his military career as despite being a career soldier that he maintained that he did not particularly like war. In July 1940, Wavell went to Khartoum where the Emperor Haile Selassie had set up a government-in-exile and Wavell discussed plans with the emperor for British support for Ethiopian guerrillas. During
12512-521: A tenth of India's total cotton crop and a third of its wheat crop. Per capita output of all the crops in the province increased by approximately 45 percent between 1891 and 1921, a growth contrasting to agricultural crises in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the period. The Punjab Agricultural College and Research Institute became the first higher educational agricultural institution in the Punjab when established in 1906. Rapid agricultural growth, combined with access to easy credit for landowners, led to
12784-437: A visit to London, Wavell first met the prime minister Winston Churchill on 12 August 1940. After the meeting, Eden wrote in his diary that Churchill called Wavell a "good, average colonel" and the sort of a man who would make for a good chairman of a local Conservative Party constituency association in the suburbs of London (not a compliment on Churchill's part). Wavell did not enjoy the confidence of Churchill who felt he
13056-414: Is also sometimes used for the entire boundary between India and Pakistan. However, outside of Punjab and Bengal, the boundary is made of existing provincial boundaries and had nothing to do with the Radcliffe commissions. The demarcation line was published on 17 August 1947, two days after the independence of Pakistan and India. Today, the Punjab part of the line is part of the India–Pakistan border while
13328-447: Is not the language of these districts and neither is Persian". In 1854, the Board of Administration abruptly ended the two-language policy and Urdu was designated as the official language of government across the province. The decision was motivated by new civil service rules requiring all officials pass a test in the official language of their local court. In fear of potentially losing their jobs, officials in Persian districts petitioned
13600-419: The 1907 Punjab unrest . The unrest was unlike any previous agitation in the province as the government had for the first time aggrieved a large portion of the rural population. Mass demonstrations were organised, headed by Lala Lajpat Rai , a leader of the Hindu revivalist sect Arya Samaj . The unrest resulted in the repeal of the Colonisation Bill and the end of paternalist policies in the colonies. During
13872-478: The 3rd Infantry Division , until July 1930 when he was given command of 6th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier. In March 1932, he was appointed aide-de-camp (ADC) to King George V , a position he held until October 1933 when he was promoted to Major-General. However, there was a shortage of jobs for Major-Generals at this time and in January 1934, on relinquishing command of his brigade, he found himself unemployed on half pay once again. By
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#173285173972414144-495: The 6th Australian Division as high-quality divisions, which like the 7th Armoured Division were to greatly distinguish themselves in the fighting in Africa. At a conference in Khartoum with the South African prime minister, Jan Smuts , Wavell came under strong pressure to invade Italian East Africa as soon as possible as Smuts expressed fears of an Italian conquest of Kenya, and then of Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe). Smuts also demanded that
14416-418: The Afrika Korps would probably be able to take Alexandria and without Tobruk it could not. On 8 April 1941, Wavell personally visited Tobruk to inspect its defence. The first combat with the Wehrmacht in Greece occurred on 9 April 1941 as the unmobilised and thinly spread Royal Yugoslav Army was promptly defeated and the German XXXX Panzer Corps having smashed way into Yugoslav Macedonia turned south though
14688-434: The Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of the Lahore Division from Pakistan would put a majority of Sikhs in India. (Amritsar had a non-Muslim majority and Gurdaspur a marginal Muslim majority.) To compensate for the exclusion of the Gurdaspur district, they included the entire Dinajpur district in the eastern zone of Pakistan, which similarly had a marginal Muslim majority. After receiving comments from John Thorne, member of
14960-466: The Battle of Java Sea , and on 12 March 1942 the Dutch governor of Java signed the instrument of surrender. After the fall of Singapore, Wavell commented to Alan Brooke , the new CIGS, that if only the defenders of Malaya had held out for a month longer, it would have be possible to defend Singapore along with the Dutch East Indies. On 23 February British forces in Burma had suffered a serious setback when Major-General Jackie Smyth 's decision to destroy
15232-404: The British Expeditionary Force as General Staff Officer Grade 2 (GSO2), but shortly afterwards, in November 1914, was appointed brigade major of 9th Infantry Brigade . He was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres of 1915, losing his left eye and winning the Military Cross . In October 1915 he became a GSO2 in the 64th Highland Division. In December 1915, after he had recovered, Wavell
15504-464: The Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Sir John Dill was in Cairo, during which time Wavell changed his views on the proposed Greek expedition. Wavell's volte-face on the Greek expedition seems to have been motivated partly out by the belief that with German forces massing in Bulgaria with the clear intention of invading Greece it was a matter of British honour to respect the "guarantee" of Greece made on 13 April 1939 and do something to help
15776-543: The First Sea Lord Admiral Dudley Pound and the Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal , all spoke in favour of the expedition, but protected themselves from any future criticism by citing Wavell's opinion as the primary reason for their approval. Menzies, who attended the War Cabinet, felt that there was a lack of discussion about the merits of the Greek expedition. After visiting Ankara to meet President İsmet İnönü , Eden and Dill returned to Athens on 2 March 1941 to find that Alexandros Papagos had refused to redeploy
16048-440: The First World War , Punjabi manpower contributed heavily to the Indian Army . Out of a total of 683,149 combat troops, 349,688 hailed from the province. In 1918, an influenza epidemic broke out in the province, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 962,937 people or 4.77 percent of the total estimated population. In March 1919 the Rowlatt Act was passed extending emergency measures of detention and incarceration in response to
16320-421: The Government of India Act 1919 expanded the Punjab Legislative Council and introduced the principle of dyarchy , whereby certain responsibilities such as agriculture, health, education, and local government, were transferred to elected ministers. The first Punjab Legislative Council under the 1919 Act was constituted in 1921, comprising 93 members, seventy per cent to be elected and rest to be nominated. Some of
16592-426: The Horn of Africa led to the Emperor Haile Selassie returning to his throne and the surrender of 100,000 Italian soldiers under the command of the Duke of Aosta . Benito Mussolini had claimed the conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 as his greatest accomplishment, and the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941 was a great blow to the prestige of the Fascist regime. On 11 April 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that
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#173285173972416864-454: The Indian National Congress and two from the Muslim League . Given the deadlock between the interests of the two sides and their rancorous relationship, the final decision was essentially Radcliffe's. After arriving in India on 8 July 1947, Radcliffe was given just five weeks to decide on a border. He soon met with his fellow college alumnus Mountbatten and travelled to Lahore and Calcutta to meet with commission members, chiefly Nehru from
17136-400: The Indus River and its tributary the Sutlej formed the two sides up to their confluence, the base of the triangle in the north being the Lower Himalayan Range between those two rivers. Moreover, the province as constituted under British rule also included a large tract outside these boundaries. Along the northern border, Himalayan ranges divided it from Kashmir and Tibet . On the west it
17408-545: The Kargil conflict of 1999 . There were disputes regarding the Radcliffe Line's award of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Gurdaspur district . Disputes also evolved around the districts of Malda , Khulna , and Murshidabad in Bengal and the sub-division of Karimganj of Assam. In addition to Gurdaspur's Muslim majority tehsils, Radcliffe also gave the Muslim majority tehsils of Ajnala ( Amritsar District ), Zira, Firozpur (in Firozpur District), Nakodar and Jullandur (in Jullandur District) to India instead of Pakistan. On
17680-411: The Lahore Durbar and also consisted of his younger brother John Lawrence and Charles Grenville Mansel . Below the Board, a group of acclaimed officers collectively known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men" assisted in the administration of the newly acquired province. The Board was abolished by Lord Dalhousie in 1853; Sir Henry was assigned to the Rajputana Agency , and his brother John succeeded as
17952-416: The North-West Dry Area – along with five administrative divisions – Delhi , Jullundur , Lahore , Multan , and Rawalpindi – and a number of princely states . In 1947, the Partition of India led to the province's division into East Punjab and West Punjab , in the newly independent dominions of the Indian Union and Pakistan respectively. The region was originally called Sapta Sindhu Rivers ,
18224-426: The Rethymno airfield. General Kurt Student , the commander of the Fallschirmjäger , nearly cancelled Operation Mercury as reports of the German failures come in, but Hitler insisted on continuing the operation. The Allied successes against the elite Fallschirmjäger at Heraklion and Rethymno were especially striking as Freyberg continued to regard these landings as a diversion and kept the majority of his forces on
18496-417: The Scinde , Punjab and Delhi railways to build and operate new lines. In 1862, the first section of railway in the Punjab was constructed between Lahore and Amritsar, and Lahore Junction railway station opened. Lines were opened between Lahore and Multan in 1864, and Amritsar and Delhi in 1870. The Scinde, Punjab and Delhi railways merged to form the Scinde, Punjab & Delhi Railway in 1870, creating
18768-477: The Second Boer War and Lillie Wavell (née Percival), Wavell attended Eaton House , followed by the leading preparatory boarding school Summer Fields near Oxford , Winchester College , where he was a scholar, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst . His headmaster, Dr. Fearon, had advised his father that there was no need to send him into the Army as he had "sufficient ability to make his way in other walks of life". After graduating from Sandhurst, Wavell
19040-401: The Sikh Khalsa Army was disbanded, and soldiers were required to surrender their weapons and return to agricultural or other pursuits. The Bengal Army , keen to utilise the highly trained ex-Khalsa army troops began to recruit from the Punjab for Bengal infantry units stationed in the province. However opposition to the recruitment of these soldiers spread and resentment emerged from sepoys of
19312-447: The Vedic land of the seven rivers originally: Saraswati, Indus, Sutlej, Jehlum, Chenab, Ravi, and Beas. The Sanskrit name for the region, as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata for example, was Pañcanada which means literally "Five Waters", and was translated from Sanskrit to Farsi as Panj-Âb after the Islamic conquests . The later name Punjab is thus a compound of two Farsi words Panj (five) and āb (water) and
19584-545: The Western Desert in April 1941. He served as Commander-in-Chief, India , from July 1941 until June 1943 (apart from a brief tour as Commander of American-British-Dutch-Australian Command ) and then served as Viceroy of India until his retirement in February 1947. Born the son of Archibald Graham Wavell (who later became a major-general in the British Army and military commander of Johannesburg after its capture during
19856-431: The 1940 Lahore resolution of the Muslim League demanding Pakistan, B. R. Ambedkar wrote a 400-page tract titled Thoughts on Pakistan. In the tract, he discussed the boundaries of Muslim and non-Muslim regions of Punjab and Bengal. His calculations showed a Muslim majority in 16 western districts of Punjab and non-Muslim majority in 13 eastern districts. In Bengal, he showed non-Muslim majority in 15 districts. He thought
20128-413: The 6th Australian Division to Greece. Wavell had replaced O'Connor with General Sir Philip Neame , who had no experience of desert warfare. The new GOC of the 2nd British Armoured Division , Major-General Michael Gambier-Parry was likewise new to desert warfare. Rommel soon learned from reconnaissance that the British forces in the Western Desert, at the end of a long supply line, were not prepared for
20400-667: The Allies were on the brink of a great victory, continued to bombard Wavell with telegrams demanding he sent more forces to Crete. On 22 May 1941, the New Zealanders failed to recapture Maleme airfield and on 25 May the Germans captured Galatas. A counter-attack by the New Zealanders halted the German advance for the moment. Churchill was notably angry when Wavell reported to him that Germans had air superiority made it impossible to send tanks to Crete. On 26 May Freyberg asked Wavell for permission to evacuate his forces to Egypt as defending Crete
20672-531: The Australians than any of the other Allied soldiers in Egypt. The 7th British Armoured Division , which Wavell chose to spearhead the offensive, was described by the American historians Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett as an "excellent" division made of "first-class" troops. Murray and Millet also described the other two divisions selected by Wavell to lead the offensive, namely the 4th Indian Division and
20944-643: The Axis powers meant that Wavell always had to keep forces in the Nile river valley instead of in the Western Desert. Wavell disliked King Farouk whom he described as an immature and pompous teenager who did little to conceal his anti-British feelings. British interests in the theatre were to protect the Suez Canal, which required command of the Mediterranean sea, known as the "lifeline of the Empire" where shipping went back and forth from
21216-458: The Axis the moment that Axis forces reached the Nile river valley. On 6 April 1941, the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia. Of the two divisions and one brigade that made up General Henry Wilson's Force W , the 2nd New Zealand Division and the 1st British Armoured Brigade were just taking up their positions on the Aliakhmon Line in central Greece while the 6th Australian Division was in
21488-620: The Bengal Army towards the incursion of Punjabis into their ranks. In 1851, the Punjab Irregular Force also known as the 'Piffars' was raised. Initially they consisted of one garrison and four mule batteries, four regiments of cavalry, eleven of infantry and the Corps of Guides , totalling approximately 13,000 men. The gunners and infantry were mostly Punjabi, many from the Khalsa Army, whilst
21760-699: The Bengal part of the line serves as the Bangladesh–India border . On 18 July 1947, the Indian Independence Act 1947 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom stipulated that British rule in India would come to an end just one month later, on 15 August 1947. The Act also stipulated the partition of the Presidencies and provinces of British India into two new sovereign dominions : India and Pakistan. Pakistan
22032-622: The Biloch Trans–Frontier Tract. As with religion, Punjab was a linguistically eclectically diverse province and region . In 1837, Persian had been abolished as the official language of Company administration and replaced by local Indian vernacular languages. In the Sikh Empire, Persian continued to be the official state language. Shortly after annexing the Punjab in 1849, the Board of Administration canvassed local officials in each of
22304-468: The Board of Administration was abolished, and authority was invested in a single Chief Commissioner. The Government of India Act 1858 led to further restructuring and the office of Lieutenant-Governor replaced that of Chief Commissioner. Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell , GCB , GCSI , GCIE , CMG , MC , PC (5 May 1883 – 24 May 1950)
22576-621: The British Indian ministers under the dyarchy scheme were Sir Sheikh Abdul Qadir , Sir Shahab-ud-Din Virk and Lala Hari Kishen Lal. The Government of India Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy to Punjab replacing the system of dyarchy. It provided for the constitution of Punjab Legislative Assembly of 175 members presided by a Speaker and an executive government responsible to the Assembly. The Unionist Party under Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan formed
22848-588: The British and Commonwealth troops were forced once more to evacuate. The Anglo-Greek-Australian-New Zealander forces had been evacuated to Crete, and placed under the command of Freyberg. Churchill had personally insisted on Freyberg being given the Crete command. For Unternehmen Merkur (Operation Mercury), the invasion of Crete, the Germans had committed the Fallschirmjägerkorps (i.e the Parachute Corps) of
23120-603: The Caucasus to invade Iran, and from there invade India. Wavell once again had the misfortune of being placed in charge of an undermanned theatre which became a war zone when the Japanese declared war on the United Kingdom in December 1941. On 22 December 1941, Wavell went to Chungking , the temporary capital of China, to see Chiang Kai-shek to discuss keeping the Burma Road open. While waiting for his flight to Chungking, Wavell met at Rangoon airport with Claire Lee Chennault and
23392-717: The Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army, told Wavell that the German build-up of Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria was highly concerning to the Greeks, and that Greece would need at least nine British Army divisions to hold the Greek-Yugoslav frontier where the Metaxas line ended. Wavell told Papagos that he did not have nine divisions to spare for the defence of Greece. On 20 January 1941, the Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia in
23664-493: The Congress and Jinnah, president of the Muslim League. He objected to the short time frame, but all parties were insistent that the line be finished by the 15 August British withdrawal from India. Mountbatten had accepted the post as Viceroy on the condition of an early deadline. The decision was completed just a couple of days before the withdrawal, but due to political considerations, not published until 17 August 1947, two days after
23936-536: The Danzig crisis that read in jest: "Lord Halifax is ready/To take off for Berlin/And if he gives them Danzig/We might just save our skin/Why should we do the fighting?/The Jews will stand to gain/We are the ones who'll suffer/If England fights again". Wavell complained in a letter in August 1939 of "wishful thinking" in Britain about the Danzig crisis as he wrote: "News smells of mustard gas and antiseptics and other unpleasant things". The British official whom Wavell met in
24208-454: The Delhi ridge. Finally he recruited new regiments of Punjabis to replace the depleted force, and was provided with manpower and support from surrounding princely states such as Jind, Patiala, Nabha and Kapurthala and tribal chiefs on the borderlands with Afghanistan. By 1858, an estimated 70,000 extra men had been recruited for the army and militarised police from within the Punjab. In 1858, under
24480-609: The Egyptians as the First Australian Imperial Force in World War One had been notorious for its heavy drinking and debauchery in the bars and brothels in Cairo, and Wavell was forced to issue a promise that this time the Australians would be better behaved. Despite Wavell's promises, the Australians during their leave times lived riotously in the bars and brothels in Cairo, and there were more complaints about conduct of
24752-604: The Executive Council in charge of Home affairs, Wavell forwarded the proposal to the Secretary of State. He justified the exclusion of the Amritsar district because of its sacredness to the Sikhs and that of Gurdaspur district because it had to go with Amritsar for 'geographical reasons'. The Secretary of State commended the proposal and forwarded it to the India and Burma Committee, saying, "I do not think that any better division than
25024-536: The Foreign Office, were all pro-Arab if they not actually anti-Semitic". This line was removed from the final draft of Their Finest Hour , but it reflected Churchill's feelings about Wavell. On 11 August 1940, the Italians invaded the colony of British Somaliland (modern northern Somalia) and faced with overwhelming Italian numbers, Wavell ordered General Reade Godwin-Austen to evacuate to Aden. On 18 August 1940,
25296-568: The French put up a determined defence. For a time, it appeared that a stalemate was developing as the Anglo-Australian-Indian=Free French force that had invaded Syria seemed to be stuck before Damascus. Churchill determined to relieve Wavell and after the failure in mid June of Operation Battleaxe he told Wavell on 20 June that he was to be replaced by Auchinleck, whose attitude during the Iraq crisis had impressed him. The requirement that Wavell send forces barely recovered from
25568-420: The Germans". By the end of May Edward Quinan 's Iraqforce had captured Baghdad and the Anglo-Iraqi War had ended with the re-establishment of the pro-British ruler and troops in Iraq once more reverting to the overall control of Indian Army GHQ in Delhi. However, Churchill had been unimpressed by Wavell's reluctance to act. In book 3 of his memoirs/history of the war, The Grand Alliance , Churchill split
25840-516: The Governor telling them that Gurdaspur was a "non-Muslim district". They contended that even if it had a marginal Muslim majority of 51%, which they believed to be erroneous, the Muslims paid only 35% of the land revenue in the district. In April, the Governor of Punjab Evan Jenkins wrote a note to Mountbatten proposing that Punjab be divided along Muslim and non-Muslim majority districts and proposed that
26112-515: The Grand Duke, though an excellent host, failed to share much information about the Russian operations against the Ottoman Empire. Wavell learned about the state of Russian operations by looking at the divisional patches of Ottoman POWs, which he then matched with the known locations of the said Ottoman divisions. In June 1917, he was promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel and continued to work as
26384-702: The Greek expedition played a major role in silencing any criticism. On 25 March 1941 Yugoslavia joined the Axis Tripartite Pact , but did not grant the Germans transit rights, which would have forced Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria to attack Greece through the Metaxas Line. Later on 25 March 1941, a military coup in Belgrade overthrew the Regent, Crown Prince Paul , which led Hitler to invade Yugoslavia as well as Greece and led
26656-589: The Greeks. Wavell also felt the Greek expedition fitted in with the British objective of bringing the United States into the war. The U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt had leaned into a pro-Allied neutrality since the start of the war, but much of American public and Congressional opinion was solidly isolationist, and Wavell wrote that to not help the Greeks would have a "deplorable" effect on American public opinion. In an attempt to appeal to American public opinion, British decision-makers had consistently portrayed
26928-513: The Hindu population was at 30.1%. The period between 1881 and 1941 saw a significant increase in the Sikh and Christian populations, growing from 8.2% and 0.1% to 14.9% and 1.9% respectively. The decrease in the Hindu population has been attributed to the conversion of Hindus mainly to Sikhism and Islam, and also to Christianity. In 1941, the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs made 30.1, 53.2 and 14.9 per cent of
27200-582: The Hoshiarpur district, it would have taken quite long time to construct the roads, bridges and communications that would have been necessary for military movements. Stanley Wolpert writes that Radcliffe in his initial maps awarded Gurdaspur district to Pakistan but one of Nehru's and Mountbatten's greatest concerns over the new Punjab border was to make sure that Gurdaspur would not go to Pakistan, since that would have deprived India of direct road access to Kashmir. As per "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture",
27472-625: The Islamic world. In common with many British Army officers, Wavell disliked prime minister Neville Chamberlain less because of appeasement, but rather because of Chamberlain's "limited liability" rearmament policy. Under that policy, the Royal Air Force was given first priority in terms of defence spending, the Royal Navy the second and the Army the third. Like many British Army officers, Wavell charged that
27744-656: The Italian Tenth Army at the Battle of Beda Fomm taking 130,000 prisoners and appeared to be on the verge of overrunning the last Italian forces in Libya , which would have ended all direct Axis control in North Africa. On 29 January 1941, Metaxas died, and his successor as prime minister of Greece, Alexandros Koryzis , was unable to stand up to the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden (Eden had been moved from
28016-441: The Italian camps have fallen. In the Battle of Sidi Barrani , which began on 9 December 1940, a numerically superior Italian force was overwhelmed by a mixed force of British, Indian and Australian troops. The battle ended with three Italian divisions surrendering and the Italians almost pushed back into their colony of Libya. After the victory, Wavell pulled out the 4th Indian Division and sent it south to take retake Kassala in
28288-592: The Italian naval base at Kismayu be taken as soon as possible lest the Regia Marina cut off South Africa from the sea. As Smuts was a close friend of Churchill, he soon brought Churchill over to his viewpoint. On 28 October 1940 Italy invaded Greece . Britain had a legal and moral commitment to help Greece because of the "guarantee" issued on 13 April 1939, promising to defend Greece against any power that attacked it. In October–November 1940, Anthony Eden , now Secretary of State for War , made an extended visit to
28560-568: The Italians in North Africa with the Afrika Korps and by the end of April the weakened Western Desert Force had been pushed back to the Egyptian border, leading to the Siege of Tobruk . On 31 March 1941, the Afrika Korps went on the offensive and rapidly pushed back the Commonwealth forces into Egypt. Inspired by the German victories, on 3 April 1941 a group of pro-German Iraqi Army generals staged
28832-605: The Italians out of Libya. De Guingand believed that if the British reached the Libyan-Tunisian border, French officials in Tunisia, where it was known that several French garrison officers were lukewarm in their loyalty to Vichy France , would defect over to the Free French . Wavell's staff had argued that Allied control of Libya and Tunisia would enable Allied shipping to pass through the central Mediterranean to Egypt rather than via
29104-497: The Japanese counter-attacked, and by March 1943 the position was untenable, and the remnants of the attacking force were withdrawn. Wavell relieved the Eastern Army commander, Noel Irwin , of his command and replaced him with George Giffard . In 1942, Wavell brought Orde Wingate to India to launch the first Chindit raid into Burma, which began on 8 February 1943. The Chindit raid, through militarily inconclusive, lifted morale as
29376-528: The Japanese had landed in the northern islands of the Dutch East Indies .(modern Indonesia ). Late at night on 10 February 1942, Wavell prepared to board a flying boat to fly from Singapore to Java. He stepped out of a staff car, not noticing (because of his blind left eye) that it was parked at the edge of a pier. He broke two bones in his back when he fell, and this injury affected his temperament for some time. Wavell chose to focus on defending Java as
29648-702: The Lieutenant consisted of 29 Districts, grouped under 5 Divisions, and 43 Princely States . Each District was under a Deputy-Commissioner, who reported to the Commissioner of the Division. Each District was subdivided into between three and seven tehsils , each under a tahsildar , assisted by a naib (deputy) tahsildar . In 1885 the Punjab administration began an ambitious plan to transform over six million acres of barren waste land in central and western Punjab into irrigable agricultural land. The creation of canal colonies
29920-544: The Luftwaffe codes had been broken. During the hard-fought Battle of Crete, the British, Greek, Australian and New Zealander forces put up a ferocious resistance, and the invasion of Crete nearly turned into a German defeat as the Fallschirmjäger took heavy losses and two of the three airfields were successfully held. British and Australian forces inflicted heavy losses on the Germans at Heraklion air field and Greek and Australian forces were equally successful in holding
30192-485: The Luftwaffe. As the British had broken the Luftwaffe codes, the entire German plans for Operation Merkur was known in advance. However, Freyberg refused to believe the Ultra intelligence which warned him of an airborne assault and even named the three Cretan airfields targeted, and persisted in keeping the majority of his forces on the coast to resist a seaborne invasion. Freyberg regarded Crete as strategically unimportant, and
30464-664: The Middle East that were supposed to be redeployed to Burma were sent instead sent back to Australia as Curtin argued as the Australian prime minister that the defence of Australia took precedence over the defence of Egypt or India. Wavell also had to deal with General Joseph Stilwell , who had been appointed by Chiang to take command of the Chinese armies driven into India by the Japanese conquest of Burma . Wavell first met Stilwell in Calcutta on 28 February 1942, and had difficult relations with
30736-496: The Middle East to see Wavell who told him about his plans for an offensive in the Western Desert. On 3 November 1940, Eden cabled Churchill that Wavell had an plan for an offensive and that it was imperative that no British forces be sent to Greece. Churchill did not tell the War Cabinet about this cable and on 4 November 1940 secured the approval of the War Cabinet to send aid to Greece. On 8 November 1940, Churchill finally informed
31008-585: The Monastir Gap into Greece. On 11 April 1941, Wavell visited Athens to meet with General Henry Maitland Wilson , GOC of Force W along with Thomas Blamey , the GOC of the 6th Australian Division and Bernard Freyberg , GOC of the New Zealand Division. With the Germans having advanced into northern Greece, Wavell decided that the Aliakhmon line was indefensible and ordered Force W to retreat south with
31280-468: The Monastir gap in the mountains forms a natural invasion route into northern Greece. The Greeks had wanted Force W to hold the Greek-Yugoslav border, but Wavell chose the Aliakmon line further south on the grounds that Force W was too small to hold the entirety of the Greek-Yugoslav border. Even then, Wavell admitted that Force W was too small to hold the Aliakmon line either. Wavell also admitted that
31552-528: The Muslim League in July 1947 before the Radcliffe Boundary Commission, stated that the boundary commission was a farce. A secret deal between Mountbatten and Congress leaders had already been struck. Mehr Chand Mahajan , one of the two non-Muslim members of the boundary commission, in his autobiography, has acknowledged that when he was selected for the boundary commission, he was not inclined to accept
31824-646: The Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities had loyally collaborated with the British since annexation, supported the Unionist Party and were hostile to the Congress party led independence movement. Amongst the peasantry and urban middle classes, the Hindus were the most active National Congress supporters, the Sikhs flocked to the Akali movement whilst the Muslims eventually supported the All-India Muslim League . Since
32096-409: The Muslims could have no objection to redrawing provincial boundaries. If they did, "they [did] not understand the nature of their own demand". After the breakdown of the 1945 Simla Conference of viceroy Lord Wavell , the idea of Pakistan began to be contemplated seriously. Sir Evan Jenkins , the private secretary of the viceroy (later the governor of Punjab), wrote a memorandum titled "Pakistan and
32368-624: The Palestine Mandate (modern Israel) as an militia to assist with the defence of the Middle East, a plan that Wavell had vetoed. In the first draft of Their Finest Hour , Book 2 of his memoirs/history of the Second World War , Churchill had written: ""All our military men disliked the Jews and loved the Arabs. General Wavell was no exception. Some of my trusted ministers like Lord Lloyd and of course,
32640-668: The Partition Plan of 3 June was announced with a notional partition showing 17 districts of Punjab in Pakistan and 12 districts in India, along with the establishment of a Boundary Commission to decide the final boundary. In Sialkoti's view, this was done mainly to placate the Sikhs. A crude border had already been drawn up by Lord Wavell , the Viceroy of India prior to his replacement as Viceroy, in February 1947, by Lord Louis Mountbatten. In order to determine exactly which territories to assign to each country, in June 1947, Britain appointed Sir Cyril Radcliffe to chair two boundary commissions—one for Bengal and one for Punjab. The commission
32912-573: The Punjab was carried out in 1855. This covered only British territory to the exclusion of local princely states, and placed the population at 17.6 million. The first regular census of British India carried out in 1881 recorded a population of 20.8 million people. The final British census in 1941 recorded 34.3 million people in the Punjab, which comprised 29 districts within British territory, 43 princely states, 52,047 villages and 283 towns. In 1881, only Amritsar and Lahore had populations over 100,000. The commercial and industrial city of Amritsar (152,000)
33184-404: The Punjab", where he discussed the issues surrounding the partition of Punjab. K. M. Panikkar , then prime minister of the Bikaner State , sent a memorandum to the viceroy titled "Next Step in India", wherein he recommended that the principle of 'Muslim homeland' be conceded but territorial adjustments made to the two provinces to meet the claims of the Hindus and Sikhs. Based on these discussions,
33456-410: The Punjab, reducing its influence more so than in any other province, and inhibiting its ability to challenge colonial rule locally. The political dominance of the Unionist Party would remain until partition, and significantly it was only on the collapse of its power on the eve of independence from Britain, that communal violence began to spread in rural Punjab. In the immediate aftermath of annexation,
33728-449: The Red Sea was no longer a war zone and as the USA was still officially neutral, American merchantmen and tankers could now travel the Red Sea to Egypt, which greatly reduced the demands placed on British shipping. On 23 April 1941, General Charles de Gaulle arrived in Cairo to ask Wavell for permission for Free French forces to use the Palestine Mandate to invade the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon ruled by General Henri Dentz , who
34000-456: The Reforms Commissioner, and his colleague Sir B. N. Rau in the Reforms Office. They prepared a note called "Demarcation of Pakistan Areas", where they included the three western divisions of Punjab ( Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore ) in Pakistan, leaving two eastern divisions of Punjab in India ( Jullundur and Delhi ). However, they noted that this allocation would leave 2.2 million Sikhs in the Pakistan area and about 1.5 million in India. Excluding
34272-534: The Romanian Ploesti oil fields as the Germans had constructed a powerful air defence system around them. Wavell stated that air defence system of radar stations, searchlights, flak batteries, and fighter squadrons would make it almost impossible to bomb the oil fields. On 13 January 1941, Wavell on Churchill's orders visited Athens to meet Metaxas to offer British Army forces to the mainland of Greece, and seemed privately relieved when Metaxas refused his offer. During his visit to Athens, Field Marshal Alexandros Papagos ,
34544-437: The Royal Hellenic Air Force against the Regia Aeronautica . Metaxas was very confident that the Royal Hellenic Army was more than capable of defending Greece from the Regio Esercito without British troops. However, Churchill saw Greece as the key to winning the war as British bombers could use Greek airfields to attack the Romanian oil fields , which supplied the Reich with its oil. In addition, Churchill wanted to revive
34816-417: The Royal Hellenic Army to the Aliakhmon Line as he had promised in February, saying he was not going to abandon northern Greece without a fight. Wavell was summoned to Athens, where he was unable to change Papagos's mind. On 6 March 1941, the South African prime minister General Jan Smuts arrived in Cairo for a conference with Wavell, during which he strongly expressed support for the Greek expedition. Smuts
35088-491: The Russian Section of the War Office . In July, he was granted the temporary rank of captain and became GSO3 at the Directorate of Military Training. On 20 March 1913 Wavell was promoted to the substantive rank of captain. After visiting manoeuvers at Kyiv in the summer of 1913, he was arrested at the Russo-Polish border as a suspected spy following the secret police's search of his Moscow hotel room. However, he managed to remove from his papers an incriminating document listing
35360-415: The Russian elite still hoped for a rapprochement with Germany against Britain or believed that a war against Germany was unlikely to occur; that much of the intelligentsia wanted Russia to lose a war against Germany as the best way to bring about a revolution; and that the Russian public in general did not care about foreign affairs at all. In April 1912, he became a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3) in
35632-401: The SS Simla at the same time. In 1903 he was transferred to join the battalion in India and, having been promoted to lieutenant on 13 August 1904, he fought in the Bazar Valley Campaign of February 1908. In January 1909 he was seconded from his regiment to be a student at the Staff College . He was one of only two in his class to graduate with an A grade. In 1911, he spent a year as
35904-404: The Salonika Front strategy of World War One by bringing Yugoslavia and Turkey into the war, which he believed would bog the Wehrmacht down in the Balkans. Metaxas had wanted to keep Greece neutral, and only became involved in the war when confronted with an Italian ultimatum demanding that Greece become an Italian colony. Throughout the winter of 1940-1941, Metaxas had sought German mediation to end
36176-478: The Sikh community. Lord Islay was rueful for the British not to give more consideration to the community who, in his words, had "provided many thousands of splendid recruits for the Indian Army" in its service for the crown in World War I. However, the Sikhs were militant in their opposition to any solution which would put their community in a Muslim ruled state. Moreover, many insisted on their own sovereign state, something no one else would agree to. Last of all, were
36448-468: The Sikh leaders accepted both the long term and interim proposals despite their earlier rejection. The Sikhs attached themselves to the Indian state with the promise of religious and cultural autonomy. In March 1946, the British government sent a Cabinet Mission to India to find a solution to resolve the conflicting demands of Congress and the Muslim League. Congress agreed to allow Pakistan to be formed with 'genuine Muslim areas'. The Sikh leaders asked for
36720-415: The Sikhs also feared Muslim domination. Sikhs warned the British government that the morale of Sikh troops in the British Army would be affected if Pakistan was forced on them. Giani Kartar Singh drafted a scheme of a separate Sikh state if India was to be divided. During the Partition developments, Jinnah offered Sikhs to live in Pakistan with safeguards for their rights. Sikhs refused because they opposed
36992-595: The Sudan in order to appease Smuts. O'Connor felt it was a mistake to pull out the elite 4th Indian Division from the Western Desert. On 3 January 1941, Wavell launched a new offensive that saw the destruction of what was left of the Italian 10th Army and the capture of the Cyrenaica province of Libya. On 8 January 1941, Wavell with Major William J. Donovan who was visiting Egypt as the personal representative of President Roosevelt , who often sent out his close friends on diplomatic missions. Wavell told Donovan that he saw little hope in success in Churchill's plans to bomb
37264-404: The United Kingdom to Australia, New Zealand, India and the other British Asian colonies. Closely linked to the first interest was the desire to defend the oil fields in Iran and Iraq where Britain obtained much of its oil, which travelled via tankers to Britain using the Suez Canal-Mediterranean route. Italian entry into the war closed the central Mediterranean to British shipping, which had to use
37536-448: The United Nations—also satisfied the British Government's urgent desire to save face by avoiding the appearance that it required outside help to govern—or stop governing—its own empire." The equal representation given to politicians from Indian National Congress and the Muslim League appeared to provide balance, but instead created deadlock. The relationships were so tendentious that the judges "could hardly bear to speak to each other", and
37808-401: The War Cabinet of Wavell's planned offensive and that of his wish to not sent any forces to Greece. Wavell made it clear to Churchill throughout the winter of 1940-1941 that he did not want any forces diverted from Egypt to Greece while the Greek dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas did not want British Army troops in Greece, saying he only needed 5 squadrons of Royal Air Force fighters to assist
38080-443: The War Office to the Foreign Office in December 1940), who pressed him very strongly to allow more British forces into Greece. In February 1941, Wavell launched an offensive into the colony of Italian East Africa with the British advancing into what is now Somalia from Kenya and making amphibious landings in Somaliland and Eritrea. On 11 February 1941, a landing was made in Italian Somaliland and on 14 February 1941, Kismayu , one of
38352-422: The Wehrmacht generals to use their preferred plan to bypass the Metaxas Line by invading Yugoslav Macedonia . The new government in Belgrade refused to antagonise Hitler by mobilising the Yugoslav military and spread out the Yugoslav forces too thin to defend the whole of Yugoslavia. These decisions caused the rapid defeat of Yugoslavia. The result was a disaster. The Germans were given the opportunity to reinforce
38624-410: The agendas so at odds that there seemed to be little point anyway. Even worse, "the wife and two children of the Sikh judge in Lahore had been murdered by Muslims in Rawalpindi a few weeks earlier." In fact, minimizing the numbers of Hindus and Muslims on the wrong side of the line was not the only concern to balance. The Punjab Border Commission was to draw a border through the middle of an area home to
38896-399: The aim of holding the Thermopylae Pass . On 13 April, Wavell returned to Cairo and on 15 April 1941 he decided that Greece could not be held and that Force W should be withdrawn before the entire expeditionary force was lost. On 16 April 1941, Papagos requested that the British pull out what was left of the Greek Army and on the same day Wavell passed along that request to Churchill. Later
39168-454: The aircraft needed to defend India. In April 1942, he wrote to Churchill after the Japanese Indian Ocean raid : "It certainly gives us furiously to think when, after trying with less than twenty light bombers to meet an attack, which has cost us three important warships and several others and nearly 100,000 tons of shipping, we see that over 200 heavy bombers attacked one town in Germany". By definition, Wavell's role in India required him to put
39440-416: The army meant that a significant amount of military expenditure went to Punjabis and in turn resulted in an abnormally high level of resource input in the Punjab. It has been suggested that by 1935 if remittances of serving officers were combined with income from military pensions, more than two thirds of Punjab's land revenue could have been paid out of military incomes. Military service further helped reduce
39712-406: The army took place. Henceforth recruitment into the British Indian Army was restricted to loyal peoples and provinces. Punjabi Sikhs emerged as a particularly favoured martial race to serve the army. In the midst of The Great Game , and fearful of a Russian invasion of British India, the Punjab was regarded of significant strategic importance as a frontier province. In addition to their loyalty and
39984-446: The award was changed to put a salient portion of the non-Muslim majority Firozpur district (consisting of the two Muslim-majority tehsils of Firozpur and Zira ) east of the Sutlej canal within India's domain instead of Pakistan's. There were two apparent reasons for the switch: the area housed an army arms depot, and contained the headwaters of a canal which irrigated the princely state of Bikaner, which would accede to India. After
40256-411: The beaches. For five days starting on 24 April 1941, Force W was evacuated amid Dunkirk -like scenes under heavy German air attacks on various Greek beaches. By 29 April 1941, the last Commonwealth forces had been pulled out of Greece, having suffered 15,000 casualties and leaving behind all their heavy equipment and artillery. Force W withdrew to Crete . Further south, the successful campaign in
40528-503: The benefits of oriental scholarship, and the fusion of government education with religious instruction. In January 1865 he had established the Anjuman-i-Punjab, a subscription based association aimed at using a European style of learning to promote useful knowledge, whilst also reviving traditional scholarship in Arabic , Persian and Sanskrit . In 1884, a reorganisation of the Punjab education system occurred, introducing measures tending towards decentralisation of control over education and
40800-427: The best way to defend Australia. On 23 February 1942, with Malaya lost and the Allied position in Java and Sumatra precarious, ABDACOM was closed down and its headquarters in Java evacuated. Wavell returned to India to resume his position as C-in-C India where his responsibilities now included the defence of Burma . On 27 February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy defeated an Anglo-Australian-American-Dutch fleet in
41072-532: The board to replace Persian with Urdu, believing Urdu the easier language to master. Urdu remained the official administrative language until 1947. Officials, although aware that Punjabi was the colloquial language of the majority, instead favoured the use of Urdu for a number of reasons. Criticism of Punjabi included the belief that it was simply a form of patois , lacking any form of standardisation, and that "would be inflexible and barren, and incapable of expressing nice shades of meaning and exact logical ideas with
41344-441: The bombing of Darwin and a Japanese submarine attack in Sydney Harbour led to considerable public Australian alarm in early 1942 and insistent demands by the Australian prime minister John Curtin that the Allies hold the Dutch East Indies to stop the expected Japanese invasion of Australia. The Allies rushed reinforcements to the Dutch East Indies instead of Burma. In particular, two of the three Australian divisions fighting in
41616-448: The boundary awards were distributed. By his own admission, Radcliffe was heavily influenced by his lack of fitness for the Indian climate and his eagerness to depart India. The implementation was no less hasty than the process of drawing the border. On 16 August 1947 at 5:00 pm, the Indian and Pakistani representatives were given two hours to study copies, before the Radcliffe award was published on 17 August. To avoid disputes and delays,
41888-520: The bridge over the Sittang river to prevent the enemy crossing had resulted in most of his division being trapped on the wrong side of the river. The Viceroy of India Lord Linlithgow sent a signal criticising the conduct of the field commanders to Churchill who forwarded it to Wavell together with an offer to send Harold Alexander , who had commanded the rearguard at Dunkirk. Alexander took command of Allied land forces in Burma in early March with William Slim arriving shortly afterwards from commanding
42160-466: The call by General Maxime Weygand to take the Armée du Levant from Beirut to Thessaloniki, saying he saw much potential to opening a Balkan front similar to the First World War Salonika Front . In February 1940, Wavell first met Dominions secretary Anthony Eden who had gone to Port Said to greet the arrival of the first Australian and New Zealand troops to Egypt. Eden was later to write: "I liked [Wavell] from this first meeting and our friendship
42432-425: The cavalry had a considerable Hindustani presence. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 , eighteen new regiments were raised from the Punjab which remained loyal to the East India Company throughout the crisis in the Punjab and United Provinces. By June 1858, of the 80,000 native troops in the Bengal Army, 75,000 were Punjabi of which 23,000 were Sikh. In the aftermath of the rebellion, a thorough re-organisation of
42704-406: The coast. However, Brigadier L.W Andrew of the 22nd New Zealand Battalion unwisely pulled his forces back from Battle of Maleme airfield, which allowed the Germans to fly in heavy forces to Crete. The Allied forces defending Crete were lightly armed as they had abandoned all of their heavy equipment on the Greek mainland, and once Maleme airfield was lost, so was Crete. Churchill, who believed
42976-435: The colonies, such as Lyallpur , Sargodha and Montgomery . Colonisation led to the canal irrigated area of the Punjab increasing from three to fourteen million acres in the period from 1885 to 1947. The beginning of the twentieth century saw increasing unrest in the Punjab. Conditions in the Chenab colony, together with land reforms such as the Punjab Land Alienation Act, 1900 and the Colonisation Bill, 1906 contributed to
43248-442: The communities without any representation. The Bengal Border Commission representatives were chiefly concerned with the question of who would get Calcutta. The Buddhist tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bengal had no official representation and were left totally without information to prepare for their situation until two days after the partition. Perceiving the situation as intractable and urgent, Radcliffe went on to make all
43520-458: The company of Wavell's favourite guerrilla fighter Orde Wingate , and the news of his return sparked a fast-spreading rebellion all over Ethiopia, which tied down a significant number of Italian forces (see East African campaign (World War II) ). On 26 January 1941, Churchill in a cable to Wavell expressed the hope that the British would soon take all of Libya and urged him to start planning for an invasion of Sicily to be launched later in 1941. In
43792-437: The concept of Pakistan and also because they did not want to become a small minority within a Muslim majority. Vir Singh Bhatti distributed pamphlets for the creation of a separate Sikh state "Khalistan". Master Tara Singh wanted the right for an independent Khalistan to federate with either Hindustan or Pakistan. However, the Sikh state being proposed was for an area where neither religion was in absolute majority. Negotiations for
44064-419: The costly Battle of Crete as he was convinced that that British would use the airfields in Crete for that purpose. Having fallen back in front of Italian advances from their colonies Libya and Eritrea towards (respectively) Egypt and Ethiopia , Wavell mounted successful offensives into Libya ( Operation Compass ) in December 1940 and Eritrea and Ethiopia in January 1941. On 8 December 1940, Wavell called
44336-448: The defeat on the Greek mainland and the bloody fighting on Crete into Syria and Iraq reduced the number of forces that Wavell could commit to Operation Battleaxe while British tank commanders failed to take into the account the devastating 8.8 cm anti-aircraft/anti-tank gun; most of the British tanks knocked out in Operation Battleaxe were destroyed not by German tanks, but by the "88" guns. German tactics were to lure British tanks into
44608-427: The different campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Greece into different chapters, making Wavell's complaints about feeling overwhelmed seem petty and churlish. In fact at one point in May 1941, Wavell was conducting simultaneously campaigns in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, North Africa and Crete. Churchill had great hopes for Wavell's Operation Battleaxe planned for June to relieve Tobruk, and in May 1941 sent out
44880-419: The difficult decisions himself. This was impossible from inception, but Radcliffe seems to have had no doubt in himself and raised no official complaint or proposal to change the circumstances. Before his appointment, Radcliffe had never visited India and knew no one there. To the British and the feuding politicians alike, this neutrality was looked upon as an asset; he was considered to be unbiased toward any of
45152-445: The district had been awarded to India instead of Pakistan, Cheema left for Pakistan. The major part of Gurdaspur district, i.e. three of the four sub-districts had been handed over to India giving India practical land access to Kashmir. It came as a great blow to Pakistan. Jinnah and other leaders of Pakistan, and particularly its officials, criticized the award as 'extremely unjust and unfair'. Muhammad Zafarullah Khan , who represented
45424-427: The district was followed by a population transfer between the two nations, with Muslims leaving for Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs arriving from there. The entire district of Gurdaspur had a bare majority of 50.2% Muslims. (In the `notional' award attached to the Indian Independence Act, all of Gurdaspur district was marked as Pakistan with a 51.14% Muslim majority. In the 1901 census, the population of Gurdaspur district
45696-401: The division was done in secret. The final Awards were ready on 9 and 12 August, but not published until two days after the partition. According to Read and Fisher, there is some circumstantial evidence that Nehru and Patel were secretly informed of the Punjab Award's contents on 9 or 10 August, either through Mountbatten or Radcliffe's Indian assistant secretary. Regardless of how it transpired,
45968-413: The divisions of the Royal Hellenic Army to the front in Epirus and pushed into the Italian colony of Albania while the remainder of the Greek Army held the Metaxas Line along the Greek-Bulgarian border. The Metaxas line did not extend along the Greek-Yugoslav border as Yugoslavia was a Greek ally while Bulgaria claimed parts of northern Greece (see Macedonian Struggle ). Along the Greek-Yugoslav border
46240-437: The early 1860s, a number of educational colleges were established, including Lawrence College, Murree , King Edward Medical University , Government College, Lahore , Glancy Medical College and Forman Christian College . In 1882, Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner published a damning report on the state of education in the Punjab. He lamented the failure to reconcile government run schools with traditional indigenous schools, and noted
46512-420: The elite classes. In 1849, a Board of Administration was put in place to govern the newly annexed province. The Board was led by a President and two assistants. Beneath them Commissioners acted as Superintendents of revenue and police and exercised the civil appellate and the original criminal powers of Sessions Judges, whilst Deputy Commissioners were given subordinate civil, criminal and fiscal powers. In 1853,
46784-457: The end of March his forces in Eritrea under William Platt won the decisive battle of the campaign at Keren which led to the liberation of Ethiopia and the British occupation of the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland . In February Wavell had been ordered to halt his advance into Libya and send troops to intervene in the Battle of Greece . Between 12 and 19 February 1941, a mission headed by Anthony Eden (now Foreign Secretary ) and
47056-463: The end of the year, although still on half pay, Wavell had been designated to command 2nd Division and appointed a CB . In March 1935, he took command of his division. In August 1937 he was transferred to Palestine, where there was growing unrest , to be General Officer Commanding (GOC) British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan and was promoted to Lieutenant-General on 21 January 1938. During his time in Palestine, Wavell found himself leading
47328-399: The exclusion of the Gurdaspur district, they included the entire Dinajpur district in the eastern zone of Pakistan, which similarly had a marginal Muslim majority. Pakistanis have alleged that the award of the three tehsils to India was a manipulation of the Award by Lord Mountbatten in an effort to provide a land route for India to Jammu and Kashmir . However, Shereen Ilahi points out that
47600-421: The extent of indebtedness across the Province. In Hoshiarpur , a notable source of military personnel, in 1920 thirty percent of proprietors were debt free compared to the region's average of eleven percent. In addition, the benefits of military service and the perception that the government was benevolent towards soldiers, affected the latter's attitudes towards the British. The loyalty of recruited peasantry and
47872-573: The first Chief Commissioner. Recognising the cultural diversity of the Punjab, the Board maintained a strict policy of non-interference in regard to religious and cultural matters. Sikh aristocrats were given patronage and pensions and groups in control of historical places of worship were allowed to remain in control. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 , the Punjab remained relatively peaceful, apart from rebellion led by Ahmad Khan Kharral . In May, John Lawrence took swift action to disarm potentially mutinous sepoys and redeploy most European troops to
48144-446: The first to seek their fortunes abroad. At the outbreak of the Second World War, 48 percent of the Indian army came from the province. In Jhelum, Rawalpindi and Attock, the percentage of the total male population who enlisted reached fifteen percent. The Punjab continued to be the main supplier of troops throughout the war, contributing 36 percent of the total Indian troops who served in the conflict. The huge proportion of Punjabis in
48416-437: The frontier districts beyond the Indus were separated from Punjab and made into a new province: the North-West Frontier Province . Subsequently, Punjab was divided into four natural geographical divisions by colonial officials on the decadal census data: On 21 February 1849, the East India Company decisively defeated the Sikh Empire at the Battle of Gujrat bringing to an end the Second Anglo-Sikh War . Following
48688-425: The government had been planning to crush the Ulster Scots , whatever they later claimed. However, he was also concerned at the Army's effectively intervening in politics, not least as there would be an even greater appearance of bias when the Army was used against industrial unrest. Wavell was working as a staff officer when the First World War began. As a captain, he was sent to France to a posting at General HQ of
48960-403: The government in 1937. Sir Sikandar was succeeded by Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana in 1942 who remained the Premier till partition in 1947. Although the term of the Assembly was five years, the Assembly continued for about eight years and its last sitting was held on 19 March 1945. The struggle for Indian independence witnessed competing and conflicting interests in the Punjab. The landed elites of
49232-529: The grant of independence to India and Pakistan. Each boundary commission consisted of five people – a chairman ( Radcliffe ), two members nominated by the Indian National Congress and two members nominated by the Muslim League . The Bengal Boundary Commission consisted of justices C. C. Biswas, B. K. Mukherji , Abu Saleh Mohamed Akram and S.A.Rahman . The members of the Punjab Commission were justices Mehr Chand Mahajan , Teja Singh, Din Mohamed and Muhammad Munir . All lawyers by profession, Radcliffe and
49504-424: The impression that Chiang was planning to steal the billions of American aid that he had been promised by Roosevelt. On the second day of the conference, Wavell accepted Chiang's offer of the 6th Chinese Army to help Burma, but refused the offer of the 5th Chinese Army under the grounds it would be impossible to supply two Chinese armies at once. Wavell denied that his refusal of Chiang's offer of two Chinese armies
49776-426: The increasing franchise of the rural population, this interventionist approach led to a long lasting impact on the political landscape of the province. The agricultural lobby remained loyal to the government, and rejected communalism in common defence of its privileges against urban moneylenders. This position was entrenched by the Unionist Party. The Congress Party's opposition to the Act led to it being marginalised in
50048-485: The independent Sikh state had commenced at the end of World War II and the British initially agreed but the Sikhs withdrew this demand after pressure from Indian nationalists. The proposals of the Cabinet Mission Plan had seriously jolted the Sikhs because while both the Congress and League could be satisfied the Sikhs saw nothing in it for themselves. as they would be subjected to a Muslim majority. Master Tara Singh protested this to Pethic-Lawrence on 5 May. By early September
50320-433: The influence of military groups in rural areas across the province limited the reach of the nationalist movement in the province. In 1853, the Viceroy Lord Dalhousie issued a minute stressing the military importance of railways across India. In the Punjab, however, it was initially strategic commercial interests which drove investment in railways and communications from 1860. Independent railway companies emerged, such as
50592-407: The information wanted by the War Office. Wavell was working at the War Office when Army officers refused to act against Ulster unionists in March 1914; the government was expecting Unionist paramilitary opposition to introduction of devolved government in Ireland. His letters to his father record his disgust at the government's behaviour in giving an ultimatum to officers – he had little doubt that
50864-430: The invitation as he believed that the commission was just a farce and that decisions were actually to be taken by Mountbatten himself. It was only under British pressure that the charges against Mountbatten of last minute alterations in the Radcliffe Award were not officially brought forward by Pakistani Government in the UN Security Council while presenting its case on Kashmir. Zafrullah Khan states that, in fact, adopting
51136-492: The land route to Kashmir was entirely within the Hindu-majority Pathankot tehsil. The award of the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils to India did not affect the Kashmir land route. Pakistan maintains that the Radcliffe Award was altered by Mountbatten ; Gurdaspur was handed over to India and thus was manipulated the accession of Kashmir to India. In support of this view, some scholars claim the award to India "had little to do with Sikh demands but had much more to do with providing India
51408-475: The largest provinces of the British Raj. It encompassed the present day Indian states of Punjab , Haryana , Chandigarh , Delhi , and some parts of Himachal Pradesh which were merged with Punjab by the British for administrative purposes (but excluding the former princely states which were later combined into the Patiala and East Punjab States Union ) and the Pakistani regions of the Punjab , Islamabad Capital Territory and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa . In 1901
51680-406: The last Allied forces totaling 16,000 men had been evacuated from Crete. The Germans had lost 4,000 killed and 2,500 wounded taking Crete, which was more than all of their losses on the Greek mainland and Yugoslavia combined. About 16,000 Allied soldiers were killed or captured while the Royal Navy had lost three cruisers and six destroyers to German air and naval attacks during the evacuation while
51952-444: The last British forces left Berbera . During the brief campaign, the British lost 260 men (38 killed and 222 wounded) against the Italian loss of 1, 800 (465 killed, 38 missing and the rest wounded). Wavell received what he called a "red-hot cable" from Churchill complaining that the British forces in British Somaliland must had fought poorly as hardly any British soldiers had been killed. Wavell wrote back that "a 'big butcher's bill'
52224-421: The local rank of full general . Subsequently, on 15 February 1940, to reflect the broadening of his oversight responsibilities to include East Africa, Greece and the Balkans , his title was changed to Commander-in-Chief Middle East. By the time, Wavell returned to the Middle East, the revolt in Palestine had finally been put down with the last of the fedayeen bands being hunted down or laying down their arms by
52496-404: The long route around Africa, which in effect was the same as severing the Suez canal, but the American historian Robin Higham wrote that no-one in London ever gave a serious reappraisal of what should be British grand strategy in the Middle East beyond defeating Italy as the best way to reopen the Mediterranean to British shipping. Higham wrote that much of Wavell's problems stemmed from the lack of
52768-530: The long route around Africa. At War Cabinet meeting in London on 24 February 1941, papers written by Eden were presented which argued for the expedition. By all accounts, Eden was the minister most in favour of the expedition, which he believed would cause Turkey to enter the war on the Allied side. Churchill stated at the meeting that Wavell was in favour of the expedition, saying he "was inclined to understatement and so far had always promised less than what he had delivered". The three service chiefs, namely Dill,
53040-442: The new regime in Iraq had joined the war on the Axis side. Events in Greece provoked an Iraqi pro-Axis faction to begin the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état . Wavell, hard pressed on his other fronts, was unwilling to divert resources to Iraq and so it fell to Claude Auchinleck 's British Indian Army to send troops to Basra . Churchill saw Iraq as strategically vital and in early May, under heavy pressure from London, Wavell agreed to send
53312-469: The northeast (54.4% Muslim). After elaborate discussions, these two provinces ended up being partitioned between India and Pakistan. The Punjab's population distribution was such that there was no line that could neatly divide the Hindus , Muslims , and Sikhs . Likewise, no line could appease both the Muslim League , headed by Jinnah , and the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel . Moreover, any division based on religious communities
53584-465: The notoriously abrasive and Anglophobic Stilwell. Stilwell described Wavell in his diary as "a tired, depressed man pretty well beaten down". Wavell charged that Stillwell was a generally difficult subordinate who had no staff to speak of as Stilwell tried to serve as a one-man general staff for the Chinese. Stillwell had a very specific mission, namely to reopen the Burma Road so that American aid could reach China, which caused conflicts with Wavell had
53856-431: The one the Viceroy proposes is likely to be found". The Sikh leader Master Tara Singh could see that any division of Punjab would leave the Sikhs divided between Pakistan and Hindustan. He espoused the doctrine of self-reliance, opposed the partition of India and called for independence on the grounds that no single religious community should control Punjab. Other Sikhs argued that just as Muslims feared Hindu domination
54128-517: The only possible access to Kashmir. Andrew Roberts believes that Mountbatten cheated over India-Pak frontier and states that if gerrymandering took place in the case of Firozepur, it is not too hard to believe that Mountbatten also pressurized Radcliffe to ensure that Gurdaspur wound up in India to give India road access to Kashmir. Perry Anderson states that Mountbatten, who was officially supposed to neither exercise any influence on Radcliffe nor to have any knowledge of his findings, intervened behind
54400-568: The other commissioners had all of the polish and none of the specialized knowledge needed for the task. They had no advisers to inform them of the well-established procedures and information needed to draw a boundary. Nor was there time to gather the survey and regional information. The absence of some experts and advisers, such as the United Nations, was deliberate, to avoid delay. Britain's new Labour government "deep in wartime debt, simply couldn't afford to hold on to its increasingly unstable empire." "The absence of outside participants—for example, from
54672-489: The other hand, Chittagong Hill Tracts and Khulna , with non-Muslim population of 97% and 51% respectively, were awarded to Pakistan. Indian historians now accept that Mountbatten probably did influence the Firozpur award in India's favour. The headworks of River Beas, which later joins River Sutlej flowing into Pakistan, were located in Firozpur. Congress leader Nehru and Viceroy Mountbatten had lobbied Radcliffe that headworks should not go to Pakistan. The Gurdaspur district
54944-418: The other pilots of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the " Flying Tigers " who were also on their way to China. Chennault and the other "Flying Tigers" impressed Wavell as brave, determined, high-spirted adventurers, whom Wavell predicted would do well in China. Wavell described his landing on a airport on a semi-flooded island in the Yangtze river as "rather hair-raising" and Chungking itself as
55216-406: The parties, except of course Britain. Only his private secretary, Christopher Beaumont, was familiar with the administration and life in Punjab. Wanting to preserve the appearance of impartiality, Radcliffe also kept his distance from Viceroy Mountbatten . No amount of knowledge could produce a line that would completely avoid conflict; already, "sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for
55488-531: The partition of the sub-continent had been decided, special meetings of the Western and Eastern Section of the Legislative Assembly were held on 23 June 1947 to decide whether or not the Province of the Punjab be partitioned. After voting on both sides, partition was decided and the existing Punjab Legislative Assembly was also divided into West Punjab Legislative Assembly and the East Punjab Legislative Assembly. This last Assembly before independence, held its last sitting on 4 July 1947. The first British census of
55760-451: The partition, the fledgling governments of India and Pakistan were left with all responsibility to implement the border. After visiting Lahore in August, Viceroy Mountbatten hastily arranged a Punjab Boundary Force to keep the peace around Lahore, but 50,000 men was not enough to prevent thousands of killings, 77% of which were in the rural areas. Given the size of the territory, the force amounted to less than one soldier per square mile. This
56032-430: The perceived threat of terrorism from revolutionary nationalist organisations. This led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre in April 1919, where Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer ordered detachments of the 9th Gorkha Rifles and the 59th Scinde Rifles under his command to fire into a group of some 10,000 unarmed protesters and Baisakhi pilgrims, killing 379. The Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms enacted through
56304-477: The policy left the Army starved of funds, based on the unrealistic assumption that Britain could win a major war by only fighting in the air and on the sea while barely doing any fighting on land. In April 1938 Wavell became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Southern Command in the UK. In February 1939, Wavell delivered the Lee-Knowles lectures at Cambridge. In July 1939, he was named as General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Middle East Command with
56576-627: The precision so essential in local proceedings." Similar arguments had earlier been made about Bengali , Oriya and Hindustani ; however, those languages were later adopted for local administration. Instead it is believed the advantages of Urdu served the administration greater. Urdu, and initially Persian, allowed the Company to recruit experienced administrators from elsewhere in India who did not speak Punjabi, to facilitate greater integration with other Indian territories which were administered with Urdu, and to help foster ties with local elites who spoke Persian and Urdu and could act as intermediaries with
56848-415: The present boundary line. The tehsil was the most favourable unit. But all of the aforementioned Muslim majority tehsils, with the exception of Shakargarh, were handed over to India while Pakistan didn't receive any Non-Muslim majority district or tehsil in Punjab. Zafruallh Khan states that Radcliffe used district, tehsil, thana, and even village boundaries to divide Punjab in such a way that the boundary line
57120-424: The principal Italian naval bases on the Indian Ocean was captured by 12th African Division . A force of Ethiopian guerrillas, known as Gideon Force , under the command of Orde Wingate operated effectively behind Italian lines and advanced on Addis Ababa . On 25 February 1941, Mogadishu was taken and on 16 March 1941 Berbera was retaken. His troops in East Africa also had the Italians under pressure and at
57392-411: The process of disembarking in Piraeus . The only good news for Wavell that day was that the British had taken Addis Ababa . Also on 6 April 1941, Wavell decided to hold Tobruk , after receiving assurances from Admiral Andrew Cunningham that it could be resupplied from the sea, on the grounds that the Afrika Korps would not be able to advance any further. Wavell believed that with the port of Tobruk,
57664-406: The promotion of an indigenous education agency. As a consequence several new institutions were encouraged in the province. The Arya Samaj opened a college in Lahore in 1886, the Sikhs opened the Khalsa College whilst the Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam stepped in to organise Muslim education. In 1886, the Punjab Chiefs' College, later renamed Aitchison College , was opened to further the education of
57936-455: The province, and a split emerged in the government between paternalists who favoured intervention to ensure order, and those who opposed state intervention in private property relations. The paternalists emerged victorious and the Punjab Land Alienation Act, 1900 prevented urban commercial castes, who were overwhelmingly Hindu, from permanently acquiring land from statutory agriculturalist tribes, who were mainly Muslim and Sikh. Accompanied by
58208-417: The province, it facilitated the movement of goods, and increased human interaction. It has been observed that the Ferozpur, Lahore and Amritsar began to develop into one composite cultural triangle due to the ease of connectivity between them. Similarly barriers of spoken dialects eroded over time, and cultural affinities were increasingly fostered. In 1854, the Punjab education department was instituted with
58480-454: The province. The period also saw significant numbers of Punjabis emigrate to other regions of the British Empire . The main destinations were East Africa - Kenya , Uganda and Tanzania , Southeast Asia - Malaya and Burma , Hong Kong and Canada . The Punjab was a religiously eclectic province, comprising three major groups: Muslims , Hindus and Sikhs . By 1941, the religious Muslims constituting an absolute majority at 53.2%, whilst
58752-459: The provinces's six divisions to decide which language was "best suited for the Courts and Public Business". Officials in the western divisions recommended Persian whilst eastern officials suggested a shift to Urdu. In September 1849 a two-language policy was instituted throughout the province. The language policy in the Punjab differed from other Indian provinces in that Urdu was not a widespread local vernacular. In 1849 John Lawrence noted "that Urdu
59024-468: The range of the 88 guns, which was helped by British doctrine that tanks should serve in a "cruiser" role, independently in the desert away from supporting artillery, which might had knocked out the 88 guns. Churchill felt that because of the Ultra secret that Wavell must had been incompetent in conducting Operation Battleaxe, which led directly to his decision to sack him. Churchill could not mention Ultra in The Grand Alliance , but claimed that that MI6 had
59296-434: The region constituting approximately one tenth of the total population of British India. During the First World War, Punjabi Sikhs alone accounted for one quarter of all armed personnel in India. Military service provided access to the wider world, and personnel were deployed across the British Empire from Malaya , the Mediterranean and Africa . Upon completion of their terms of service, these personnel were often amongst
59568-437: The same day, Churchill granted his approval for a retreat from the mainland of Greece. The British and New Zealand troops holding the Thermopylae line fought bravely, but the lack of air support and devastating attack from Stuka dive bombers forced their retreat. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps could not advance further without the port of Tobruk to bring in supplies, and the 9th Australian Division holding Tobruk beat off
59840-482: The same telegram, Churchill expressed much anger at Wavell for refusing Smuts's offer of a South African division to Egypt unless the South Africans supplied of all the division's needs. The war had badly divided the Afrikaners into a pro-British "liberal" faction that supported fighting for Britain versus the pro-German "republican" faction that wanted to see South Africa fight for the Axis. Churchill accused Wavell of being politically naïve, as Churchill argued that having
60112-404: The scenes – probably at Nehru's behest – to alter the award. He had little difficulty in getting Radcliffe to change his boundaries to allot the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India instead of Pakistan, thus giving India the only road access from Delhi to Kashmir. Punjab Province (British India) The Punjab Province was a province of British India . Most of the Punjab region
60384-418: The security interests of India first, which put him at odds with the " Germany First " grand strategy. In April 1942, Wavell complained that there the 7 elite divisions of the Indian Army were fighting in Libya and Egypt while he had only 3 lesser quality Indian divisions to defend India against the expected Japanese invasion. Wavell also charged that it was not possible to raise more divisions in India owing to
60656-407: The seven most densely populated districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jullundur, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Ambala and Sialkot, and consisted primarily of Khatris , Brahmins , Jats , Arains , Sainis , Kambohs and Rajputs . The movement of many highly skilled farmers from eastern and central Punjab to the new colonies, led to western Punjab becoming the most progressive and advanced agricultural region of
60928-415: The summer of 1939. Germany and Italy had signed the Pact of Steel , a defensive-offensive military alliance, on 22 May 1939. As the Danzig crisis had pushed Britain to the brink of war with the Reich in the summer of 1939, Wavell assumed that war was near, and that should Germany invade Poland, it was almost certain that Italy would enter the war at some point. Wavell wrote an anti-appeasement poem about
61200-400: The tanks in Britain) were sent to Egypt via the shorter and more dangerous Mediterranean route. A major problem for Wavell was that the threat of Italian air and naval attacks had generally closed the central Mediterrean to British shipping, which had to reach Egypt via the long route around Africa, adding an extra 12,000 miles to the voyage from Britain to Egypt. Adding to Wavell's problems
61472-422: The tehsil as a unit would have given Pakistan the Firozepur and Zira tehsils of the Firozpur District, the Jullundur and Nakodar tehsils of Jullundur district and the Dasuya tehsil of the Hoshiarpur district. The line so drawn would also give Pakistan the princely state of Kapurthala (which had a Muslim majority) and would enclose within Pakistan the whole of the Amritsar district of which only one tehsil, Ajnala, had
61744-419: The temporary appointment of Brigadier-General, reverting to lieutenant-colonel. In December 1921, he became an Assistant Adjutant General (AAG) at the War Office and, having been promoted to full colonel on 3 June 1921, he became a GSO1 in the Directorate of Military Operations in July 1923. Apart from a short period unemployed on half pay in 1926, Wavell continued to hold GSO1 appointments, latterly in
62016-454: The terms of the Queen's Proclamation issued by Queen Victoria , the Punjab, along with the rest of British India, came under the direct rule of the British Crown. Delhi Territory was transferred from the North-Western Provinces to the Punjab in 1858, partly to punish the city for the important role the last Mughal emperor , Bahadur Shah II , and the city as a whole, played in the 1857 Rebellion. Sir John Lawrence, then Chief Commissioner,
62288-1089: The total population of Punjab but made 37.9, 51.4 and 8.4 per cent of its urban population respectively. Including Hisar district , Loharu State , Rohtak district , Dujana State , Gurgaon district , Pataudi State , Delhi , Karnal district , Jalandhar district , Kapurthala State , Ludhiana district , Malerkotla State , Firozpur district , Faridkot State , Patiala State , Jind State , Nabha State , Lahore District , Amritsar district , Gujranwala District , and Sheikhupura District . Including Sirmoor State , Simla District , Simla Hill States , Bilaspur State , Kangra district , Mandi State , Suket State , and Chamba State . Including Ambala district , Kalsia State , Hoshiarpur district , Gurdaspur district , Sialkot District , Gujrat District , Jhelum District , Rawalpindi District , and Attock District . Including Montgomery District , Shahpur District , Mianwali District , Lyallpur District , Jhang District , Multan District , Bahawalpur State , Muzaffargarh District , Dera Ghazi Khan District , and
62560-531: The viceroy sent a note on the "Pakistan theory" to the Secretary of State for India . The viceroy informed the Secretary of State that Jinnah envisaged the full provinces of Bengal and Punjab going to Pakistan with only minor adjustments, whereas Congress was expecting almost half of these provinces to remain in India. This essentially framed the problem of partition. The Secretary of State responded by directing Lord Wavell to send 'actual proposals for defining genuine Muslim areas'. The task fell on V. P. Menon ,
62832-452: The victory, the East India Company annexed the Punjab on 2 April 1849 and incorporated it within British India . The province whilst nominally under the control of the Bengal Presidency was administratively independent. Lord Dalhousie constituted the Board of Administration by inducting into it the most experienced and seasoned British officers. The Board was led by Sir Henry Lawrence , who had previously worked as British Resident at
63104-449: The war against Nazi Germany as a crusade against evil. Wavell argued that an expedition to Greece would fit in very well with the image that Britain sought to project in the United States of being an enlightened, caring nation whose moral values were almost the same as those of the United States, especially as Congress was still debating the Lend-Lease bill at the time. The crucial moment in the change in Wavell's stance appears to have been
63376-432: The war with Italy, and promised Hitler that he would never allow British bombers to strike the oil fields of Romania. Metaxas failed to recognise that his promises made no difference to Adolf Hitler , and the mere fact that Greece was allied to Great Britain led Hitler to decide to invade Greece. Hitler would not tolerate even a theoretical threat to bomb the oil fields of Romania, a determination that later led to embark on
63648-424: The war, but many of his fellow Afrikaners did not. Mitchell was replaced as the RAF GOC by Air Marshal Arthur Longmore who with support of Wavell fought hard for modern aircraft to be sent to the Middle East as the RAF forces stationed in the Middle East were equipped with antiquated aircraft. When Italy entered the war, the Italian forces in North and East Africa greatly outnumbered the British and Wavell's policy
63920-1083: The wider populace. As per the 1911 census, speakers of the Punjabi dialects and languages , including standard Punjabi along with Lahnda formed just over three-quarters (75.93 per cent) of the total provincial population. Including Hisar district, Loharu State, Rohtak district, Dujana State, Gurgaon district, Pataudi State, Delhi, Karnal district, Jalandhar district, Kapurthala State, Ludhiana district, Malerkotla State, Firozpur district, Faridkot State, Patiala State, Jind State, Nabha State, Lahore District, Amritsar district, and Gujranwala District. Including Nahan State, Simla district, Simla Hill States, Kangra district, Mandi State, Suket State, and Chamba State. Including Ambala district, Kalsia State, Hoshiarpur district, Gurdaspur district, Sialkot District, Gujrat District, Jhelum District, Rawalpindi District, and Attock District. Including Montgomery District, Shahpur District, Mianwali District, Lyallpur District, Jhang District, Multan District, Bahawalpur State, Muzaffargarh District, and Dera Ghazi Khan District. Punjab Province
64192-416: The youngest general officers in the British Army. He then returned to Palestine where he served as brigadier general, general staff (BGGS), effectively the chief of staff , of XX Corps , part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), until the war's end. Wavell was given a number of assignments between the wars, though like many officers he had to accept a reduction in rank. In May 1920 he relinquished
64464-410: Was 49% Muslim, 40% Hindu, and 10% Sikh.) The Pathankot tehsil was predominantly Hindu while the other three tehsils were Muslim majority. In the event, only Shakargarh was awarded to Pakistan. Radcliffe explained that the reason for deviating from the notional award in the case of Gurdaspur was that the headwaters of the canals that irrigated the Amritsar district lay in the Gurdaspur district and it
64736-463: Was Churchill's favourite Dominion prime minister, and the one whose military advice he was most likely to follow as Churchill believed him to be a military genius after his leading role in the Second Boer War . The American historian Robin Higham described Smuts as playing a "sinister" role in British decision-making during both world wars as Smuts was grossly overrated as a general and his ideas about strategy were consistently wrong; his endorsement of
65008-456: Was a "sagacious ally" whose thinking about opening a front in the Balkans was very close to his own. The Middle Eastern theatre was quiet for the first few months of the war until Italy's declaration of war on 10 June 1940. On 17 October 1939, Wavell had signed the Anglo-French-Turkish alliance, which was hoped in London would bring Turkey into the war. At an Anglo-French war conference in Vincennes in December 1939, Wavell had strongly supported
65280-517: Was a senior officer of the British Army . He served in the Second Boer War , the Bazar Valley Campaign and the First World War , during which he was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres . In the Second World War , he served initially as Commander-in-Chief Middle East , in which role he led British forces to victory over the Italian Army in Eritrea - Abyssinia , western Egypt and eastern Libya during Operation Compass in December 1940, only to be defeated by Erwin Rommel's Panzer Army Africa in
65552-434: Was agreement upon utmost help to Greece at the earliest possible moment". On 17 February 1941, Wavell met with the Australian prime minister Robert Menzies in Cairo, during which Wavell mentioned that Churchill was planning to revive the First World War Salonika Front and was talking about sending the three Australian divisions to Greece. Wavell asked for freedom to move about the Second Australian Imperial Force as needed,
65824-473: Was also able the better to appreciate the vastness of the problems with which he had been confronted and the greatness of his achievements, in a command in which some 40 different languages are spoken by the British and Allied Forces." Wavell in effect swapped jobs with Auchinleck, transferring to India where he became Commander-in-Chief, India and a member of the Governor General 's Executive Council. Initially his command covered India and Iraq so that within
66096-431: Was annexed by the British East India Company on 29 March 1849 ; it was one of the last areas of the Indian subcontinent to fall under British control. In 1858, the Punjab , along with the rest of British India, came under the rule of the British Crown . It had a land area of 358,355 square kilometers. The province comprised four natural geographic regions – Indo-Gangetic Plain West , Himalayan , Sub-Himalayan , and
66368-403: Was appointed the first Lieutenant-Governor on 1 January 1859. In 1866, the Judicial Commissioner was replaced by a Chief Court. The direct administrative functions of the Government were carried by the Lieutenant-Governor through the Secretariat, comprising a Chief Secretary, a Secretary and two Under-Secretaries. They were usually members of the Indian Civil Service . The territory under
66640-485: Was commissioned into the British Army on 8 May 1901 as a second lieutenant in the Black Watch , and joined the 2nd battalion of his regiment in South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War . The battalion stayed in South Africa throughout the war, which formally ended in June 1902 after the Peace of Vereeniging . Wavell was ill, and did not immediately join the battalion as it transferred to British India in October that year; he instead left Cape Town for England on
66912-405: Was confusingly renamed the 6th Division while another division was renamed 7th Division) to move his formation from Palestine to the Egyptian-Libyan border as Wavell believed it was only a matter of time before Italy entered war. Wavell's next step was to go to Beirut to meet General Maxime Weygand , the commander of the Armée du Levant , to discuss Anglo-French war plans. He reported that Weygand
67184-520: Was considered offensive by the Nazis, and in the aftermath of the battle, the Fallschirmjäger went massacred many Cretan civilians. In the aftermath of the Battle of Crete, Wavell was described as being very unhappy. Sir Miles Lampson , the British ambassador to Egypt, wrote on 29 May 1941 after a meeting with Wavell that he was "looking the picture of gloom". Lampson reported that Wavell's mood recovered as he joked that Churchill's "snappy, caustic telegrams" were useless as telegrams "didn't help him beat
67456-408: Was designed to relieve demographic pressures in the central parts of the province, increase productivity and revenues, and create a loyal support amongst peasant landholders. The colonisation resulted in an agricultural revolution in the province, rapid industrial growth, and the resettlement of over one million Punjabis in the new areas. A number of towns were created or saw significant development in
67728-451: Was diverse, with the main castes represented alongside numerous subcastes and tribes (also known as Jāti or Barādarī ), forming parts of the various ethnic groups in the province, contemporarily known as Punjabis , Saraikis , Haryanvis , Hindkowans , Dogras , Paharis , Potoharis , Bagri people and other non related ethnicities were Kashmiris , Balti people , Ladakhi people , Pashtuns , Baloch people , Marwaris . Within
68000-439: Was divided geographically by the Ravi River , with the Shakargarh tehsil on its west bank, and Pathankot , Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils on its east bank. The Shakargarh tehsil, the biggest in size, was awarded to Pakistan. (It was subsequently merged into the Narowal district of West Punjab .) The three eastern tehsils were awarded to India. (Pathankot was eventually made a separate district in East Punjab .) The division of
68272-563: Was drawn much to the prejudice of Pakistan. However, while Muslims formed about 53% of the total population of Punjab in 1941, Pakistan received around 58% of the total area of the Punjab, including more of the most fertile parts. According to Zafrullah Khan, the assertion that the award of the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils to India did not 'affect' Kashmir is far-fetched. If Batala and Gurdaspur had gone to Pakistan, Pathankot tehsil would have been isolated and blocked. Even though it would have been possible for India to get access to Pathankot through
68544-430: Was hopeless. On 27 May 1941, Wavell reported to London that the situation in Crete was "no longer tenable" and recommended a retreat to Egypt as otherwise all of the Allied forces in Crete would be lost. Owing to the strength of German air attacks on the northern shore of Crete, the Allied forces had to retreat to the southern shores where they were picked up by Royal Navy ships under heavy German air attacks. On 1 June,
68816-403: Was important to keep them under one administration. Radcliffe might have sided with Lord Wavell's reasoning from February 1946 that Gurdaspur had to go with the Amritsar district, and the latter could not be in Pakistan due to its Sikh religious shrines. In addition, the railway line from Amritsar to Pathankot passed through the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils. He further claimed that to compensate for
69088-481: Was instructed to "demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will also take into account other factors." Other factors were undefined, giving Radcliffe leeway, but included decisions regarding "natural boundaries, communications, watercourses and irrigation systems", as well as socio-political consideration. Each commission also had four representatives—two from
69360-441: Was intended as a Muslim homeland, while India remained secular . Muslim-majority British provinces in the northwest were to become the foundation of Pakistan. The provinces of Baluchistan (91.8% Muslim before partition) and Sindh (72.7%) and North-West Frontier Province became entirely Pakistani territory. However, two provinces did not have an overwhelming Muslim majority— Punjab in the northwest (55.7% Muslim) and Bengal in
69632-409: Was introduced to the region by the Turko-Persian conquerors of India and more formally popularised during the Mughal Empire . Punjab literally means "(The Land of) Five Waters" referring to the rivers: Jhelum , Chenab , Ravi , Sutlej , and Beas . All are tributaries of the Indus River , the Chenab being the largest. Geographically, the province was a triangular tract of country of which
69904-493: Was loyal to Vichy France. On 26 April 1941, Wavell first learned via Ultra of Unternehmen Merkur , the German plan for an airborne invasion of Crete. On 30 April 1941, Wavell visited Crete, where at a meeting in Canae he expressed much approval of Freyberg as GOC of Crete, saying that Freyberg had won the Victoria Cross in 1916 and that he was a very brave, tough soldier. During the same visit, Wavell told Wilson that "I want you to go to Jerusalem and relieve Baghdad", saying
70176-402: Was more aggressive in patrolling the "no-man's land" between the Allied and Axis lines. The end of Operation Battleaxe released more British forces to be sent north to Syria and on 21 June 1941 Damascus fell, the same day that Auchinleck replaced Wavell. One of Wavell's last duties was to serve as the host for W. Averell Harriman , another of President Roosevelt's friends whom he had sent out on
70448-442: Was not aggressive enough. Unlike the loquacious Churchill, Wavell was a quiet, reserved man, and Churchill tended to take Wavell's laconic statements as a sign that he lacked aggression. In addition, Wavell was a poet, which Churchill saw as too "soft" and inappropriate for a British Army general. In the summer of 1940, Churchill was intent on sacking Wavell and replacing him with one of his favourite generals, Bernard Freyberg , and
70720-416: Was not aware of Hitler's fears that the British would use airfields on Crete to bomb the Ploesti oil fields on which Germany depended. Freyberg's son claimed in the 1970s that Wavell had let Freyberg in on the Ultra secret shortly before Operation Mercury was launched, but also told him that would could not move his forces away from the coast to protect the three airfields as that might tip the Germans off that
70992-484: Was not enough to protect the cities much less the caravans of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were fleeing their homes in what would become Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan were loath to violate the agreement by supporting the rebellions of villages drawn on the wrong side of the border, as this could prompt a loss of face on the international stage and require the British or the UN to intervene. Border conflicts led to three wars, in 1947 , 1965 , and 1971 , and
71264-410: Was not necessarily evidence of good tactics", a remark that greatly angered Churchill. In the summer and autumn of 1940, the British garrison in Egypt was reinforced by tanks from the United Kingdom and additional troops, which came primarily from India, New Zealand and Australia. In a bold move despite the risk that Germany would invade the United Kingdom that summer, in August 1940 154 tanks (half of
71536-409: Was only stopped by objections from the War Office that Freyberg lacked the necessary experience for Middle East Command. Eden, whose judgement Churchill respected, lobbied the prime minister hard to keep Wavell as the GOC Middle East, and for the moment Wavell was retained. In addition, Churchill and Wavell had clashed over the "Palestine Question". Churchill had wanted to arm the Jewish population of
71808-410: Was racially motivated, saying that moving two Chinese armies from Yunnan province into Burma would increased his logistical problems immensely. His return flight to India was constantly stopped because of the heavy Japanese bombing of Chungking. Wavell was made Commander-in-Chief of ABDACOM (American-British-Dutch-Australian Command). Besides a relentless advance down Malaya (modern Malaysia ),
72080-448: Was returned to General HQ in France as a GSO2. He was promoted to the substantive rank of major on 8 May 1916. In October 1916 Wavell was graded General Staff Officer Grade 1 (GSO1) as an acting lieutenant-colonel, and was then assigned as a liaison officer to the Russian Army in the Caucasus . Wavell called the Grand Duke Nicholas, the Viceroy of the Caucasus "the handsomest and most-impressive-looking man". However, Wavell charged that
72352-445: Was separated from the North-West Frontier Province by the Indus, until it reached the border of Dera Ghazi Khan District , which was divided from Baluchistan by the Sulaiman Range . To the south lay Sindh and Rajputana , while on the east the rivers Jumna and Tons separated it from the United Provinces . In total Punjab had an area of approximately 357 000 km square about the same size as modern day Germany, being one of
72624-407: Was short of modern equipment, and the American historian Robin Higham wrote Wavell's forces were fitted for "a 1898 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy' colonial war" and nothing else. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Wavell was angry about what he regarded as the weakness of Chamberlain about honouring the British "guarantee" of Poland as he wrote to Lord Gort on 2 September 1939 that Chamberlain was "making
72896-485: Was slightly larger than the cultural capital of Lahore (149,000). Over the following sixty years, Lahore increased in population fourfold, whilst Amritsar grew two-fold. By 1941, the province had seven cities with populations over 100,000 with emergence and growth of Rawalpindi, Multan, Sialkot, Jullundur and Ludhiana. The colonial period saw large scale migration within the Punjab due to the creation of canal colonies in western Punjab . The majority of colonists hailed from
73168-462: Was sure to entail "cutting through road and rail communications, irrigation schemes, electric power systems and even individual landholdings." The idea of partitioning the provinces of Bengal and Punjab had been present since the beginning of the 20th century. Bengal had in fact been partitioned by the then viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905, along with its adjoining regions. The resulting 'Eastern Bengal and Assam' province, with its capital at Dhaka , had
73440-444: Was that the Admiralty and War Office miscounted the number of ships available to take supplies to Egypt by including the Greek Merchant Marine and the Norwegian Merchant Marine into the British Merchant Marine and then counting the ships separately as part of their respective national merchant marines; not until April 1941 was this error corrected. The arrival of the Second Australian Imperial Force to Egypt produced much dismay amongst
73712-444: Was therefore one of "flexible containment" to buy time to build up adequate forces to take the offensive. In June 1940, Wavell had only two British Army divisions (36,000 men) to defend Egypt against a much larger Italian army in Libya while also having to deal with an Egyptian government whose loyalty to the Allies was questionable. The Royal Egyptian Army was not well regarded, but the possibility that King Farouk of Egypt would join
73984-410: Was to grow very close and last until his death". Wavell's relations with the Australians and the New Zealanders were to be difficult as both Canberra and Wellington wanted to keep control of their own forces. In March 1940, Wavell made a lengthy visit to South Africa to ask the South African prime minister Jan Smuts if South African troops could go to Egypt; the response was negative as Smuts supported
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