The Frontier in British India

Thomas Simpson is a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge.

Introduction; 1. Borders; 1.1 'Rude and complicated': the posa boundary in northern Assam; 1.2 'Making outside barbarians': the administrative border in early colonial Punjab; 1.3 'Absurd and impossible': bordering the Naga Hills District, 1866–1905; 1.4 'Breaking the border rule': Balochistan's boundaries, 1866–1892; 1.5 'Substantial pillars': marking the boundary in northern Assam during the 1870s; 1.6 'A line shifting': borders in the Chin-Lushai Hills, 1869–1900; 1.7 'As if our territory': British India's international boundaries at the turn of the twentieth century; 1.8 Conclusion: limits of the colonial state; 2. Surveys and maps; 2.1 'Getting at the truth': route surveys at nascent frontiers; 2.2 'Impossible to level': frontiers and the problem of altitude in the 1850s; 2.3 'Rough accurate maps': frontier representations as material objects; 2.4 Sites for 'sore-eyes': surveying in frontier regions from the later 1860s; 2.5 'A higher land': theorising the unknowable frontier; 2.6 Conclusion: 'Clean out of the map'; 3. Ethnography; 3.1 'Entirely distinct from the ordinary population': ethnographic encounters during the 1810s; 3.2 'Raising, not solving, doubts': the advent of Assam's 'mountain tribes', 1820s–1840s; 3.3 'Aboriginal remnants': ethnography in the time of war and annexation at the Sind and Punjab frontiers, 1830s–1850s; 3.4 'Patient, painstaking care': fragmented ethnography in northeast India during the 1870s; 3.5 'Insufficient intimacy and confidence': photographing 'frontier tribes' in the later nineteenth century; 3.6 'Purely tribal': frontiers and anthropology at the turn of the twentieth century; 3.7 Conclusion: productive problems; 4. Violence; 4.1 'Terrible to behold': violence on the Upper Sind frontier, 1839–1848; 4.2 'Often repeated outrage': state violence and the Nagas, 1838–1900; 4.3 'Few permanent results': military expeditions on the Punjab frontier, 1849–1901; 4.4 Conclusion: 'Exterminate all the brutes'; 5. Administration; 5.1 'Strangers and exiles': tribal colonies on the Upper Sind Frontier; 5.2 'Made very useful': relocating communities in northeastern Assam; 5.3 'Doing nothing but write-write-write': irregular administration at the northeast frontier; 5.4 'A rough half-subdued country': administering Balochistan, 1877–1900; 5.5 Conclusion: Fashioning fractals; Conclusion: the significance of the frontier in British India.