Colonel Sir Robert Warburton KCIE CSI (11 July 1842 – 22 April 1899) was a British soldier and administrator.

Robert Warburton was born in a Ghilzai fort between Jagdallak and Mak on 11 July 1842, the only son of Lt. Col. Robert Warburton (1812–1863), of the Royal Artillery, by Shah Jahan Begum, niece of the Amir Dost Mohammed of Afghanistan through a marriage of forced abduction at gunpoint during the British occupation of Kabul.

At the time of Robert's birth his mother was fleeing from the troopers of Sardar Muhammad Akbar Khan, who pursued her for months after the massacre of English at Kabul on 1 November 1841.

[2] At the close of the Afghan war, Robert and his mother accompanied his father's battery to Sipri, whence they removed to Morar in Gwalior.

While serving with the transport train Warburton showed great tact in conciliating native feeling, and received the thanks of Sir Robert Napier for his services.

On his return to India in April 1869, Warburton was attached as a probationer to the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, and in July 1870 was appointed to the Punjab commission as an assistant commissioner to the Peshawar division.

Under Sir Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari, he took part in several enterprises against the hill tribes who persisted in raiding British territory, particularly against the Utman Khel in 1878, and was five times complimented by the government of the Punjab and thrice by the secretary of state for India.

[2][3] On the news of the murder of Cavagnari at the Siege of the British Residency in Kabul, Warburton was nominated chief political officer with General Sir Robert Onesiphorus Bright, commanding the Jalalabad field force.

Able to converse fluently with the learned in Persian and with the common folk in the vernacular Pashto, he succeeded, by his acquaintance with tribal life and character, in gaining an exceptional influence over the border Afghans.