Carl Zimmermann was a first lieutenant in the Prussian Army who, in the early 1840s, developed a strong personal and professional interest in the conflict then being waged by the British Army in Afghanistan. In what became known as the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-40), Britain tried to extend its control from India northwest into Afghanistan, but suffered a series of disastrous defeats at the hands of the Afghan tribes and eventually was forced to withdraw. In 1842 Zimmermann published Der Kriegs-Schauplatz in Inner-Asien (The theater of war in inner Asia), a book in which he attempted to bring the geographic knowledge that the British had accumulated about Afghanistan and its environs to a German audience. Zimmermann based this map on English sources, in particular Geographer to the Queen James Wyld's “Notes to a Map of Afghanistan” and East-India Company geographer John Walker's “Skeleton Map of Afghanistan and the Countries on the North-West-Frontier of India.”