As the British extended their conquest across India, at its borders they encountered challenges to the established colonial order that they had never had to face in the settled societies of the plains. As Simpson’s stimulating study recounts, in these remote areas of desert, jungle, and mountains, colonial officials, all at once, had to define and mark boundaries, measure the land, identify and pacify resident peoples, devise appropriate forms of governance, and decide how far to employ violence as a means of containing unrest. Although much of the analysis encompasses the sweeping arc from Sind around to the Burmese border, Simpson focuses his attention upon two areas—Baluchistan in the west and the Naga hills in the east—that, he argues, were the key sites for the formulation of colonial frontier administration. He has little to say about the “classic” northwest frontier across the Khyber Pass, the subject of a recent excellent...

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