Frontiers Into Borders: Defining South Asia States, 1757-1857

208 Pages·2020·1.532 MB·English

by  Ainslie Embree

Frontiers into Borders

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Frontiers into Borders
Defi ning South Asian States
1757–1857
Ainslie T. Embree
Edited by
Mark Juergensmeyer
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ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-012106-8
ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-012106-8

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-099017-6
ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-099017-1

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Preface
Mark Juergensmeyer

S
hortly after Ainslie Embree, the great historian of South Asia,
died on 6 June 2017 at the end of a long and productive life, I
visited his wife, Suzanne, at their retirement home outside
Washington DC. She invited me to go through Ainslie’s papers in his
study, and my eyes fastened on a remarkable thing: the draft of a manu-
script typed on an old-fashioned Smith Corona typewriter, on the topic
of how the uncertain frontiers of what the British called India were fash-
ioned into the defi nite boundaries of today’s South Asian states, largely
by the political and military calculations of the colonial government.
‘Th is is for a book that may or may not get written,’ Ainslie wrote in
notes for revisions and expansions of the manuscript that were found on
his computer. ‘But it should provide a focus for my reading and writing
since I have no other large commitments,’ he added in a parenthetical
insertion labelled ‘Note to Self’. It is not clear when he began working on
this manuscript, though the Smith Corona typing would indicate some
viii Preface
time in the 1970s or 1980s. In addition to the typed manuscript, there
were a large number of pen- and pencil-inserted edits and additions.
On Ainslie’s computer were found several attempts at rewriting the
fi rst chapter and what appears to be a long introduction, which I have
used for both the introductory chapter of this book and the concluding
Afterword. Th e last date on which he appears to have made substantial
changes and edits to the book was 2015, when Ainslie was 94 years old.
Th e time frame of this study changed at various places in his notes.
In most versions, it was to begin in 1757; at other times 1754, 1765,
or 1767. Th e ending date was even less certain. In some versions it was
1914; in others it was all the way up to the recent present, 2015, and
would include not only the partition of the subcontinent and the creation
of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and independent India, but also the border
disputes with China and the continuing uncertainty about boundaries
in what were the northwest and northeast frontiers. It was an expansive
vision for a large project which is outlined in Chapter 1, though the
next three chapters bring the reader only to 1857. In a remarkable way,
however, the book is complete, since, as Ainslie argues in these chapters,
all of the major parameters of the South Asian external boundaries were
set during this time—the latter half of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth.
Moreover, this was the period of Indian history that Ainslie knew
best, the early British colonial years. One of the fi rst works in Ainslie’s
career was also his favourite: his study of Charles Grant, one of the key
players in the British East India Company from the 1760s until the fi rst
decades of the nineteenth century. In his book C harles Grant and British
Rule in India , Ainslie scoped the historical fi eld for the study of British
colonialism in the subcontinent in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries with all of its internal political intrigue, its arrogance,
and its enduring impact. A return to this period of colonial rule was
a natural and appropriate move for what would become Ainslie’s last
major project.
From the beginning of his work on this project, the phrase ‘Frontiers
into Boundaries’ was frequently mentioned as the title, though he infor-
mally referred to it as ‘the borders book’. In what appears to be Ainslie’s
last attempt to revise the introduction to the book, in 2015, he gave it the
title Th e Formation of the Modern States of South Asia: Borders, Sovereignty,
Preface ix
Treaties, 1765–2015. Th e earlier, fully typed manuscript with four
complete chapters bears two titles, I ndia: In Search of Frontiers, and then
below it on the same page a diff erent title, F rontiers into Boundaries: Th e
Making of the Outer Boundaries of India and Pakistan. I have chosen to
go with a variant of the second title of the earlier manuscript, changing
the subtitle to broaden the scope since the book talks about the borders
with Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma as well as defi nes the
external boundaries of what would become India and Pakistan. Hence,
my subtitle, Defi ning South Asian States , and then giving the dates that
the main chapters of the book cover, from 1757 to 1857, even though the
introductory chapter and Afterword briefl y mention events after 1857
up to the present.
In much of the manuscript, Ainslie uses the term ‘boundaries’ rather
than ‘borders’. Most dictionary defi nitions regard the two as synonyms,
but I suspect Ainslie’s choice of terms was deliberate. Th e word ‘borders’
describes how the separation between nations appears from the ground;
hence, one crosses the border to go from India to Pakistan, rather than
crossing the boundary. ‘Boundary’ on the other hand indicates how this
separation is precisely made by cartographers; so one would trace the
boundaries between India and Pakistan on a map rather than tracing their
borders. Since much of this book is how distant colonial administrators
were debating where the lines should be drawn, the term ‘boundary’ is the
appropriate term to use, and I have kept Ainslie’s wording throughout
the book. For the title, however, I have chosen the more commonly used
term ‘border’ as Ainslie himself did in his 2015 notation of the title for
the book, perhaps because he was aware of the growing subfi eld of border
studies, for which this book provides an interesting example.
What is impressive about the research for this book is how thoroughly
Ainslie mined the archives of the British colonial administration both in
London and in Delhi. In addition to offi cial reports and correspondence,
he was able to tap into the personal collections of correspondence of
some of the leading fi gures involved in this study. Because this book is
about the British colonial administrators’ attempts to construct India’s
boundaries, it is necessarily Eurocentric in its sources. Where relevant,
Ainslie refers to the responses and interactions with Indian leaders
and administrators, but to a large extent the book is based on English-
language sources of the colonial administration.
x Preface
Th ough Ainslie utilizes the colonial sources, this does not mean that
there was by any means unanimity among their points of view. One of the
fascinating aspects of the book’s narrative is the degree to which admin-
istrators argued and disagreed among each other, and how in some cases
the fi gures in India ignored or rejected the points of view of London
offi cials. A major theme of this book, in fact, is how deeply many of the
British offi cers in India regarded their responsibility towards India as a
nation. Th ough London may have seen the role of the British primarily
in mercantile and exploitive terms, the administrators in the subconti-
nent often sided with the national interests of India, and did what they
thought was best for the security and integrity of the emerging nation.
Th is gives a much richer and more textured view of British colonial rule
than is often portrayed.
Perhaps because of the attention given by British offi cials in India
to the integrity of India as a nation, Ainslie can regard one of the main
outcomes of boundary creation to be nation building. As he says, many
of the early nationalist leaders in India held on to the idea promulgated
by British colonial authorities that India had ‘natural boundaries’ that
destined it for national integrity. India’s fi rst prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, among others would refer to this idea in creating an image of a
Mother India that had endured for centuries.
Th is quest for ‘natural boundaries’ was central to the British adminis-
trators’ attempts to create fi rm boundary markers along India’s frontiers.
Th ey were no doubt infl uenced by the European notion of nationalism
that gave national status to regions defi ned by a common culture, and
they assumed that India must have one within its natural boundaries.
But such boundaries were also an essential aspect of security: determin-
ing those locations where military defence could provide protection
against any possible incursions from foreign powers. For this reason, this
book is primarily concerned with India’s external borders, and not with
interstate boundary creation. Since the issue of external boundaries was
primarily a matter of land demarcation, it involves, almost exclusively,
North India rather than South India. But the narrative of nation build-
ing relates to the whole of the Indian subcontinent.
I n going through the manuscript, I edited very little. My main task
was to decipher Ainslie’s handwritten insertions, correct typographi-
cal errors, and complete unfi nished sentences and paragraphs. Th ough
Preface xi
the introductory chapter was not a part of the original four sections of
the typed manuscript, I used most of it (omitting some redundancies
with material he used in Chapter 1) for what is the Introduction and
Afterword of this book. Chapter 1 of the book, ‘Frontiers and Borders’,
replicates an article with a similar name that will be found in another of
Ainslie’s books, I magining India: Essays on Indian History . Ainslie has,
however, revised and expanded on this essay considerably, and the chap-
ter in this book is much more substantial than the previously published
essay.
Th e footnotes have created a special problem, since only in the
Introduction, Afterword, and Chapter 1 were all of the citations fully
present in the typed manuscript that we initially found in his study.
After a great deal of searching through a box of Ainslie’s loose papers
and half-fi nished essays, we located—seemingly miraculously—an even
earlier draft of Chapters 1, 3, and 4, some of it handwritten, but with
the footnotes largely intact. Hence, I have been able to insert almost all
of Ainslie’s own citations for most of the chapters, though in some cases
I had to reconstruct them from abbreviated notes. In Chapter 2, Ainslie
indicated where footnotes were to be inserted, but we have not found the
actual footnotes. What we have done in this case is to supply citations
that seem consistent with the context, sources that Ainslie may or may
not have had in mind. Th ere are also a number of citations throughout
the manuscript for which complete information could not be found. In
those cases, we have retained whatever information Ainslie provided.
With the assistance of the aptly named India Amarina, we have created
a bibliography at the end of each chapter that provides full information
about those works that Ainslie cited, as well as including other works
related to the period that Ainslie might well have wanted to be included
in a reference list. My thanks to the anonymous reviewers at Oxford
University Press and others who have suggested recent works that
Ainslie would certainly have wanted to include, and which I have added
to the bibliographies at the end of each chapter, where relevant.
In putting this work together, I felt relatively confi dent that I was help-
ing to create a book that Ainslie would want, since we worked together
on two previous projects, I magining India and U topias in Confl ict: Religion
and Nationalism in Modern India, which was published in 1990 in a book
series that I edited for the University of California Press. In both of these
xii Preface
cases my task was to rummage through Ainslie’s previously published
articles and essays—many located in rather arcane and inaccessible ven-
ues—and through some editing and rewriting, some of it done by Ainslie
and some by me, fi t them together into reasonably coherent books. And,
of course, Ainslie and I discussed and argued about how these books
would take shape. Th us, this current book is the third project in what
has been a collaborative partnership, and I have imagined Ainslie, as
always, arguing with me and at times disagreeing with my choices and at
times approving as I have tried to bring this volume to life.
I am grateful to Ainslie’s wife, Suzanne Harpole Embree, and to their
children, Ralph Th omas Embree and Margot Embree Fisher, for their
enthusiastic support for this project and their help in facilitating my
access to the manuscript in its various versions and providing a box of
notes related to it. For help in deciphering the manuscript and retyping it
for digital access, I am grateful for the labours of Ainslie’s granddaughter,
Sarah Langley Fisher, who retyped much of Chapter 3, and also for the
work of India Amarina, who retyped much of the rest of the manuscript
as well as helped with the citations. I appreciate the suggestions of the
historian Judith Walsh, one of Ainslie’s former students, for comments
during the preparation of the manuscript, and for a mutual friend of
Ainslie and myself, John Stratton Hawley, for suggesting her name.
I am also grateful to the team at the Delhi branch of Oxford University
Press which has shepherded the production process along. Admittedly,
it has taken some of my time which could have been devoted to other
things, but, in a curious way, working on this book was a way of work-
ing alongside Ainslie in a collegiality and friendship that has been
40 years old, and it turned out to be a gratifying task. It was in many
ways a labour of love.