The First American in Afghanistan, The true story of Josiah Harlan. A Pennsylvania Quaker and the 1st American to enter Afghanistan. This is the man on whom Rudyard Kipling based his story The Man Who Would be King, and the later movie with Sean Connery and Michael Çaine.. In 1822, Josiah Harlan was in Calcutta when he received a letter from his brother. What was in the letter we don't know but he burnt it & set off an 18-year journey through Asia. He was employed as surgeon to the Maharaja of Punjab, agent for the exiled Afghan king and then CinC of the Afghan armies. In 1838, following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great across the Hindu Kush he forged his own kingdom. Only to be thrown out of it by the invading British. He was the greatest living expert on the country and the British by ignoring him and his advice managed to loose their army of 47,000 men except for one man, in the 1st Afghan War of 1847. A well-written biography of a soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveller and writer. Josiah Harlan’s remarkable story is a cautionary story, relevant even today, to any Western group in Afghanistan. It is the story of an extraordinary American. 09/04/08. My reading is somewhat idiosyncratic and is mainly history, military and political, on the US, Western Europe and England as well as biographies, autobiographies and miscellaneous other books. I enjoy reading history for the lessons that are there to be learned. The world’s problems and people don’t really change. Just the circumstances do. Histories and biographies have a clear beginning; middle, end and events have clear causes and effects. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' American philosopher George Santayana.