Untitled

ruling the savage periphery
RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY
Frontier Governance and the Making of

the Modern State
 be n ja m i n d. hopk i ns 
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2020
Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Americ a
First printing
Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth

Jacket art: Duncan1890/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
9780674246140 (EPUB)
9780674246157 (MOBI)
9780674246164 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Hopkins, B. D., 1978–
Title: Ruling the savage periphery : frontier governance and the making of
the modern state / Benjamin D. Hopkins.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2020. |
Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019041799 | ISBN 9780674980709 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780674246140 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands—Political aspects. | Imperialism. |
Indigenous peoples—Government relations. | Frontier and pioneer life.
Classification: LCC JC323 .H65 2020 | DDC 323.11—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041799
To Eliana, Tobias, and Olivia
You are the suns of my day, the moons of my night,
the loves of my life.
—Papi
Contents
Introduction: The Edges of Authority 1

1. Frontier Governmentality 13
2. Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier 27
3. The Imperial Life of the Frontier Crimes Regulation 61
4. The Colonial Specter of “Savagery” 91
5. Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in Americ a’s
Desert Southwest 112
6. Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert and the Limits
of Frontier Governmentality 153
Conclusion: A Long History of Violence 192
Notes 209
Archives Consulted 265
Acknowledgments 267
Index 271
Introduction
The Edges of Authority
T he edges of today’s global political and economic order—the world’s

modern-day frontiers—are seen as dangerous and often bloody places.
These peripheral spaces are characterized as contact zones between order
and anarchy, peace and violence, “civilization” and “savagery.” They pro-
vide portals between the modern world and an indefinite, atemporal past
where aberrant ideas of tribe, tradition, and fanatical religious bigotry pre-
dominate. They are, in short, the land that time forgot, and that the
world has done its best to ignore. The toxic combination of premodern
identities, penchant for irrational and unpredictable violence, and the
ability to access modern weaponry make such places of special concern
today. They require constant vigilance and policing. These spaces, and
the people who inhabit them, need to be contained and confined, lest the
ever-present, though abeyant danger they hold ever manifests itself.
Yet sometimes it does, and spectacularly so. In April 2015, Al-Shabaab
militants stormed the grounds of Garissa University in the North Eastern
Province of Kenya, killing 147 people in the attack. Five months earlier,
in December 2014, gunmen of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan took over
the Army Public School in Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, and mur-
dered 145 people, including over 130 children. Earlier that same year,
Boko Haram fighters abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno
state in northeastern Nigeria.1 All three incidents involved self-described
terrorist networks advocating violent jihad to establish an Islamic political
order akin to the Caliphate.
1
The latent violence of the world’s limits exploded in dramatic fashion,

and sadly not for the first, nor likely the last time. But these attacks are
bound by more than the so-called War on Terror. The geography of vio
lence they present is neither accidental nor coincidental. Rather, it is con-
nected by deep historical roots. All three episodes occurred on what w ere
previously the frontiers of imperial systems and today are the peripheries
of states and the modern global order. It is the liminal character of these
spaces, and, more importantly, the p eople inhabiting them, that has made
them systemically vulnerable to the bloodletting so gruesomely put on
display.
Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria w ere all important linkages in Britain’s
global empire. But not all the spaces within those linkages were of equal
importance to that empire. The spaces subject to t hese recent atrocities sat
astride the imperial limits. Indeed, it was the advent of the British Empire
in the latter half of the nineteenth c entury that rendered these spaces
frontiers. It was here, along these edges, that Britain’s colonial enterprise,
and the successor states it gave rise to, defined themselves—not only spa-
tially, but also conceptually. For the way the empire and its constituent
colonial parts conceived and wielded power along these frontiers had a
profound effect on how they did so elsewhere.
The practices of frontier rule that the British imperial juggernaut au-
thored, maintained, and replicated w ere part of a global paradigm at-
tending the rise of the modern state-based international order in the
closing decades of the nineteenth century. British imperial practices were
decidedly more imperial than British. Their administrative doppelgangers
could be found in other contemporary European empires, as well as the
neo-European states of the Americas, such as the United States and Ar-
gentina, which were at the same time constructing the foundations of their
rule and authority along their expanding limits. Though not formally em-
pires, at least in their own estimations, the actions of these states were
substantively imperial. In structuring their own systems of frontier rule,
these neo-European, neo-imperial states evinced a decidedly colonial face,
at least to those subject to such systems.
This book tells a story, one likely familiar in its contours if not its con-
tents, about the way states defined and governed their frontiers and the
indigenous people inhabiting them in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries. In many ways, it is a history of the global periphery—both
place and peoples. As the modern state system filled in the map through
conquest and colonization, its constituent parts time and again encoun-
2
Introduction
tered seemingly stateless peoples inhabiting “wild” lands along their limits.
The peoples were invariably “savage,” in contrast to the “civilized” states
that encountered and, in many instances, exterminated them. They w ere
“tribal”—non-sedentary and bound by ties of kinship and timeless pre-
cepts of “custom” and “tradition,” which governed them collectively. Fur-
ther, they w ere inherently violent. But their violence lacked e ither method
or meaning, making it seem dangerously irrational. To state officials they
presented an undifferentiated mass marked by cruelty, barbarity, and ig-
norance. As such, they were seen as a threat to the civilized order of the
expanding state-based societies of the day.
The lands such p eople inhabited were equally characterized as dan-
gerous and “savage.” In nearly all the cases examined in the following
pages, the p eoples subject to the regime of rule along the frontiers of the
global order shared the distinction of occupying lands marginal in the eyes
of the imperial exchequer or national treasury. That marginality lay rooted
in the fact that these lands were relatively unproductive of settled agri-
culture. Officials viewed them as ecologically barren. They failed to pro-
duce tax receipts sufficient to support regular administration. These lands
were too poor to pay for themselves, or more precisely for their own gov-
ernance. They were thus nothing more than fiscal sinks— bottomless
money pits draining the state’s limited resources. It was not worth the
state’s investment to erect the normal architecture of administration on
such parsimonious lands. Nor was the extermination of the inhabitants
of such lands—violent and “savage” as they supposedly were—worth the
costs either in terms of blood or treasure. Why waste resources to con-
quer resourceless wastelands and eradicate recalcitrant “barbarians”?
How, then, were states to deal with these “savage” people inhabiting
“savage” lands? How were the limits to be governed? Or, more precisely,
what strategies and tactics did states develop and deploy over time to
govern these spaces and their unruly inhabitants? This is the central ques-
tion animating this work. What is arresting is that despite the geographic
distance and cultural difference between sites of governance and subjects
of rule, the states of the late nineteenth c entury turned to a nearly iden-
tical model of governance. Whether they were Apaches or Afghans, Zulus,
Somalis, or Mapuche, the p eoples of the periphery w
ere ruled in substan-
tively the same way. While details differed from place to place, a striking
continuity of power, both in its structure and deployment, clearly reveals
itself. This book documents this seemingly universal phenomenon of fron-
tier rule.
3
The increasingly powerful states of the time could conceivably deal

with such nuisances and potential threats in any number of ways. But
three administrative options quickly rose to the top of the procedural pile.
First, following the logic of liberalism, the “savage” inhabitants of these
spaces could be remade, civilized and assimilated into the expanding body
politics of the day. The land could be tamed through cultivation, turning
the barren desert into a blooming garden by the now-pacified peoples of
the periphery. Second, the inhabitants could be eliminated—a potential
strategy that their relatively small numbers, combined with expanding
state power and capabilities of the time, made more and more realistically
possible. The lands could then be turned over to people—almost invari-
ably colonial settlers—who would make productive use of them, and
thus sported a superior moral claim. Third, the p eople as well as the land
could be contained—both physically and culturally. The frontier dwellers
could be encapsulated in their own “customs” and “traditions” and exiled
to impoverished lands of little interest to the states and their land-hungry
populaces. Such encapsulation of the p eople and enclosure of the land
proved the most economical as well as, in many ways, the easiest option.
It had the advantage of separating the “savage” peoples and their waste-
land from the surrounding state sphere, which both physically and cul-
turally enveloped them. Such a strategy quarantined the chaos, and in so
doing it promised to inoculate the modern, civilized societies from the
premodern anarchy infecting the indigenous “barbarians.”
While all three strategies w ere tested weapons of the arsenal of expan-
sion employed by the states of the late nineteenth c entury, the third is the
focus h ere. The policy of encapsulation and enclosure proved one of signifi-
cant contemporary popularity, with modern, as well as modernizing, poli-
ties around the globe pursuing it. Yet it was not only widespread. It also
relied on deep historical antecedents whose temporal reach forward in time
extend to today, giving the policy continuing valence in the twenty-first-
century world.2 Within the Western canon at least, this was a strategy pur-
sued by the Roman Empire against the Germanic tribes in the first century
bce.3 As such it provided a time-tested strategy of subjugation for dealing
with the “barbarian” hordes of beyond. The prominence of this policy
transformed it into nothing less than a standard administrative practice for
how modern states dealt with the premodern p eoples of the periphery. It
became an administrative archetype, widely replicated the world over.
That archetype produced particular types of spaces to contain the
people subject to this administrative regime. The spaces assumed many
4
Introduction
different names that are still in use today—reservations, native reserves,

tribal areas, and indigenous agencies. Yet an altogether different moniker
is more appropriate for them both individually and collectively—frontiers.
These spaces were not frontiers because of their locations. Some, if not
all of them, were eventually enveloped by the expanding states they lay
along the limits of. Rather, they were frontiers because of their char-
acter, a character constituted by the state practices that defined and de-
limited them. They w ere not frontiers because of place, but rather
because of practice—the practice of administration that states used to
govern them. That practice constituted a singular regime of rule I call
frontier governmentality.
While frontier governmentality assumed many guises, all its forms
manifested the same basic skeletal structure. There was invariably a legal
component—most often a code or regulation. This reflects the fact that
the powers that deployed frontier governmentality nearly all justified their
expansion, conquest, and authority—to themselves as well as o thers—in
terms of the “rule of law.” These states w ere bringing the light of order
into the darkness of anarchy, and the torch that shone the light was the
law. But laws are inanimate abstractions which must be affected by p eople.
In the case of frontier governmentality, the laws themselves did not struc-
ture a highly bureaucratic form of governance, but rather a highly per-
sonalized one that empowered the “man on the spot.”4 This was a system
of personal administration, justified and stiffened by the objective inde
pendence of the law, but nonetheless reliant on its subjective interpreta-
tion and application by men. In nearly all the instances detailed h ere, in-
dividual frontier administrators left their imprimatur on the regime of rule,
bestowing their monikers in lasting popular memory on the system. But
imperial administrators were not the only players on the stage. The ruled
also played a central role in their subjugation to the system of frontier
governmentality as they were entailed in its structures of power and stric-
tures of exploitation. Local tribesmen provided the first line of colonial
muscle to enforce the precepts of the regime’s legal code and personal ad-
ministration within frontier societies. As tribal police and militia, they
became the coercive arm of the state complicit in their own suppression
and in that of their fellow tribesmen.
To both explain and illustrate the meaning and content of frontier gov-
ernmentality, the following pages consider a series of episodes in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to analyze this globally ubiqui-
tous form of governance constructed along the expanding bounds of state
5
authority.5 From the North-West Frontier of British India, to the Northern

Frontier Province of colonial Kenya, to the San Carlos Apache reserva-
tion in southern Arizona, to the “Pais de las Manzanas” at the edge of the
Argentine Pampas, one finds the near simultaneous construction of a
system of frontier administration on a cosmopolitan canvas. While some
instances stand as clear reproductions of administrative practices honed
elsewhere and brought to bear by the mobile c areers of imperial servants,
others evince a seemingly autochthonous origin in both conception and
execution. Yet in all, the frontier governmentality that emerged and em-
bedded itself along states’ limits—through administrative transmission or
original authorship—retained and shared the same four centrally defining
elements: indirect rule, sovereign pluralism, imperial objecthood, and eco-
nomic dependence.
Expanding empires and nation-states constructed and entrenched a
regime of rule along their frontiers that was both strikingly similar and
remarkably consistent across divides of distance and culture. The inhab-
itants of these spaces were at the edges, or rather beyond the edges of
“civilization” with which empires and contemporary states justified them-
selves. The states neither had the appetite nor made the pretense of ruling
the peoples of the periphery directly. Instead, employing colonially sanc-
tioned “customs” and “traditions,” the states exerted their authority indi-
rectly. As a consequence, the tribesmen were portrayed as “sovereign” if
not “independent” by colonial officials, though they were in fact neither.
This rhetorical exercise excluded them from the colonial sphere. Not sub-
jects of the Queen’s law, nor those of the republic, they were nonetheless
objects of imperial action. These frontier dwellers lay beyond the sover-
eign purview of the colonial state, though they nonetheless remained
trapped within the suzerain one of the imperial sphere. And although ju-
dicially excluded from the colonial regime, the tribesmen were rendered
economically dependent on it.
Invariably, t hese forms of frontier rule were considered exceptional and
temporary administrative expedients necessary to deal with less advanced
peoples not yet suited to the legal complexities of regular administration.
They were often thought of, then and since, as passing aberrations—
glitches in the triumphal pro cession of state formation. But nothing
could be more removed from the truth. Rather than the unintended de-
tritus of modern political development—a step in the progressive advance-
ment of peoples—these systems were the consciously intended outcome.
They were a central part of the blueprint, a foundational element to the
6
Introduction
state-centric order constructed at the time. And they continue to have

lasting impacts today. The imperial pasts of Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria
have an ensanguined and pressing legacy on the postcolonial presents of
the people populating their peripheries. While in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries the stateless p eoples of the periphery, at the edges of
governmental power, were discussed in terms of “savagery” and “barba-
rism,” the updated lexicography of the early twenty-first century is that
of “failing” or “fragile” states.6
Viewing the periphery through the lens of frontier governmentality of-
fers a markedly different vantage than the ways these spaces are gener-
ally characterized. Others have depicted the frontier as either “states of
exception” or as places to practice “the art of not being governed.”7 As a
subject of inquiry, frontiers are thought to constitute a liminal case on the
margins of normalcy, interesting either for their aberrance or for what they
do not tell us about the state order. But precisely the opposite holds. Fron-
tier governmentality argues that the frontier is far from exceptional.
Rather, it constitutes an integral, and in truth pedestrian, part of state de-
sign. The frontier underlines the fragmented and varied character of the
state-based order. Likewise, frontier governmentality contests the notion
that the people of the periphery practice some art of not being governed.
Instead, it demonstrates yet another way that states govern t hose they ab-
jure from their direct gaze and administration. The p eople subject to
forms of frontier governmentality are the people of the proverbial hills—
those who by choice or circumstance are removed from the confines of
normal state administration. While some romanticize the hills, by the late
nineteenth century they were not retreats and redoubts of freedom, but
prisons and sites of enforced exile.8 Expanding states transformed these
hills not through conquest and assimilation, but rather through contain-
ment and encapsulation. Far from not being governed, the p eoples of
the hills and peripheries were very much ruled, through state sanctioned
“customs” and “traditions.” This was another form of subjugation and
governance rather than the absence of it.
Though states may have governed the p eoples of the periphery through
their own “customs” and “traditions,” such regimes of authority were a
consequence of state weakness rather than strength. States were neither om-
nipresent nor omniscient along their peripheries—in ambition or in reality.
Their presence was both geographically and temporally episodic at best.
Frontier governmentality is what states did when they could muster neither
the will nor the resources to affect their presence in a more penetrative or
7
permanent manner. This, then, was not a case of dominance without he-
gemony, but rather of the ephemerality of authority.9 Recognizing such,
although this regime of rule may have minimized political and fiscal ex-
penditure, it was by no means without costs. Frontier governmentality,
like much of the colonial regime, was a regime of rule predicated on dif-
ference. Such rule of difference necessitated the particularization of both
colonial and frontier populations. They w ere to be divided and governed
by their distinct social identities, which were bounded by their communal
customs and traditions. For states to effect a rule of difference along their
limits, they needed to be able to erect, maintain, and police that differ-
ence. Not all states of the nineteenth-century world, or indeed today,
could convincingly do so. Thus while frontier governmentality may reflect
state weakness where the state abjures its sovereign authority, that weak-
ness is relative.
The story of frontier governmentality is first and foremost a history of
the state, and in particular the state of colonial regimes. Though indige-
nous people play a central role, it is a history of what states did to those
indigenous peoples rather than how those people escaped, resisted, or
ultimately succumbed to the state. In a way, this history arguably repli-
cates epistemically the violence perpetrated by the state on these people
physically—a violence of domination that silences their historical voice.
That is certainly not the intention here. Rather, this work is offered as a
critical consideration of the ways states composed and constructed
themselves through the practices of governance they employed. And as a
reflection on the lasting effects of such systems and practices. By looking
at what the state did to the p eoples of the periphery, we are in fact exam-
ining what the state did to itself. The story that emerges, while one of
dominance, subjugation, and violence, is also one of complexity. For
what it reveals is a history of state construction and governance predicated
not on the erection of a universal order—a flat political topography—but
rather on the intentional structuring of a layered political reality that in-
cluded some and excluded others by design.
To effect that design, frontier governmentality had to be enacted and
performed by the apparatuses and personnel of the imperial state. The
everyday practice of frontier governmentality was played on a global stage
by a cast of characters who enter and exit, some with dazzling cupidity
and avarice, others with a deeply held conviction about the righteousness
of European imperialism. While many of the places and people may seem
wholly disconnected from one another, they are deeply bound together
8
Iceland
FINLAND
NORWAY
Alaska
SWEDEN
ESTONIA
DENMARK LATVIA S O V I E T
GREAT LITUANIA
BRITAIN EAST PRUSSIA R U S S I A
DOMINION OF NETH. POLAND BELORUSSIA
GERMANY
CANADA BELGIUM
Newfoundland CZECHOSLOVAKIA
AUSTRIA UKRAINE
FRANCE HUNGARY
SWITZ.
Y
MONGOLIA
U
G
ROMANIA
O
ITALY
SL
A
BULGARIA
V
Georgia
IA
SPAIN ALBANIA Azerbaijan
PORTUGAL TURKEY Armenia
UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA GREECE
KOREA
Spanish TUNISIA Syria
Morocco Lebanon JAPAN
ATLANTIC PERSIA AFGHANISTAN REPUBLIC
French Palestine Iraq OF CHINA
TIBET
OCEAN Morocco Algeria Trans-
Jordan Kuwait
Nepal
Libya Bhutan
Bahrain
HIJ
Rio De Oro Egypt Qatar INDIAN
AZ
MEXICO EMPIRE
CUBA
DOMINICAN NEJD Oman Burma PACIFIC
REP. French West
HAITI OCEAN
British Jamaica Puerto Rico Africa
Honduras
HONDURAS Anglo- Eritrea Yemen Goa SIAM
GUATEMALA Aden
Egyptian
a
EL SALVADOR NICARAGUA Gambia French French Philippine
Sudan Somaliland Indo-china Islands
Portuguese Guinea
COSTA RICA Nigeria British
l Afric
VENEZUELA Sierra Leone Gold ABYSSINIA Somaliland
PANAMA British French Coast
Guiana LIBERA
atoria
Guiana Cameroon
COLOMBIA Italian Malay States
Dutch Somaliland
Rio Muni Uganda
h Equ
Guiana
Singapore
nc
ECUADOR Belgian
Fre Kenya
Congo
Tanganyika Dutch East Indies
Territory
Portuguese
BRAZIL
Timor
PERU Angola
Northern Nyasaland
PA C I F I C Rhodesia
BOLIVIA INDIAN
OCEAN Southern Madagascar
South-west Rhodesia OCEAN
ATLANTIC Africa
PARAGUAY Bechuana- Portuguese
OCEAN Land East Africa AUSTRALIA
Swaziland
Basutoland
SOUTH
AFRICA
CHILI URUGUAY
ARGENTINA
NEW
ZEALAND
Map 1. The world, c. 1920. Circles indicate frontiers discussed.

by sinews into a discernable if not unitary whole, highlighting global cir

cuits of ideas, administrative practices, and personnel. At the core of the
story of frontier governmentality sit two central characters—one a law
and the other a man. The former is the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR),
the legal code used by the British to govern their Afghan frontier. The latter
is Sir Robert Groves Sandeman, the first head of the Baluchistan Agency
of British India. Together, these two personify, as well as arguably docu-
ment, the origins and rise of frontier governmentality globally during the
last three decades of the nineteenth c entury and into the opening years of
the twentieth century.
The book begins in the borderlands between British India and what
would later become Afghanis tan. The issues of territorial demarcation,
practical governance, and economic penetration w ere particularly pressing
here. By the 1870s, the British had over twenty years of direct adminis-
trative experience and an even longer history of encounter h ere, begin-
ning with the First Afghan War (1839–1843). It was along this frontier,
which was not demarcated in theory u ntil the Durand Agreement of 1893
and in practice u ntil much later, that the British developed and deployed
their system of frontier governmentality in full. This system was embodied
by a draconian legal regime known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation,
initially promulgated in 1872. The Regulation created a system of gover-
nance relying on indirect rule and encapsulating frontier tribesmen in what
were, in effect, native reserves, though it neither used that language nor
explicitly proclaimed that vision. The outworking of the Regulation over
time made the inherent suppositions of the law clear in their political and
administrative implications.
The FCR proved an imperial template subsequently exported around
Britain’s burgeoning global empire. It was first duplicated within British
India, where it was quickly copied and enforced along the Raj’s northeast
frontier in the highlands bordering Burma during the 1890s. Its last in-
stance of imperial reproduction was in Kenya’s Northern Frontier Prov-
ince in 1934. In the interval between, the law, as well as the substance of
its administrative structure, was constructed time and again along a widely
dispersed array of frontiers globally. In South Africa in the late 1870s and
the early 1880s, Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of the Cape Colony, ap-
plied the lessons learned from his days as Commissioner of Sindh along
the Afghan frontier in British India to his dealings with the Zulus, with
disastrous results. He was preceded in these efforts by Theophilus Shep-
stone in Natal, who eventually produced the Natal Code. Twenty years
10
Introduction
later, at the turn of the twentieth century, Frederick Lugard, the alleged
architect of indirect rule in Africa in the eyes of subsequent generations
of imperial administrators, cribbed his notes from his days in Peshawar
in the 1870s and 1880s to construct a system of frontier governmentality
in northern Nigeria. The British Indian Empire’s involvement in the First
World War on behalf of the King Emperor brought the FCR, originally
designed for the particular problem of the Pathan tribesmen in the Hindu
Kush, to the marshlands of the Basra vilayet taken from the disintegrating
Ottoman Empire. From there, it traveled the deserts of the Middle East,
settling, in modified form, in the Negev of mandatory Palestine and Tran-
sJordan. Through the careers of various imperial officials, the FCR had
an imperial career of its own.
Yet the ideas of indirect rule, and, more importantly, the practices of
frontier governmentality, were not the singular purview of the British
Empire. Nor w ere the underlying norms and values that provided the
intellectual foundation on which these governing practices rested. A
number of contemporary thinkers—scholars, administrators, and scholar
administrators—held a common view of the “savagery” of the p eoples of
the periphery and how their “savage” state not only justified but also ne-
cessitated their subjugation and rule. Men like Sir Bartle Frere in Britain,
Frederick Jackson Turner in the United States, and Domingo Sarmiento
in Argentina collectively authored and maintained an intellectual edifice
on which the rule of frontier governmentality was built. Their transna-
tional intellectual milieu points to the fact that the rationale for and prac-
tice of frontier governmentality proved a regime of rule with global
reach. In Argentina, the republic’s expansion into the Pampas and Pata-
gonia at the end of the 1870s and through the mid-1880s—known as the
conquista del desierto (conquest of the desert)—was precipitated by the
same impulses concurrently driving the British into Af ghan i
stan.10
With the former’s success, they tried to put in place forms of rule strikingly
similar to those embodied by the FCR. At the same moment, the United
States—in one of its many wars of expansion along its rolling continental
frontier—created a reservation system for the Apache in the Arizona
territory that embodied the elements of frontier governmentality. This
was clearly a global phenomenon linking geographically far-removed
corners of the world inhabited by p eoples who, though individually quite
distinct, collectively constituted an archetype of frontier dwellers who
had to be dealt with in a similar fashion by the expanding state order of
the nineteenth century.
11
Frontier governmentality facilitates a deeper understanding of the

modern world we live in—both past and present. Through an examina-
tion of the “peripheries” of the global order, it throws a revealing light on
the “centers.” For the construction of both was not a dichotomous project
where the interior defined its limits, but rather a wholly entangled enter-
prise in which the two mutually constituted one another. Frontiers defined
the centers as much as centers defined the frontiers. Yet this is no simple
collapse of categories, for those definitions were differential. Indeed the
story of frontier governmentality is r eally about how the state system, so
often characterized as driven by the universalizing, and flattening impetus
of modern political power, intentionally constructed and included an un-
dulating, uneven political terrain of difference, which remains central to
our world today.
That system affected, and continues to affect, p eoples’ lives in a direct
and malicious manner. The inhabitants of the frontier—the objects of this
story as well as the actions of the imperial states—are the forgotten peoples
of the periphery who only seem to explode into popular consciousness
when they perpetrate or are more often the victims of spectacular and os-
tensibly unintelligible acts of violence. The world looks with horror as
the bodies of massacred c hildren are removed from the Army Public School
in Pakistan, as the bloodied remains of young students are put into body
bags in Kenya, or as the hooded heads of pubescent girls are shown in
the propaganda videos disseminated by Boko Haram. As such violence is
so alien to the daily lives of so many, we struggle to make sense of such
bloodletting, reaching for the interpretive lens of terrorism and thus un-
derstanding t hese people and places as “fanatical”—and thus deviant and
dangerous. Yet there is a deep structural logic at the heart of these inci-
dents along the global periphery, embedded in the very construction of
these spaces as peripheries from the late nineteenth century onward. These
are not spaces of exception, aberrations in our modern global system of
nation-states. Rather, these are central parts of the system’s design—
intended outcomes, not unexpected accidents. As such, they sit as
damning indictments of the political, economic, and social order con-
structed over the last century and a half.
12
N1n
Frontier Governmentality
T he nineteenth-century world was a new world marked by rapid pro

gress in technology, communications, and transport. It was also marked
by political upheaval, the likes of which the world had never seen before.
But what distinguished this c entury from those that came before, or in-
deed a fter, was that it was the first truly global century.1 While linkages
between the world’s distant lands had been forged previously, only after
1800 did those linkages serve to tightly bind far-removed corners into a
loosely united, if not unitary global arena. In that arena, the changes that
shaped one locale rippled out across the world to affect, often in unfore-
seen ways, faraway lands inhabited by vastly different peoples. Yet the
impulse of the nineteenth century was one of both sameness and differ-
ence. Whereas the eighteenth c entury, for Europeans at least, was about
knowing the places and p eoples of the world (the Enlightenment world)
the nineteenth c entury proved to be about ruling them (the imperial
world). But such rule was expensive. To economize and expedite it, stan-
dard practices of administration, which lasted beyond the often short
careers of colonial servants, were increasingly put in place and embedded
in the foundations of the colonial enterprise. The story of frontier gov-
ernmentality is a story about the authoring, propagation, and reproduc-
tion of just such a practice, or rather regime of rule.
Before one considers how the frontier was ruled, however, one must
consider what was ruled. What did “frontier” mean in the nineteenth-
century imperial world? Frontiers appear as a self-definitional category re-
quiring no formal elucidation. Rather, like obscenity, one knows a frontier
13
when one sees it. Yet such reasoning is in many ways teleological. Fron-
tiers are not objective realities, but rather social constructs. As such, the
very act of observation is in fact an act of definition—a kind of social
version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. To most, frontiers are at the
limits of polities—markers of authorities and bounds of belonging that
have existed since the dawn of history itself. There have always been “ins”
and “outs,” with frontiers delimiting the line between the two. Yet in the
nineteenth century, they assumed a distinct, if not altogether different
meaning commensurate with the altogether different polities they demar-
cated.2 They w ere an outward expression of the state-based empires
Europeans constructed the world over.
Much ink, as well as blood, has been spilled trying to define the “ideal”
frontier.3 Though often thought of as a discrete place, most frequently on
the extremity of the relevant political or administrative entity, frontiers
are a particular type of space. The frontier is an ideational space marked
by specific manifestations of state power and political authority. In this
space, the state defines the limit of both its claims to, as well as actualiza-
tion of authority over, people and territory. Just as those claims, and states’
abilities to assert and realize them, entail a wide spectrum of possibilities,
so too do frontiers assume a wide array of expressions. Some frontiers
manifest themselves as hard lines, drawn on a map and theoretically en-
forced on the ground. These are thought of as borders, or more precisely
modern borders.4 Other frontiers articulate themselves as zones, where
state claims and power recede through space. These are thought of as
borderlands.5
Frontiers are not only spatial and territorial artifacts, but temporal
ones as well. They are not static, but rather dynamic, changing location
and meaning, as well as character over time. For example, the frontier of
the American West through the nineteenth century was marked by its con-
stant movement, while the frontier between British India and Afghani
stan evinced a remarkable geographical fixity after the British assumption
of power at mid-century. The significance of both, in the contemporary
and historical imagination, changed with the changing nature of the states
claiming and enforcing these respective frontiers. The conquest of the
American West, along with the narrative of the American national project,
led to the “closing” of the American frontier by the end of the nineteenth
century.6 In contrast, the arrival of British imperial power along the Af-
ghan frontier in 1849 simply served to codify this space as different and
apart. The American frontier and its closure represented the supposedly
14
universalizing face of the nation-state while the British Indian frontier epit-
omized the particularizing one of the imperial state. Such renderings of
these frontiers—of regimes of sameness and difference—are distorted
by time. How they are remembered today is not how they w ere either
conceived or experienced at the time.7 That dissonance—between then
and now—has important and lasting implications not only for frontiers
themselves, but also for the states that enforced them and for the p eoples
enclosed by them. The time-bound character of frontiers is thus as impor
tant to recognize as their spatial locations.
The mobility and variety of the frontier as place makes it an unstable
and unreliable category of space.8 It is more productive to think of fron-
tiers as conceptual rather than physical spaces, a move that allows for their
location to be at one and the same time multiple as well as mobile.9 Con-
sequently, rather than identifying specific places as “frontiers,” it is more
useful to identify the particular practices constituting frontiers. Thinking
of the frontier as practice has radical implications as it moves the inter-
rogative gaze away from the external bounds of the state to the internal
body as a realm of frontier possibility. If the frontier marks the limits of
both the claims and actualizations of state authority, the absence (inten-
tional or otherwise) of such authority within the state itself—native Amer-
ican reservations, Indian princely states, African tribal reserves—creates
frontiers. Indeed, for many states of the modern world, the most impor
tant and extensive frontiers demarcate their interior, rather than their
exterior.
The relationship between the frontier and the state is a mutually af-
fective one. The state may claim and enforce the frontier, but the act of
doing so irrevocably alters the state itself. The frontier does not have an
independent, self-evident, or “objective” reality, but rather has to be en-
acted in both space and time by governing agents. The frontier has to be
made and maintained through constant, repeated, and publicly visible acts.
It must be both inscribed and performed. Such performances are acts of
sovereignty—the assertion by the state of its ultimate authority.10 Some
of these acts can have the fiction of permanence, such as a boundary
marker or border wall. Some of them can personify the frontier, such as
the surveillance of a border guard or customs officer. It is through these
acts, these practices, that the frontier is performed and thus realized. While
one may say this is true of government in general, the frontier is con-
structed through a particular constellation of practices best understood
as frontier governmentality.
15
Frontier governmentality is composed of two distinct phenomena that

when combined give rise to a unique spatialized and time-bound prac-
tice. Whereas “frontier” denotes a sense of the place, “governmentality”
locates it in time. One of the necessary conditions for the advent of gov-
ernmentality was the emergence of political economy as a central arena
for governments’ aspirations to control.11 The development of capitalism
and the modern state system not only took place concurrently, but also
sprang from the same root. The rise of political economy as both a prac-
tice of governance and discourse during the nineteenth c entury, a func-
tion of the global expansion of capitalism, was intimately tied to the pro
cesses of state formation. As the economy became an arena for action by
the state, it opened a new realm of regulation by which the state could
control its subjects-cum-citizens, through regimes of taxation, regulation,
and work.12 The state could intervene directly into the individual lives of
its subjects by policing economic intercourse between them, something
previously outside both its abilities and ambitions. The rise of statistical
sciences and development of economics as an academic field during the
nineteenth century changed all that. Smith’s ideas of comparative advan-
tage and Ricardo’s theory of rent combined with the enumerative capabili-
ties of bureaucratizing administrations to make it imperative for the state
to intervene directly in the spheres of commerce, finance, and economics,
even if only to ensure the market’s unhindered functioning. Another arena
for state action was born, along with another field of social-cum-political
life upon which it could place its administrative imprimatur.
The expansion of capitalism and state power were thus intimately
linked. Yet the logic of global capitalism created specific opportunities
and forms for its expression, which varied by time and place. Along the
frontier, they facilitated the expansion of capitalism into the spaces of
“savagery” through a distinctive regime of state administration. In the
main that regime was one of negative action—namely what the state did
not do in the economic realm of the frontier, as opposed to what it con-
structively did do. As such, the story of frontier governmentality—of the
rule of the periphery—is in part a story about the expansion of global
capitalism in the late nineteenth century and its integration, or abnega-
tion, of the limits of the state-based international order.
Governmentality then, as opposed to governance, is a temporal signi-
fier, an aspect of the modern state whose ambitions and abilities to inter-
vene, regulate, and control the lives of the populations over which it rules
are both qualitatively and quantitatively different than the state forms
16
receding it. The term speaks to the invasive architecture of order as-
p
sembled by states to regiment everyday life. The technological changes of
the nineteenth century, in particular the rise of statistics and quantifica-
tion of government, radically expanded the state’s intrusion into indi-
viduals’ lives.13 Arguably, the most important and famous practice of
governmentality, at least in the colonial world, was the census. The emer-
gence of the individual, as opposed to collectivities as the target of gover-
nance, required a fundamental rewriting of the compact on which political
order rested. Successful state control of individuals rather than groups
was predicated on the ability of the state to deploy technologies of rule
over individuated subjects. This marked a significant expansion of state
abilities and ambitions. The idea of governmentality captures these devel-
opments, firmly placing its subject m atter in the modern world wrought
by the changes of the nineteenth century.
But empires were not simply about bringing new technologies to bear
on foreign lands. Rather, imperial enterprises integrated local practice with
classical learning to develop a regime along the frontier akin to, yet fun-
damentally different than, past praxis. For the British administrators along
the Afghan frontier, this meant combining the lessons of their classical
education with Mughal and even Sikh methods.14 Mountstuart Elphin-
stone, the first British ambassador to the kingdom of Kabul and author
of modern understandings of Afghanistan and its frontiers, read Tacitus’s
Germania on his progress to the court in Peshawar.15 Though in many
ways Elphinstone’s An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815) resem-
bled the writings of his Roman precursor, both in descriptive and pre-
scriptive manner regarding frontier peoples, they served fundamentally
different state forms in fundamentally different political epochs.16 Though
the systems of frontier rule developed in and deployed by the Roman and
British empires, respectively, may have been intellectual kin, they w ere at
best far-removed relations. The frontier governance of any number of pre-
modern or even early modern empires—from the Romans to the Mughals,
from the Tang dynasty to the Ottomans—resembled that of nineteenth-
century European global empires. But it was nonetheless distinct from
the frontier governmentality ushered in by the nineteenth-century global
political and economic order.
Frontier governmentality entailed a common set of governing norms,
administrative practices, and legal regimes that together constituted a dis-
crete form of rule unique to frontier spaces. What made it unique to these
spaces was a combination of the fleeting reach of state authority as well
17
as the circumscribed assertion of that authority, often based on an assess-

ment of its fragility as well as strategic concerns.17 The elements consti-
tuting frontier governmentality were present—singly and in combination—
elsewhere in the colonial realm. But nowhere e lse did its discrete parts
combine to articulate a systematized order as they did along frontiers.
Those constituent elements—indirect rule, sovereign pluralism, imperial
objecthood, and economic dependency—were intimately linked to one an-
other and mutually reinforcing. They represented, respectively, the state’s
cultural, political, juridical, and economic calculations.
Indirect rule, a phrase made famous by Lord Frederick Lugard, gov-
ernor of Nigeria and a key player in this story, was the practice of gov-
erning native peoples by their own “customs and traditions” through
ostensibly indigenous institutions of rule.18 While the specific mechanisms
were supposedly culturally conditioned and dependent on the particular
people being governed, the practice invariably relied on some sort of na-
tive authority, often a “chief” of some sort, serving as the central medi-
ator with and conduit of colonial authority. In some instances, such as
the tribes along the Afghan frontier, these authorities could be corporate
in nature. However constituted, indirect rule aimed to substitute state-
sanctioned indigenous forms of governance for the “regular” administra-
tive structure of the colonial regime. Strikingly, those indigenous forms,
though supposedly specific to their context, assumed a standard appear-
ance in state administration around the world. In colonial constructions
of them, the Somali tribesmen of Kenya’s Northern Frontier Province in-
dulged the same excesses of the “blood feud,” which likewise marked the
Bedouin of the Negev and the Pashtuns of the North-West Frontier Prov-
ince as “savages.” Ironically, despite their presumed particularity, each of
these peoples of the periphery presented a universal archetype. The
spaces subject to such forms of rule were invariably those where the cost
of direct rule outweighed the potential returns. Those costs could be, and
often were, exponentially increased by the resistance of local inhabitants.
More importantly, however, the lands they occupied were marginal to the
imperial economy, and thus not worth the effort of forcibly integrating.
One of the most important aspects of indirect rule was suzerainty,
which constituted a claim to political power that was neither exclusive
nor exclusionary, in marked contrast to modern ideas of sovereignty. A
suzerain acted as primus inter pares, allowing often-overlapping alle-
giances to various overlords. This plasticity of power did not require loy-
alties to be absolute, a recognition of the limited abilities of suzerains to
18
enforce inimitability. The European imperial formations that sprouted in

the eighteenth century and matured through the nineteenth inherited and
integrated local political cultures marked by suzerain political relations.
Instead of replicating modern, metropolitan norms of sovereignty, the co-
lonial states of the imperial heyday were mishmashes of local and impe-
rial political norms, forms, and practices often cobbled together through
an unending series of temporary compromises made permanent by the
weight of time and accretion.19 It was precisely this that allowed the East
India Company to be both a vassal of the great Mughal in Delhi and the
sovereign representative of the British Crown in South Asia u ntil its dis-
solution in 1858.
Yet the political order erected by colonial states, though resembling
their local suzerain predecessors, was fundamentally different. By the latter
half of the nineteenth c entury the issues of communication, transporta-
tion, and finance that previously limited the ability of early modern su-
zerains to assert claims of exclusive authority had largely been overcome,
though by no means totally eradicated. Nonetheless, the colonial state ab-
jured uninhibited claims of sovereignty. Instead, it created a universe of
sovereign pluralism, where the exclusivity associated with the idea of sov-
ereignty was present, as paradoxically was the space for multiple po
litical allegiances.20 Unlike the personal and relational aspects of a suzerain
political universe, a world of sovereign pluralism was an institutionally
framed one based on the rule of law, or rather the manifold codes of law
coexisting within most colonial realms. Multiple sovereignties could co-
exist and interact, and even be nested within one another. Unlike modern
absolutist understandings of sovereignty, a realm of sovereign pluralism
lacked the formal demarcation of a hierarchy of authority. It did, how-
ever, maintain and police a clear informal understanding of the relative
place of ones’ power and its limits. In such a realm, colonial authorities
could indulge in the fiction of native sovereignty and independence—be
it in the form of princely state or frontier tribes—without fundamentally
contradicting their own all-encompassing pretentions to power.
Such an understanding of sovereignty runs starkly at odds with today’s
sensibilities. It abjures the elements commonly associated with ideas of
sovereignty in the modern world—the exclusive control over a specific
and identifiable territory and population; a monopoly over all forms
of legitimate violence; some form of regularized bureaucratic structure
or apparatus; and recognition by other analogous states.21 These ele
ments necessarily imbue the sovereign with singular and superior political
19
authority, legible to its equals who themselves are similarly constituted.

Further, such states are marked by the universality of the rule of law—all
stand equal before blind justice. While this vision of the state remains
central to understandings of the state-centric political order that emerged
through the nineteenth c entury, there has been an increasing recognition
that it represents at best an ideal type, rather than a fully actualized
reality.22 The nineteenth-century imperial world, which serves as the foun-
dation of t oday’s state-based international system, was one of sovereign
pluralism. At their inception, many of the states populating today’s sov-
ereign world had very different ideas of political authority than those
usually ascribed to them. They comfortably inhabited a world marked by
the undulating exercise of power central to sovereign pluralism.
Perhaps nowhere was that political terrain more variegated than in the
legal realm. Imperial entities and colonial states, though justified by the
“rule of law,” nonetheless sliced the law into innumerable discrete portions
that did not necessarily overlap. Though realized in the form of communal
civil codes, it was most pronounced in the recognition of subsidiary sover-
eignties, such as the princely states of colonial India.23 Yet not all such
sovereignties w ere that subsidiary. Maintaining the sovereignty, or even
independence, of various native authorities placed at least some of them
beyond the legal reach of the colonial state. The inhabitants of such ad-
ministrative spaces w ere not subjects of the state’s justice.24 Indeed, in
many instances, they w ere barred access to avenues and arenas of colonial
justice, most especially the courts. This was accomplished e ither through
outright legal injunction, or through the rendering of these people as non-
justiciable in the eyes of the court, such as American Indians who w ere not
recognized as “persons within the meaning of the law” u ntil 1879.25 Juridi-
cally illegible, such p eople could be acted upon without any legal con-
straints theoretically offering colonial subjects a modicum of judicial pro-
tection from executive overreach. While such legal protection was more
honored in its breach than its observance, for many colonial states the
rhetoric of bringing the rule of law to a “barbarous” and “savage” world
was a foundational pillar of self-justification.26 So the fact these “indepen
dent” p eople were not covered by this blanket protection, however thread-
bare its reality may have been, was an important and telling omission.
They could be objects of state action without being subjects of its justice.
These p eople were thus not colonial subjects, but rather imperial objects.
Imperial objecthood had important implications for both the p eoples
of the periphery as well as the colonial state itself. Whereas within the
20
colonial juridical sphere, the state exercised a rule of difference through

discrete, individuated forms of rule deployed over different subject popu-
lations, these were by and large limited to the civil legal sphere, most
especially in matters of personal law. Communities were ruled by their
individual civil codes, such as the Muslim personal law statutes of British
India or the Hindu Code of postcolonial India.27 Criminal law, such as
the Indian Penal Code, was universal. The subjection of the colonial pop-
ulation to that universal law was both a marker of the colonial state’s
sovereign aspirations, as well as justification of its rule—namely equality
before the law.28 Colonial governmentality thus worked on a register of
civil difference and criminal sameness.29 Frontier governmentality, in con-
trast, excluded frontier inhabitants from the colonial legal sphere alto-
gether, save in certain limited cases, and in so doing abjured the colonial
state’s sovereign claims.30 The law, which provided the rhetorical justifi-
cation for imperial rule, met its limits along the frontier, there disaggre-
gating between judicial subjects and political objects.31
While frontier dwellers w ere legally disenfranchised by and at least rhe-
torically independent of the colonial state, they nonetheless remained
politically and economically beholden to the imperial one. Dependence,
in particular economic dependence, marked the final foundational fea-
ture of frontier governmentality. In terms of their political relationship
with the imperial state, this meant the independence of these people was
highly circumscribed and contingent. Economically, they were rendered
dependent on the imperial economy, the tentacles of which reached well
beyond the physical confines of the colonial state. Their economic subju-
gation facilitated the disciplining of frontier inhabitants. This dependence
was accomplished through administrative practices such as policing, the
expansion of economic intercourse tied to burgeoning patterns of global
trade, and the recruitment of bodies into labor practices and migratory
circuits. These practices ensured the relationship between the imperial
economy and the “independent” peoples of the frontier was heavily
weighted in the former’s f avor. Drawn into an economic order wrought
by imperialism, they w ere nonetheless denied the limited political enfran-
chisement of colonialism.
The economic dependence of frontier p eoples was most conspicuous
in a distinctive and exploitive labor regime. There were two central ele
ments to this regime: first, a military labor market closely tied to policing
frontier peoples; and second, migratory labor flows that cycled frontier
bodies into productive ends. The military labor market operated by directly
21
recruiting the men of the frontier into the military forces of the colonial
state—as regular troops, as scouts, and as paramilitary units. George
Crook’s Apache scouts, the Bedouins of John Glubb’s Desert Patrol, and
the Pashtuns of the Punjab Field Force all played central roles in colonial
force along its extremities. Relatedly, men were recruited into “tribal
militias,” which w ere deployed to police the indigenous communities of
the frontier from which they were recruited. In either capacity—the mili-
tary or policing one—these men had their labor of violence turned into
wage work. The colonial state paid them, and that pay made its way back
to the frontier through remittances within kinship networks. Such injec-
tions of cash along the frontier monetized the local economy, in turn more
closely integrating it with the enveloping imperial one. It had the secondary
effect of monitoring the tribesmen while simultaneously monetizing
them.32 They were thus subjected to surveillance at the same time they
were subjugated to the imperial economy.
The second major element of the frontier labor regime, and remit-
tances, was migration. As the frontier economy monetized, it was also
impoverished. Frontier dwellers w ere thus forced to pursue strategies to
counter that impoverishment. With the economy of plunder—“raiding”—
no longer an option, wage labor stood as the colonially conditioned al-
ternative.33 Such labor would obviously be preferable in the military
labor market discussed above, but only a small percentage of men could
avail themselves of it. Others were forced to enter circuits of labor migra-
tion within the colonial or even broader imperial sphere. Consequently,
the newly transformed economic man of the frontier could be found at
work far away from home. His dependence, and that of his f amily, on the
imperial economic sphere was thus complete, while at the same time his
integration into the colonial political and judicial sphere remained barred.
This is not to say the spaces subject to frontier governmentality were
transformed into labor reserves. While this may have been true in indi-
vidual cases over time, such as the so-called Bantustans of South Africa,
as a general rule the p eoples of the periphery inhabiting these spaces did
not make a docile labor force. Indeed, in many of the areas where such
spaces existed, cheap labor was imported from elsewhere. In South Af-
rica, Indian coolie labor was brought in as they w ere easier to control; in
the Desert Southwest of the United States, Mexicans proved more reli-
able, pliable, and numerous as a workforce than the recalcitrant Apache
and other reservation Indians. Nonetheless, the peoples of the periphery
were forced into migratory labor circuits in a dependent position on the
22
imperial economy. Pashtun railway workers in northwest India and far-

ther afield joined Apache thespians who were part of traveling Indian
shows in the global circuits of migratory labor.34 So while the spaces were
not labor reserves as such, the bodies occupying those spaces provided
labor reserved solely for exploitation by the surrounding imperial economy.
The dependence of such peripheral places and p eoples on that economy,
along with the state’s cash requirements in the form of taxes, had an ad-
ditional, lasting ramification. It created pathways for the development of
“illicit” economies, which included trade, smuggling, and the production
of prohibited goods, which at one and the same time sought to create cash
revenue while denying it to state coffers.35 Often, these illicit economies
centered around commodities either banned by or highly regulated by the
state, most importantly arms, as well as bodies.36 Today, these have ex-
panded to include drugs, criminal extortion, and even capital flows.37
Many of the frontiers discussed here—like the Afghan frontier, the Somali
frontier, and the Burmese frontier—have become nodes in the global drug
and arms trades, making them places of particular peril. The peripheral-
ization of such spaces, while forcing the inhabitants into positions of de
pendency, also created opportunities for them to circumvent the stric-
tures of the state and profit off the differential margins of regulation,
opportunities for what may be thought of as “illicit” agency.
The constituent elements of frontier governmentality—indirect rule,
sovereign pluralism, imperial objecthood, and economic dependence—
provided the substance of the system. However, that substance had to be
exercised and transferred in a bureaucratic and personnel form. Frontier
governmentality assumed the character of a legal regime—be it a single
ordinance or regulation or a collection of laws. Such legal regimes were
paradoxical as they w ere designed to provide clarity, coherence, and stan-
dardization. Yet they codified a system of highly personalized rule, which
maximized deference to the “man on the spot.” Frontier governmentality
relied on the steady hand of an experienced local officer who became val-
orized in the imperial imaginary. Men like Robert Sandeman, John
Glubb, Frederick Lugard, and John Clum dispensed rough-and-ready jus-
tice to the “savage” hordes of the frontier and w ere lionized in print and
even film for doing so. These men played a capacious part in frontier ad-
ministration, and purposely so as the peoples of the periphery needed a
firm and familiar hand to govern them. Such administrators ruled the fron-
tier as virtual kings, jealously protecting their freedom of action from
their bureaucratic overlords. Yet the laws they enforced circumscribed
23
their independence and authority through bureaucratic surveillance in the

guise of reporting. They w ere the vessels administering frontier govern-
mentality in the flesh, and as such they play an outsized role in its story.
Frontier administrators are not the only p eople in this story. More nu-
merous and important were the frontier dwellers themselves, the peoples
of the periphery who w ere the objects of frontier governmentality. This
system of rule was both predicated on, and culminated in, a characteriza-
tion of these people as “savage.” Indeed, it was their “savagery”—their
predilection for violence, recalcitrance to rule, and general lack of defer-
ence to political hierarchy—that placed them beyond the pale of regular
administration in the eyes of colonial administrators.38 The Pashtuns of
the Afghan borderland were no more ready for the marks of civilization
than the Apaches or Somalis. Yet while there is a long history of ideas
dividing barbarians from the civilized realms, the idea of civilization itself
was a rather late invention dating to the Enlightenment in the latter half of
the eighteenth c entury.39 Further, the idea of the “savage” has a particular
intellectual genealogy closely tied with the conquest and colonization of
the Americas, as opposed to “barbarian,” a term of much greater antiq-
uity.40 While recognizing t hese linguistic nuances, my aim h ere is not to be
sidetracked by them. Nineteenth-century writers interchangeably used the
terms “savage / barbarian” and “savagery / barbarism / uncivilized” to mean
substantively the same thing.41 Denoting and degrading frontier dwellers
as “savage,” “barbarous,” and “uncivilized” was a shorthand justification
for colonial rule generally and frontier governmentality specifically. It is
centrally important to recognize the language of “savagery” as a colonial
one of delegitimation, for its use, even in historical texts, can be controver-
sial. Thus when I refer to the p eoples of the periphery as “savages” in the
text, it is not to make a normative statement about their cultural disposi-
tion, but rather to document part of the political project of conquest
undertaken by colonial (and in some instances postcolonial) states.
While, in significant ways, frontier governmentality overlapped with
other forms of governance practiced by the colonial, and postcolonial,
state, the spaces in which it was enacted were both a key constitutive and
distinguishing feature.42 Indeed, the exercise of frontier governmentality
along the physical limits of colonial authority constituted one of the cen-
tral practices of bordering in the late nineteenth c entury.43 By demarcating
the inhabitants of these spaces as outside the colonial sphere, the colonial
state marked the edges of its power. However, the liminal space—physical,
politi
cal, juridical, and economic— occupied by these people clearly
24
revealed those edges to be blurred. State authority receded rather than

stopped along the “border,” which in many instances did not even notion-
ally exist. The processes of bordering were, at their core, negotiations of
that recession and diminution.44
The frontiers inhabited by these independent tribesmen did not abut
other colonial or sovereign states. Rather, beyond the limits of the colo-
nial state lay a world of indigenous polities subtly but, nonetheless, wholly
remade by the globalization wrought by European imperialism. More
often than not, colonial policymakers did not know what exactly to make
of such polities. Clearly their moment had passed, eclipsed by the rise of
the juggernauts of nineteenth-century European empires. As a conse-
quence, administrators often tried to fashion these indigenous polities
into political o rders more familiar, and thus more intellectually recogniz-
able, to the colonial one. The classic example was the rise in the nineteenth
century of “buffer states,” places like Afghanistan, intervening between
expanding European empires.45 The political o rders of t hese interstices
were absorbed within imperial strategies to make them legible to Euro
pean powers and tamed within the imperial imagination.46 D oing so, how-
ever, either essentially subjugated or fundamentally subverted any sort of
indigenous agency, often to the ultimate detriment of imperial as well as
indigenous authorities.
Such borderland spaces were created by the expansion of European
colonial empires throughout the world in the nineteenth century. As those
empires expanded into the “unknown,” they disrupted existing regional
political and economic orders, often causing “chaos” in the eyes of the
imperial authorities as a result. Those European powers used the threat
of such chaos along their limits to e ither annex the areas subject to it, or
encapsulate and seemingly quarantine it, applying the medicine of fron-
tier governmentality.47 With the expansion of European empires and the
creation of colonial frontiers, the birth of frontier governmentality and
its global reach became multicausal as well as multivalent. Rather than a
singular point of origin from which this administrative practice spread
outward to the world, the story is one of both a spread of practice from
particular points of origin and the near simultaneous, seemingly sponta-
neous birth of multiple points of origin. Frontier governmentality appeared
independently in similarly situated spaces around the late nineteenth-
century world. And from some of those spaces, most importantly British
India’s Afghan frontier, it spread through imperial c areer circuits, admin-
istrative exchanges, and a common intellectual milieu.
25
The practices developed and employed along the Afghan frontier in

the late nineteenth c entury, in the Desert Southwest of the Arizona terri-
tory, on the Pampas of the Argentine interior, along the desert rim of north-
east Kenya—all these peripheries were touched by, if not themselves,
sources of frontier governmentality. In some instances, the manifestation
of t hose practices almost identically mirrored one another, collapsing geo-
graphic and temporal distance as well as cultural and social difference. In
other instances, these practices expressed themselves quite differently—
perhaps incompletely, or perhaps not even at all. Taken in their totality
with stories of both sameness and difference, what emerges is a compel-
ling history of the construction, maintenance, and reproduction of a glob-
ally ubiquitous regime of rule—a frontier governmentality—along the
limits of the expanding international order. That history illuminates not
only how power and polity were embedded and manifest along the pe-
riphery of that order, but also, and, as importantly, how that periphery
was definitional of the order it delineated.48 By examining how that order
entailed, and conversely excluded, certain places and p eoples, the story
of frontier governmentality provides a lens onto the emergence of the
modern state and capitalist systems.
Understanding the frontier as practice, and of the practices collectively
defining spaces as frontiers under the rubric of frontier governmentality,
opens new interpretive vistas not only onto the colonial states that put
these forms and practices in place, but also on the postcolonial states that
inherited and in many cases continued with them. This then is not simply
a story about the forgotten peripheries and peoples whose main ambit of
action is nihilistic in character, erupting into the popular consciousness
with stunning violence. Rather, it is the story of the construction of our
modern political and economic global order. Part of the blueprint of that
order included the creation of forgotten peripheries—the edges of empire
that today are characterized as spaces of “state fragility” if not “state
failure.” But these are not spaces that have somehow failed. If anything,
they—and the peoples inhabiting them—have succeeded only too well in
assuming their consciously designed and carefully constructed place in the
modern international order. By looking at such peripheral spaces and
peoples, we can better understand not only the violence emanating from
them, but also, more importantly, the centers defining them.
26
N2n
Governing British India’s
Unruly Frontier
N aqeebullah Mehsud’s body was handed over to his family on Jan-

uary 17, 2018. He had been murdered four days e arlier by Karachi
police in an encounter killing by one of the force’s more notorious en-
counter specialists, Rao Anwar. Anwar claimed that Mehsud was a ter-
rorist killed in a shootout with police. But the story quickly fell apart and
Mehsud, the f ather of three c hildren and an aspiring model, appeared the
victim of police extortion. After torturing Mehsud and extracting Rs. 9
million, he was reportedly so badly beaten that Anwar decided it too dan-
gerous to let him go and instead staged the killing. While this incident
could have simply become yet another statistic in the gruesome history of
violence in Karachi, and another example of extra-judicial killing by the
Pakistani security services, Mehsud’s death instead became a rallying point
for the emerging Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement. The movement
transformed Mehsud’s death into an indictment of the systematic mistreat-
ment of and discrimination against the Pashtun by the Pakistani state.1
Such mistreatment and discrimination has a long pedigree in South
Asia, predating the birth of Pakistan as an independent state in the late
summer of 1947. British colonial officials, for the century they ruled
over the frontier areas abutting what became Afghanistan in the late
nineteenth century, long saw the “Pathan” (the colonial nomenclature
for Pashtun) population of this space as a problem.2 This was particu-
larly true of those inhabiting the recently dissolved Federally Adminis-
tered Tribal Areas (FATA).3 Naqeebullah Mehsud, a member of the
Mehsud tribe, was one such Pashtun. Forced from his home in South
27
Waziristan in 2009, Naqeebullah joined the uncounted exodus of frontier

tribesmen and women rendered “internally displaced persons” since 2004
by a series of military offensives in the FATA. These tribesmen, excluded
from the Pakistani body politic while residing in the FATA through the
draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), found themselves subject
to continued exclusion, mistreatment, and discrimination once out of
those areas. This deleterious triumvirate forms the core complaint of the
Tahafuz Movement, which demands not the special treatment of Pashtun
like Naqeebullah, but rather their treatment as normal Pakistani citizens.
In particular, the movement wants an end to the collective punishment of
Pashtuns in the tribal areas, a pernicious mainstay in the governing ar-
senal of the FATA. In demanding the application of the constitutional pro-
tections available to all Pakistanis, and by implication the abrogation of
the “special” treatment Pashtuns have been the object of, the Tahafuz
Movement is forwarding an innocuously radical agenda that has the po-
tential to threaten the foundations of the Pakistani state. For that postco-
lonial state, like its colonial predecessor, has never been predicated on the
uniform rule of law but rather on the particularized rule of difference.
Historically, no place was more different than the frontier, and no people
more particular than the Pashtun.
To govern that difference, the British created a special legal code known
as the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which applied to all Pashtuns as well
as the inhabitants of the frontier districts included in the notification pub-
lished in the government gazette.4 The FCR encapsulated the tribesmen
of the frontier in their own colonially sanctioned customs and traditions.
It cut them off from the regular administrative apparatus of the colonial
regime, forcing those subject to it into a legal eddy from which there was
no recourse or escape. The FCR was the legal manifestation of frontier
governmentality along the limits of British India. The British character-
ized the FCR as a culturally conditioned administrative solution to the
problem of the Pashtun. That problem, in the eyes of frontier authorities,
was that the Pashtuns were “savage” tribesmen constitutionally unsuited
to civilization inherent in the complex intricacies of colonial law. As post-
colonial Pakistan inherited that problem, it kept faith with the colonial
solution until the constitutional abrogation of the regime in 2018.5
That solution rendered the Pashtun as neither colonial subjects nor
postcolonial citizens. Rather, they were constructed and maintained as
imperial objects who could be acted upon by the colonial and then post-
colonial state—often violently—with no meaningful judicial relief. The
28
Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier
0 50 miles
0 100 km
Malakand
Agency
N O RT H - W E ST
Kabul
A F G H A N I S TA N
Khyber
Peshawar
Agency
Kurram
Agency
FRONTIER
BRITISH
North Waziristan
Agency
INDIA
PROVINCE
South Waziristan
Agency
s R.
u
Ind
BALUCHISTAN
.
iR
Ra v
Map 2. North-West Frontier Province, British India, c. 1909.
29
promise of colonial justice, however ephemeral, was intentionally fore-

closed to the Pashtun who instead were characterized as “independent
tribes” inhabiting the liminal lands of the tribal agencies. These agencies
lay beyond the edge of civilization in the settled districts of British India
and before the international boundary with Afghanistan that was consti-
tuted by the Durand Line. It is precisely this legacy—the legacy of frontier
governmentality—more than the traditions of police violence in Karachi
since the 1980s, which is responsible for Naqeebullah Mehsud’s death.
nNnNnN
The liminal lands of British India’s North-West Frontier, more specifi-
cally those which t oday mark the border between Pakistan and Afghani
stan, were considered by colonial authorities as a “savage,” violent, and
chaotic space since well before the arrival of British administration in
1849. Many still consider it such today, repeating colonial tropes and ce-
menting them in the popular imagination.6 Delimiting an ecologically and
ethnographically diverse region running nearly 1,200 miles, the frontier
ranges from the high Pamirs and Hindu Kush along its far northern reaches
to the dry desert ridges in the southern marches of Baluchistan. The moun-
tainous topography impoverished the p eoples of this periphery, forcing
them to develop multiple coping strategies, including transhumance, no-
madism, and settled agriculture on the valley floors. The hills had the dual
effect of dividing the p eoples of the region both from one another, as well
as from the lowland rulers who claimed authority over them. This in turn
made frontier inhabitants po liti
cally recalcitrant to rule by plainsmen.
When combined with the land’s relative poverty, the frontier proved an
administrative money pit—a fiscal sink in terms of governing costs.
The highland realm included diverse congeries of societies composing
equally diverse constellations of political communities, ranging from feu-
datory princely states to “independent” tribal groups.7 Most prominent
among the frontier’s inhabitants w ere the Pashtuns who populated its
northern reaches. They proved obstinate for the governing authorities of
the north Indian plains. The problem of the Pashtuns was a long-standing
one first for Mughal, then Sikh, and ultimately British colonial authori-
ties. So prominent were the Pashtuns in the British colonial imagination
that in constructing their conceptual understandings of the frontier they
largely “Pathanized” this space, demonstrating little recognition of the
complexity of the frontier’s ethnic patchwork.8 That complexity included
the Baluch, who inhabited the southern reaches of the frontier. As colo-
30
nial authority seeped into their realms in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the Raj acknowledged the difference between the Pashtuns and
Baluch, often constructing the image of each in opposition to the other.
The Pashtuns w ere supposedly republican in spirit and anarchical in so-
cial solidarity, making them difficult to control. In contrast, the Baluch
embraced a social hierarchy that made it possible to rule them through
their khans, maliks, and chiefs.9 Today, both the Pashtun and the Baluch
are subject to continued discrimination by the Pakistani state.10
British administration of India’s North-West Frontier was predicated
not only on a par tic
ular understanding of its inhabitants— there
were
other “tribal” and “savage” peoples within the bounds of British India—but
also on an inimitable conception of this space. Rather than a clear line—a
border—dividing independent and sovereign states, the frontier presented
a zone. In this zone, imperial pretensions to power, not to mention the
daily exercise on which they rested, unevenly manifested themselves. There
was a certain point, somewhere along the ridges surrounding the various
passes into the Afghan kingdom, where the administrative power of the
Raj definitively ended.11 Conversely, its full might was exercised in the
plains populated by settled agricultural populations who were easily
taxed. As one administrator put it, “The fact is, that the territory in pos-
session of the British Government runs up to the very foot of the hills
which have, for obvious reasons of convenience, been called the fron-
tier.”12 Between these settled districts and the ridgeline, which in 1893
became the border between Afghanis tan and British India, lay the “tribal
areas.” These w ere inhabited by “independent” tribes whom the British
at times claimed authority over, but not control. The British thus created
a bifurcated frontier, with an administrative one marking the end of co-
lonial control, and a political one marking the end of imperial rule. The
space between these boundaries was an imperial space, and its inhabit-
ants were imperial objects rather than colonial subjects like the Indians
of the South Asian plains.13
The dynamic and often convoluted relationship between imperial and
colonial was put in stark relief along the frontier. The colonial state was
one embedded within the imperial project. Nonetheless, the two were dis-
tinct. The former both represented and was embodied by the administra-
tive structure of rule. The latter entailed the political pretensions to power.
The imperial realm included the colonial one in its totality, yet extended
beyond it to include areas of informal control as well as influence. The
frontier between British India and the Afghan lands was one space where
31
the relationship, or rather distinction between the two, became clear. The
colonial state ended with its regular administrative structure at the foot
of the hills. From there the imperial realm assumed its full form, with
claims of political paramountcy, which lacked the bureaucratic l egal scaf-
folding marking the lowland colonial realm. Formal colonial practice
gave way h ere to informal imperial custom; control found itself supplanted
by influence. These were the tribal areas.
What distinguished the tribal areas from other anomalies within the
British Indian political topography was their location. Beyond the edge
of colonial authority, they sat uncomfortably between British India on the
one hand and the lands becoming Afghanistan on the other. The former,
though entailing a diverse range of political possibilities, was ultimately
a colonial state subject to the paramount authority of the British govern-
ment. The latter was rather less defined. It was neither a protectorate nor
a dependency of British India, but nor was it a fully formed, independent
state in the European understanding of the term.14 Rather, it was an inde
pendent indigenous polity at times subject to, and at others resistant of,
the influence of neighboring British India. What this meant for the tribal
areas was that in many ways they were neither fish nor fowl. They were
not a buffer between two European-like states, nor between two indige-
nous polities. Rather they were a liminal space that sat astride the colo-
nial and the not-colonial world. It was this liminality—at the edges of
authority—which distinguished them from other seemingly similarly con-
stituted spaces in British India. And in that liminality lay both opportu-
nity and peril for the colonial state and the inhabitants of this realm.
The language of liminality employed by the Raj was the rhetorical
pretense of the tribemen’s “independence,” one colonial officials were su-
perficially at pains to honor. At the same time, however, it insisted on
the bounds of that independence. Addressing the issue in Parliament, Lord
Lansdowne, then Secretary of State for War and himself previously Viceroy
of India (1888–1894), insisted that
To talk of tribal independence is, I cannot help thinking, a little mis-

leading. There can be no complete independence in the case of a
people that has not the power of transferring its allegiance in any
direction it pleases. We know that that power is not given to these
Frontier tribes, and I think, therefore, it is better, perhaps, not to
speak of them as independent. That condition of qualified indepen
dence [italics mine] is a very common one all through the borders
32
of India, not only on the western, but also on the eastern side, on
the borders of Burmah and Siam.15
Lansdowne’s characterization of the tribesmen’s independence as “quali-

fied” did not go uncontested either in the House of Lords or along the
Afghan frontier. Lord Ripon, himself a former Viceroy (1880–1884), char-
acterized Lansdowne’s construction of independence as a mere “shadow,”
at odds both with the tribes’ and the Raj’s understandings of it.16 Like-
wise, Lord Northbrook, another former Viceroy (1872–1876), quoted the
Earl of Kimberley’s characterization that the Durand Convention of 1893,
which agreed on the border between British India and Afghanistan, “did
not affect [the tribes’] independence.” Northbrook insisted Kimberley’s
opinion to be dispositive as he had been the Secretary of State for India
at the time of the agreement.17 Further, no less a frontier authority than
Robert Sandeman, the eponymous founder of the so-called Sandeman
system and the personification of frontier governmentality along the
North-West Frontier, was referenced by both Lansdowne and his parlia-
mentary opponents. Northbrook approvingly quoted Sandeman’s oppo-
sition to attempts to govern the frontier inhabitants: “I should consider it
am istake to make any attempt to include within our control the fringe of
independent tribes which lie between ourselves and Afghanistan proper.”18
Three weeks before the debate in the Lords, the Commons had ad-
dressed the same issue, with the same confusion attending. The Liberal
opposition, introducing an amendment to the Queen’s speech, denounced
the government’s actions along the frontier, including the transgression
of tribal territories and disregard of their independence.19 While Lord
Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, acknowledged his use of the
term “independent” in reference to the frontier tribesmen, like his ministe-
rial counterpart Lord Lansdowne he dissimulated its meaning. When
asked directly if he denied the tribesmen’s independence, he responded,
“Yes, I deny independence. I deny it because it is capable of indefinite ex-
planation.” In this vein, he chastised the Liberals, arguing that “when the
Leader of the Opposition and the Front Opposition Bench w ere asked to
define the meaning of the word ‘independent’ in regard to Ireland, they
admitted it was altogether beyond them.” Yet for the evening’s debate they
had introduced a motion regarding the independent tribes wherein “the
definition of the word hereafter w ill govern—is to govern—the whole of
our frontier regulations.” Acknowledging his use of the term, Lord Ham-
ilton noted that “it is perfectly true that the word ‘independence’ occurs
33
in my dispatches more than once, but it is always explained by the words

with which it is associated.”20 But Lord Hamilton’s words did little to
either sway the opposition or quell the debate regarding the meaning of
independence. Sir W. Lawson, MP for Cumberland and Cockermouth, re-
sponded that “these tribes are independent, they were independent, and I
believe they will continue to be independent; and when we talk about the
Frontier War we must always remember this, Mr. Speaker, that these wars
and raids are being carried on beyond the Frontier. It is not a Frontier
war; it is a war beyond the Frontier.”21
The lack of Parliamentary consensus, or rather uncertainty about the
meaning for the tribesmen’s independence is telling. Clearly, in the eyes
of imperial authorities it was a rhetorical sail that could be unfurled and
honored, or conversely tacked and ignored as political and strategic winds
necessitated. The tone and tenor of the debate, repeatedly invoking ideas
of tribal independence, “savagery,” and the onerous costs, as well as cul-
tural impropriety of regular administration enforced among the tribesmen,
reflected the confused calculus of the imperial imagination. Each side
sought political advantage in their characterization of tribal independence.
Yet neither seemed to consider fully the lasting implications of such a dis-
cussion across Britain’s empire of law—be it along the Afghan frontier or
along the limits of Her Majesty’s African colonies.22 For although the topic
of the day, brought to the Houses’ attentions by recent “fanatical upris-
ings” along the North-West Frontier, may have been specific to the Pash-
tuns, the content of the debate most certainly was not.23 These were not
the only “savage,” “independent” tribesmen living along the periphery of
the empire. Their independence, and the construction and treatment of
such, was replicated in similarly situated spaces around its limits.
The fact that independence was the currency of power along the fron-
tier, even if “qualified,” has important ramifications. For while Lord Lans-
downe might have seen independence as divisible, this was not an opinion
shared by the empire’s legal minds of the late nineteenth century, most
importantly Sir Henry Maine. One of the leading legal theorists of the em-
pire during the nineteenth century, Maine wrote and lectured extensively
about the evolutionary development of jurisprudence, publishing his most
famous work Ancient Law in 1861. His ideas and public stature brought
him to India in 1862 where he served as the legal member of the Vice-
roy’s council for the remainder of the decade.24 During that period, fol-
lowing the massive 1857 uprising against British rule in India, he strenu-
ously argued for the conservation of “traditional society,” which he saw
34
as the bedrock of social order and stability in the colonial realm.25 With
regard to the question of sovereignty, in one of his most consequential
opinions, the Kathiawar Case of 1864, Maine insisted that though sover-
eignty may be divisible, independence was most decidedly not. Maine
wrote that “although the expression ‘partial independence’ may be popu-
larly used, it is technically incorrect.”26 While Lansdowne’s pronounce-
ment of “qualified independence” could be viewed as simply the legally
imprecise vernacular of Parliamentary debate, the administrators of British
India knew better. And knowing better, they continued to refer to the tribes
of the North-West Frontier as “independent.”
The tribesmen’s “independence” stood in stark contrast to the other
“hill polities” to which they could be compared, namely the princely
states.27 Numbering over 550 and covering roughly a third of British India
at independence in 1947, the princes were tied to the Raj, and thence the
British Crown, through formal treaty relationships.28 These relationships
were the foundation on which the British Indian government built a po
litical order of layered sovereign arrangements where the Raj stood as
the proverbial primus inter pares among an assemblage of political rela-
tions.29 While de facto the Raj’s ultimate, overriding authority was never
in doubt, paramountcy meant that in places on the Indian subcontinent
de jure it was attenuated in favor of local practice and personnel. The
Raj abjured its sovereignty for paramountcy, allowing native princes the
right to rule within their fiefdoms while claiming exclusive rights over
foreign relations, defense, and communications.30 In many ways, the Raj’s
sovereign prerogatives along the North-West Frontier resembled its as-
sertion of paramountcy vis-à-vis the princely states. Yet while British au-
thority over the princely states was recognized both de jure and de facto—
unlike the frontier tribesmen, the princely states w ere never referred to as
“independent”—it was contested in both senses along the frontier.
The tribal areas constituting the frontier w ere different—both consti-
tutionally and conceptually. While there has been outstanding work de-
tailing the diversity of imperial anomalies and the consequently “lumpy”
and layered character of imperial sovereignty, these studies obscure the
distinction of the frontier realm.31 Whereas many of these studies focus
on indigenous polities, relatively few consider the governance of indige-
nous p eoples in the absence of such legible polities.32 In the princely states,
especially in the epoch of “traditional society” marking the Raj’s gover-
nance post-1857, the Government of India found a legible, if inferior polity
under the rule of a single office of authority—the prince—through which
35
imperial power could be channeled and to which limited powers could

be delegated. Such delegation rested on ideas of divisible sovereignty
marking imperial governance as articulated by Maine. The tribal areas
were altogether different, not simply in degree but rather in kind. The Raj
had no treaty relationship with recognized princes here.33 Consequently
it did not indulge in the pretense of delegating authority to a constitu-
tionally recognized constituent sovereign. Instead, it maintained the pre-
tense that the tribes inhabiting this realm w ere “independent,” demon-
strating the Raj’s marked ambivalence in its assertions of power h ere.
The rhetorical differentiation of these spaces—sovereign princely states
and independent frontier tribes—is reflected not only by the language used
to describe each but also by the amount of legal and bureaucratic atten-
tion (as opposed to violent military attention) they respectively garnered.
The princely states w ere collectively the object of intense legal consid-
erations among both administrators and legal theorists.34 Henry Maine
and C. L. Tupper w ere just two of the many colonial officials-cum-public
intellectuals who dedicated significant attention to the place of princely
states within the Indian Empire’s l egal topography. And some of the most
important legal treatises of imperial rule during this period w ere dedicated
in significant part to the position of the princely states. They w
35
ere less
so the object of military intervention. Armed interventions into princely
states were a rare occurrence, and almost unheard of post-1857. In con-
trast, the tribal areas earned no similar legal attention, but rather were
the almost annual object of military expedition. The 1898 Parliamentary
debate marks one of the few moments when the legal and political sig-
nificance of the frontier tribes’ “independence” was explicitly considered.
For an empire that prided itself on its attention to the law and its impli-
cations, this is a striking disparity.
The frontier and its inhabitants stood outside the colonial state—
physically and administratively—but nonetheless within the imperial
sphere. British governance of the frontier both reflected and constituted
these realities for the space and its p eoples. While initially, the establish-
ment of British control and self-confidence by the latter part of the nine-
teenth c entury facilitated the extension of institutions of rule utilized in
other parts of peninsular India, their shortcomings along the frontier
quickly became apparent. The objects of such rule, namely, the p eople
inhabiting barren spaces on the periphery of empire, w ere invariably
“tribal” and thus “savage.” Colonial officials viewed them as neither
interested in nor ready for “civilization,” which was delivered through
36
the precepts and exercise of the law. The former was the currency with
which the colonial state justified its rule, the latter the means by which it
enforced that rule. More important than the tribesmen’s ill-preparedness to
be tutored in civilization by the colonial state was the need to protect them
from the corrupting influences of colonial society, namely the dangerous
potential for politicization latent in colonial modernity. A new administra-
tive response was required for the particular challenges of the frontier.
nNnNnN
To govern this seemingly ungovernable space and rule these unruly
peoples of the periphery, the FCR was promulgated in 1872 by extraor-
dinary executive authority granted the Viceroy.36 Under the FCR, the in-
habitants of this frontier were to be governed by their own “traditions,”
authentic cultural practices considered such by the state. The Regulation
effectively separated the tribesmen from the colonial body politic, cre-
ating a space of judicial reservation later politically formalized with the
advent of the frontier’s tribal agencies from 1878 onward.37 This fash-
ioning of administration to local circumstances—ruling colonial subjects
indirectly through indigenous institutions—was driven by a number of
factors. Continual pressures for imperial austerity marking colonial gov-
ernance meant that ruling indirectly was more often than not a euphe-
mism for ruling on the cheap. Imperial hegemony could be projected
through local leaders rather than the expensive apparatus of the colonial
state. Further, administrators believed such indirect rule more effective as
it mediated colonial control through local institutions and personnel le-
gitimate in the eyes of indigenous societies. Colonial authorities thus
economized and embedded rule along the imperial frontier by foregoing
the extension of regular administration.
The FCR purported to answer the unique challenges of administering
the frontier. Reissued twice, the steel frame of the Raj was reinforced with
legal girders in 1887 and 1901 as the new versions of the Regulation be-
came both more detailed and draconian while its general thrust remained
essentially unchanged. The most important element of the Regulation was
its creation of an alternative judiciary for tribesmen, one essentially and
intentionally sealed from the colonial judiciary.38 Deputy Commissioners
(DCs) could refer tribesmen accused of murder or “other heinous
offence[s]” to adjudication by elders, according to “Pathan or Biloch
usage” on the grounds of insufficient evidence for conviction in colonial
courts or that ordinary procedures would prove inexpedient.39 The 1887
37
Regulation refined this tribal judiciary, specifying a “Council of Elders”

consisting of “three or more persons according to the Pathan, Baluch or
other usage as the Deputy Commissioner may in each case direct.”40
The Regulation thus usurped a “traditional” mechanism of justice. Yet its
reliance on the dispensation of justice by tribal members, appointed by
the DC, rendered the colonial state the ultimate arbiter of that tradition.
The Council of Elders, known as a jirgah, was believed by colonial au-
thorities to be an authentic tribal institution ubiquitous along the fron-
tier. While many of the Pashtun tribes along its more northerly reaches
were familiar with this “tradition,” the Baluch in the south were not.41
Further, jirgahs were less formalized institutions of tribal governance than
consultative bodies of tribal opinion. Their form as well as purpose varied
greatly, with some tribes regularly calling jirgahs of maliks and khans,
while others held them rarely, but allowed all male members to partici-
pate. The rules of the jirgahs were highly individuated, with some relying
on rawaj (local customary law) to resolve disputes, while others employed
precepts of the Pashtunwali (Pashtun tribal code) or even the shariah.42
The effect of the FCR was the standardization of the form, if not sub-
stance, of jirgahs, at least as a judicial institution of tribal governance. Yet
even among colonial officials there was significant debate regarding the
constitution of a jirgah under the FCR. In relying on “tribal tradition”
for local governance, the colonial state radically altered, and in places im-
posed, that “tradition” on the frontier’s inhabitants.
The jirgah and its underlying notion of tribal tradition was one pillar
of the FCR. Another central to the Regulation was the idea of collective
punishment. The tribesmen, uncivilized as they w ere, were communal be-
ings and thus would not be subject to the individuated punishment the
more advanced subjects of the colonial regime could call upon. The move
to collective punishment along the limits of imperial authority mirrored
a near-simultaneous one taking place in the colonial center with the pas-
sage of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871.43 Yet whereas the latter was pred-
icated on the collective constitutional disposition of the subject tribes to
criminality, in particular dacoity (banditry), the former targeted the wild
“savagery” of the Pashtun. Blockades, long a mainstay of frontier gover-
nance, were given legal sanction and structure. Collective fines against
communities harboring criminals or suppressing evidence in a criminal
case were imposed.44 And tribes that failed to maintain a system of com-
munity policing w ere liable to be punished.45 Further, the 1901 Regula-
tion banned the erection of public meeting h ouses, known as chauks or
38
hujras.46 Exclusion and banishment orders could include persons whom

the DC deemed “dangerous fanatics.”47
Such “fanatics” w ere not the only ones subject to banishment. The
1872 Regulation exiled tribesmen from British territory if they threatened
to pursue a blood feud.48 The 1887 Regulation went further, allowing the
DC to intervene directly into tribal society. Any disputes “likely to cause a
blood-feud” could be referred either to a Council of Elders or a colonial
court to prevent its outbreak.49 Specifically targeting Pashtuns, this blood-
feud jurisdiction reflected the colonial state’s belief that “the criterion of
tribal unity resides . . . in the obligations of blood revenge.”50 Blood feuds
were the currency and marker of the tribesmen’s collective “savagery,” and
as such they resonated beyond the bounds of British India’s North-West
Frontier.51 Colonial officials simultaneously bemoaned and valorized the
violence of such feuds, insisting them to be “a source of pride and glory
and an adjunct to the respectability of decent families.”52 In the eyes of the
colonial state, the inevitable consequence of blood feuds in frontier society
was murder, which had reached seemingly epidemic levels. The annual re-
ports on the administration of justice along the frontier devoted consider-
able space to the number of murders throughout frontier districts. Most
frustrating to frontier officers was not simply the violence itself, but also
their impotence to judicially address it. Murder rates climbed unabated.
The evidentiary standards of colonial courts ensured that successful pros-
ecutions proved difficult, with as few as one in six convicted.53 The Pash-
tuns’ valuation of violence, and killing in particular when perpetrated in
pursuance of a blood feud, made gathering incriminating testimony—the
key evidence used in colonial courts— virtually impossible.54 Punish-
ments meted out on those actually convicted, which were limited to fines
in the 1872 version, had little deterrent effect.55 The 1887 and 1901 ver-
sions enhanced the punishments the DC and the Council of Elders could
impose, additionally allowing whipping and transportation.56
While the FCR in the main was explicit about the institutions of tribal
justice and punishments, it remained silent as to what exactly constituted
an offense.57 Most offenses were those of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of
1861. But such use of the IPC contradicted the Regulation’s ostensible def-
erence to “Pathan and Baloch usage.” There was one notable derogation
from the IPC—the FCR’s treatment of adultery.58 Paradoxically, the pro-
cedure and punishment for adultery was brought into the colonial courts,
while other crimes were excluded from them. In doing so, the Regulation
simultaneously abrogated ideas of collective punishment for adultery,
39
while reinforcing it for other transgressions. Colonial stereotypes of

Pashtun violence, honor, and masculinity lay at the heart of the FCR’s
treatment of adultery. By making this the one crime directed into colonial
courts, the colonial state asserted a clear claim over the regulation of sex
within Pashtun communities, justifying it by reference to the tribesmen’s
“irrational” propensity to violence. As a consequence, it denuded the
Pashtun males not only of their power, but more damningly, their honor.
A Pashtun who could not fulfill badal—the prescripts of revenge—may
speak Pashto, but he could not do Pashto.59 He was therefore not a real
Pashtun. The emasculation of the Pashtuns fit a tendency of colonial au-
thorities to delegitimate their opponents by gendering them, most famously
in the case of the “effeminate Bengali.”60
The tribesmen w ere not the only ones policed by the FCR. So too were
the colonial servants tasked with administering it, specifically the DCs. The
1887 Regulation required them to produce “a record of the facts of the case,
of the offence committed and his reasons for passing the sentence” for any
case resulting in a fine of over Rs. 200, an imprisonment of three months, or
a sentence of transportation.61 The DCs’ records were annually synthetized
into reports on the administration of criminal and civil justice, which w ere
published by the government printing press in Lahore. These annual reports
were a distillation of the archive the colonial state compiled on its subjects,
as well as on its agents. The reporting requirements of the FCR were not
about disciplining the tribesmen, who themselves w ere subject to the stric-
tures of the jirgah and potentially punitive sanction of the DC, or worse the
military. Rather, they w
ere about disciplining the “man on the spot.” These
reports constituted the main bureaucratic product of the FCR and as such
stood in place of the written records, such as police reports and court pro-
ceedings, they presumably displaced. Collectively, they constituted the ar-
chive of imperial rule along the frontier. And they were produced by the
servants of a state who w ere attempting to rein in the seemingly unlimited
authority of frontier officers, but who w
ere themselves those officers.
Such reporting requirements and the implied and intended policing of
frontier officials speak to the fears of petty despotism, which served as a
driver of legal reform in the British Empire. Part of the foundation of the
empire of law constructed by the British was the regulation of state offi-
cials. Shackling their potentially unchecked authority with the restraints
of the law ensured that t hose to whom authority had been delegated would
not abuse that authority as they wielded it. The petty despotism of offi-
cials was potentially as threatening to the integrity of the empire as the
40
demands of British settlers elsewhere.62 While such concerns w ere para-

mount in the empire’s colonies of settlement, where the rights and liberties
of Englishmen needed to be protected from the avarice of state officials,
they also had traction in the colonies on the other side of the global color
line, though for dif fer
ent reasons. While the authors of the Frontier
Crimes Regulation had no concern about stepping on the liberties of the
Pashtun and Baluch frontiersmen, they were concerned at the prospect of
overreach by zealous frontier officers. These men saw themselves as a
breed apart, unencumbered by the stultifying strictures of the governing
practices and norms of the plains. The colonial state had good reason to
be wary. Collectively, frontier administrators had a potted history, which
at its most extreme led to invasions of neighboring Afghanistan.63 More
insidious though was the intimacy of frontier officers with their charges,
creating fears of at the very least cultural, if not racial miscegenation, the
likes of which produced Sir Robert Warburton.64
While frontier officials cultivated a cult of personal administration,
such ran deeply at odds with the requirements of an increasingly institu-
tionalized, bureaucratic, and regulation-bound administrative state. The
“man on the spot” could exist in this world, but only as long as he was
constrained and properly knew his place. The reports were the mecha-
nism by which the administration policed him, binding him through paper
and the archive it produced to the constraints of ostensibly law-bound
colonial rule that, though creating space for individual discretion, severely
circumscribed it within clearly delimited bounds. The paper Raj asserted
its authority over the personal Raj. This move fit the narrative that colo-
nial governance replaced the irrational personal dictates of oriental des-
pots with the rational institutional channels of colonial bureaucrats. The
FCR was as much about domesticating colonial servants along the edges
of authority and beyond the immediate reach of their superiors as it was
about encapsulating the Afghans. The latter w ere enclosed in and policed
by the colonially sanctioned traditions; the former by their reporting re-
quirements and the imperial archives constructed by such reports.
By the late nineteenth c entury, the detailed reports regularly submitted
by DCs on the workings of the FCR were collated into the annual “Re-
ports on the Administration of Criminal Justice.” These included standard-
ized tables enumerating the number of cases disposed of, in what venue,
with what result, under what sections of relevant law, and with the number
of litigants involved. Nearly all included a “statement of offences reported,
and of persons tried, committed and acquitted for each class of offence in
41
the Punjab during the year” and it detailed the returns u nder no less than
thirteen separate headings.65 The reports further listed the number of cases
adjudicated u nder the FCR, those referred to jirgahs and the conviction
rate under such proceedings, as well as the level of fines imposed by these
“traditional” bodies of tribal adjudicature. The level of detail these reports
required elicited complaints from at least one District Magistrate, who
grumbled to his superiors,
Iw ill only say that it is impossible for the officer who is Collector,
District Judge, and District Magistrate as well as Deputy Commis-
sioner, to work the new Regulation satisfactorily. . . . Frontier cases,
reports, and so called Political work which appears in no return,
takes up much time, which in other districts could be devoted to
ordinary Magisterial work.66
The administrator’s list of offices, concentrating as it did nearly all gov-
erning functions in the hands of one individual, made a mockery of colo-
nial pretensions to the rule of law. Through the paper trail, the FCR sought
to reign over the “men on the spot” as much as it sought to rule over those
objects of the law.
Yet the records themselves reveal a striking paradox of colonial admin-
istration along the frontier. The Council of Elders was not required to docu-
ment proceedings or judgments. And those proceedings, in the eyes of fron-
tier administrators, w ere riven with irregularities and shortcomings. The
District Magistrate of Kohat denounced the jirgahs’ regular resort to trial
by oath, whereby the accused, “with or without comparagators,” simply
swore his innocence, leading to a nearly 50 percent acquittal rate in his dis-
trict.67 In reviewing the workings of the law, H. M. Plowden complained
that the jirgahs followed “no formal record of evidence and no legal rules of
evidence.” The lack of such records virtually ensured the impossibility of
appeal from the decision of such bodies.68 Yet they also confirmed colonial
tropes of “savagery” and lack of civilization in that the tribesmen’s tradi-
tional mechanisms of justice remained illiterate spaces. As such, they neces-
sarily remained unjust, a point stressed by Plowden’s observation regarding
the impossibility of appeal. It was left to the colonial state, in the form of the
District Magistrate (who was also the Deputy Commissioner), to bring the
word, and thus the law, to this “savage” space through reporting. The colo-
nial rule of law was therefore constituted by its own record.
While the reports and their record of crime and punishment offer one
entrée into the colonial archive and rule of law, they are not the only one.
42
The other major generator of paper was the issue of whom the FCR
applied to. The jurisdictional reach—who fell within the ambit of the
Regulation—and how that reach was articulated offers perhaps the most
revelatory of the contradictions of the colonial and postcolonial project.
And that reach, though initially outlined in the Regulation itself and ex-
panded through notification in the gazetteer, was ultimately, though rarely,
contested in court. The Regulation’s application to tribal areas was based
on inhabitants’ ethnic identity rather than the state’s claims over terri-
tory.69 The Raj abjured a territorial claim to jurisdiction along the frontier,
which would undermine its insistence that these were indeed “independent”
tribal areas, instead extending its reach to all tribesmen. The Regulation
was applied in its totality to all “Pathans and Baluchis,” including t hose in
the tribal areas, as well as “such other classes as the Local Government,
with the previous sanction of the Governor-General in Council, may, by
notification in the official Gazette, declare subject thereto.”70 According to
the Regulation, “The word ‘class . . .’ includes any persons who may col-
lectively be described in a notification . . . as persons subject to all or any
of the provisions of this Regulations.”71 This presented an imperial tau-
tology in its purest form. The Regulation could, on extension, be applied
to notified classes, those classes being constituted by such notification.
Later notifications extended the supposedly self- evident limits of
“Pathan and Baluch” classes to include “tenants, servants, clansmen, or
retainers of any kind” as well as “all persons . . . accused of being jointly
concerned in the commission or abetment of an offence with persons of
the preceding classes.”72 Notably, the additional classes enumerated by
the notification were differentiated by their economic activity. The equiv-
alence here between occupation and class-cum-social status mirrored a
similar intellectual exercise visible in other examples of administrative
categorization, most prominently the Punjab and all-India censuses. It
points t oward the creation of the political economy as a space of govern-
mentality in which “tribal” identities were inscribed.
Ultimately, the Raj applied the FCR to virtually the entire population
of the frontier, in British, “independent,” and Afghan territories. This pre-
sented an inversion of extraterritorial jurisdiction whereby the British
Indian state claimed the right to regulate and try the subjects of another
state, as well as subjects of no state (the “independent tribes”) residing
outside British territory. The claim of jurisdiction over both Afghans and
members of independent tribes reflected the attitude of the Raj t oward these
spaces as political entities. Unlike the princely states within its domains,
43
British India considered them separate, sovereign, and, most importantly,

independent. Yet it did not consider that independence “real,” or rather
equivalent to that enjoyed by European states.73 Indeed, in the case of the
“independent tribes,” t here was no state to speak of, a fact that again un-
derlines the odd liminality of the frontier in the imperial imagination.
Even Afghanistan was not fully independent from the British Raj until
after the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 and the Treaty of Rawalpindi.74
Yet imperial officials treated both as such, at least when convenient.
The issue of whom, exactly, the Regulation applied to created a number
of potential problems of definition for the colonial state, as well as op-
portunities of those subject to it to escape the Regulation’s strictures.75
The assertion of the Regulations’ jurisdiction over the tribal areas beyond
the formal frontier of the settled districts inserted the legal and adminis-
trative manifestations of the colonial state into a space formerly occupied
exclusively by its political one. Without clear boundaries marking the
limits of the state’s power, the administrative state entered an ethereal
realm that it had little understanding of and even less control over. While
British influence carried as far as the Hindu Kush, British administration
stopped somewhere just beyond Peshawar, but no one was quite clear
where. It was not u ntil the Durand Line in 1893 that some form of ad-
ministrative limit was agreed in principle. But even after this agreement,
the space intervening between the end of “civilization” at the foot of the
hills and the international boundary on the crest of one of their ridges
remained remarkably ill-defined.
The jurisdictional application of the Regulation, based on persons
rather than places, reveals the colonial state’s highly uneven territorial-
ization of power. While elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent, the Raj
sought to clearly delineate the physical space over which it ruled—to ter-
ritorialize its powers—along the frontier such a drive was at best mud-
dled.76 The FCR applied to classes of people whose physical location was
of secondary importance. The lack of a clear demarcation between set-
tled districts and the abutting tribal areas, not to mention the late delin-
eation of the boundary with Afghanistan, further underlined the colonial
state’s seeming territorial indifference. Yet while the specifics of place do
not seem to have been the foremost concern of imperial administrators in
this instance, the idea of space—one that could be ethnically delimited if
not topographically demarcated—does. The colonial state was deeply in-
vested in a process of frontier-making and bordering along its northwest
periphery. This entailed an inscription of power over people through
44
c ollective identities bounded by colonial understandings of culture. While

the bordering of the frontier ultimately assumed a territorial expression,
it was a consequence rather than a cause. That cause was tribal identity
bounded by “custom and tradition.”
Ambiguity regarding the Regulation’s supposedly self-evident reach
proved a source of significant intervention by the colonial judiciary. Chal-
lenging its jurisdiction was almost the only avenue into colonial courts,
as once a party fell within the net of the FCR, it had virtually no escape.
This in part accounts for the relative paucity of court cases regarding the
FCR. At the same time, it puts on display the creative agency those sub-
ject to the Regulation employed to loosen its grasp and challenge the co-
lonial state. Of the few cases regarding the Frontier Crimes Regulation
that made it to the colonial courts, nearly all dealt with the issue of ju-
risdiction.77 Much to the chagrin of frontier administrators and colonial
authorities more generally, the colonial judiciary had a tendency to scru-
tinize the Regulation’s legal wordsmithing, arguably too closely. For in-
stance, in Latif Wali Khan v. Empress, the Chief Court of Peshawar held
that sections of the revised 1887 Regulation promulgated that year could
not apply in blanket form to all Pashtuns and Baluch tribesmen without
special notification by the Punjab government.78 While this elicited howls
of protest from the government generally and frontier officers particularly,
they begrudgingly acknowledged the court’s reading to be technically cor-
rect. And therein lay the rub. For the British Empire claimed itself to be
an empire of law, and as such an empire subject to the limits of the law,
regardless of their administrative inconvenience.
While the Peshawar Chief Court’s ruling was meddlesome, it was no-
where near as potentially destabilizing of frontier rule and the colonial
order as Empress v. Muhammad Umar Khan et al. The issue before the
court was whether convictions under §17 of the FCR of 1887, which re-
moved proceedings from the Sessions Court and placed them in a jirgah,
could stand despite the lack of a formal notification regarding the revised
Regulation.79 And indeed the court found that they could not. P eople
could only be held accountable for breaking laws they were presumed to
have been informed of through notification. This ruling had potentially
dire consequences if brought to its logical conclusion as it invalidated all
jirgah convictions, including those for murder, under this section of the
law between March and November 1887. The political Raj found itself
subject to the vicissitudes of the judicial Raj. While the ruling initially led
to a g reat deal of handwringing among colonial officials, the m atter was
45
quickly put to rest when the executive satisfied the requirements of the
judiciary by publishing a notification that retroactively applied to the pe-
riod in question. In honoring the letter of the law, the Raj breached its
spirit by bureaucratically backdating its applicability. While in many
ways a routine example of the hypocrisy of colonial rule, it illustrates the
importance of legal form to the Raj. Though the scales of justice w ere
forever tipped in its favor, the colonial state nonetheless paid heed to the
rhetoric of its blind fairness.80
In addition to cases regarding the FCR’s jurisdiction and notification,
the law’s treatment of adultery, which it automatically channeled to colo-
nial courts, produced some even more dangerous rulings as far as the co-
lonial state was concerned. Though few adultery cases ever reached the
colonial courts, one that did was Bhola Ram v. Emperor, where a Hindu
resident of Muzzafargah District was accused of adultery.81 The case ap-
plied the FCR, a culturally conditioned response to governing the Fron-
tier’s Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen, to Hindus “ordinarily resident of
those districts.” In extending the Regulation to a Hindu in a case of adul-
tery, a section of the FCR specifically targeting Pashtun ideas of mascu-
linity and honor, the Raj imploded the categories of difference on which
it constructed its rule. Yet Bhola Ram’s underlying premise—that Hindus
could be rendered Pashtuns through long exposure to tribal norms—was
by no means unique, nor indeed novel.
Over a quarter c entury earlier, A. H. Benton, a Sessions judge in Pe-
shawar, addressed this very issue, stating “most of the inhabitants [of the
frontier] are Pathanised sufficiently to render it desirable that the Regu-
lation should apply to them. This is the case even with Hindus, some of
whom have their blood feuds and commit murders just like Pathans.”82
Benton’s musings, when paired with Bhola Ram, clearly demonstrated
that though the FCR was a culturally conditioned answer to the problem
of the Pashtun, the colonial judiciary did not respect the limits of ethnic
exclusivity. Even the seemingly permanent, impenetrable, and self-evident
“classes” of Pashtun and Baluch identities w ere subject to legal loop-
holes of the state’s own making. Inhabitants of the frontier could be
“Pathanized”—rendered “savage”—through long exposure to the air of
the hills. But whereas the judiciary did not let the distinctions of social
groupings stand in the way of the administration of the law, it did require
that those subject to the Regulation’s reach be notified of it.
Colonial administrators were themselves cognizant of the imprecise
boundaries of Pashtun identity, despite their reliance on it as a discrete
46
and firm legal category. There was ongoing debate about how to define
both “Pathan” as well as “Baluch.” One suggestion was to consider all
speakers of Pashto as Pashtuns.83 The 1903 Administration Report of the
North-West Frontier Province characterized “Pathan” as a social category
based on property, a criterion that stood in stark contrast to the racial
classification employed in the All-India Census a mere two years prior.84
Although cognizant of the permeability of the category of Pashtun, offi-
cials expressed little if any concern regarding its use as a jurisdictional
head of the Regulation. Instead, they noted the absence of such an ethnic
classification would push the Regulation’s reach onto a territorially de-
limited jurisdiction, which would have pernicious effects.
In a report regarding revisions of the 1872 Regulation, Plowden noted
with alarm the unintended, though wholly predictable, consequences of
resting the Regulation’s jurisdiction solely on a territorial footing. He cited
two cases that had fallen under the 1872 Regulation he considered quite
inappropriate. The first was the wife of a Gurkha soldier accused of adul-
tery against whom the court applied the FCR as “local law.” The second
regarded a “Bengali babu [who] had instigated the attempt to assassinate
Major Wintle.” Referred to a jirgah, presumably for lack of evidence, on
the grounds he resided in the covered territories, the babu found himself
convicted and fined Rs. 10 lakhs. Considering his attempt on the life of a
British officer, this was a less-than-ideal outcome in the eyes of Plowden
and other colonial officials who would have rather seen him convicted in
a colonial court and presumably hanged. Plowden wrote wryly that “it is
difficult to affirm that the framers of the Regulation contemplated the trial
of a total stranger, such as an European or a Bengali, by a Pashtun Jirgah.”85
It was precisely to avoid such outcomes in future that A. H. Benton and
the justice in Bhola Ram abjured a territorial claim to jurisdiction, instead
opting for an ethnic one based on the belief that all frontier inhabitants
could be “Pathanized.” Strikingly though, their ethnic jurisprudence pro-
duced the very result Plowden warned against.
Colonial subjects themselves understood the opportunities the porous-
ness of supposedly fixed ethnic identities opened to them for exploiting
judicial cracks in the colonial façade. The FCR’s focus on behaviors sup-
posedly unique to the tribal and “savage” Pashtuns worked in interesting
ways when in the hands of resourceful litigants. Whereas Bhola Ram
found himself subject to the strictures of the Regulation, despite his Hindu
faith, for the transgression of sexual mores, the parties to Drehan Khan
v. Bahadur Khan discovered that the Regulation offered them alternative
47
judicial venues through which to pursue their claims.86 Though clearly

Muslims, one can only guess if e ither, or both, of the Khan parties w ere
Pashtuns as the court report is s ilent on this point. Regardless, in the course
of civil litigation, one of the parties, when faced with an adverse ruling in
the colonial courts, declared the issue at hand was not a property dispute,
but rather a blood feud. By invoking such sanguinary language, which fell
squarely within the remit of the Regulation, the disadvantaged litigant was
able to access a new l egal forum—the jirgah—in which to pursue his claim.
He used the prejudices of the colonial state, codified in law, to his ad-
vantage. This despite the fact that regardless of the men’s ethnic identity,
the properties at issue—some houses—sat in the city of Multan, the main
municipality of the Dera Ghazi Khan district. Multan was no village back-
water, nor part of the remote tribal lands in the hills that the FCR was
initially designed to regulate. Rather, it was one of the main commercial
entrepôts along the river Indus. By creating an alternate and enclosed legal
sphere in which to encapsulate the tribesmen, the colonial state had given
at least a few of them access to multiple jurisdictions, which if sufficiently
savvy, they could turn to their own advantage.
The jurisdictional openings occasioned by the use of ethnic categories
of “Pathan” and “Baluch” reflected an inherent instability in the founda-
tions of colonial difference. The colonial regime was predicated, at least
theoretically, on impermeable social categories policed by the state. For
the ethnographic state to work, the distinct identities by which it divided
and ruled the populace needed to be both clearly demarcated and perma-
nent in character. After all, according to that state, such differences were
not the construct of colonial administrators, but rather the recognition of
eternal social realities predating the advent of British authority on the sub-
continent. For the good of the state and society, the colonial administra-
tion needed to respect such categories through their inclusion in the im-
perial architecture. Even in instances, and there were many, when the
colonial state changed the categories of classification, these reflected the
state’s imperfect knowledge of Indian society, which was continually im-
proved by the ceaseless documentation of that society through the arms
of the ethnographic state.87 In contrast, Benton’s supposition that Hindus
could be “Pathanized” acknowledged that social identity was subject to
the pressures of social environment, and could thus change accordingly.
Benton, in other words, implied a world of social fluidity rather than fixity,
a position firmly at odds with the administrative zeitgeist and needs of
the Raj.
48
If followed to its logical conclusion, Benton’s holding had the poten-

tial to undermine the whole imperial edifice. The British Raj in particular,
and the colonial enterprise more generally, relied on the state’s adminis-
trative abilities to identify, group, and rule subject peoples as members of
discrete communal collectives that w ere at the same time both self-evident
and hermetically sealed. The Raj went to great lengths to perfect its ability
to properly capture and catalogue these collectives, with each incarnation
of decennial census between 1871 and 1901 significantly revising its clas-
sificatory schema. Yet Benton’s logic implied this was all for naught, for,
in his mind at least, long exposure to the cultural practices and social pres-
sures of surrounding populations could enable, if not enforce, assimila-
tion. In other words, cultural difference could be learned, a dopted, and
affected rather than being an inherent part of personhood within a larger
community. If frontier Hindus could be made Pashtuns, why could Ben-
galis not be Anglicized, or, even more dangerous for imperial prestige,
Englishmen (or worse w omen) be Indianized? This was exactly the po-
tentiality Plowden forewarned, and which Benton’s jurisprudence por-
tended. The horror and danger to colonial rule was self-evident. Thus
while Benton’s position recognized social realities as they were, his utter-
ance of such transgressed lines of authority not to be crossed.
While posing an existential threat to colonial rule in the abstract, more
immediately Benton’s extension of the FCR to a Hindu on the basis of his
person rather than place pointed to a fundamental tension in the law’s
jurisdictional reach. The Regulation’s ethnically based personal jurisdic-
tion, applying to all “Pathans and Baluch,” was separate from its territo-
rial jurisdiction, which was delimited by the Raj through notification. If
all residents of the frontier areas—settled and unsettled agencies—were
subject to the Regulation, then the personal jurisdiction seemed redun-
dant. Conversely, if all inhabitants of this space were “Pathans” (or Baluch),
at least behaviorally, pursuing blood feuds as the litigants in the Drehan
Khan case claimed to have done, then the territorial jurisdiction head of
the Regulation was unnecessary. Benton’s holding made a mockery of the
supposedly discrete communal and ethnic identities by which p eople lived,
and could be identified by the colonial state. As such, it implicitly under-
mined the FCR as a particularist piece of legislation culturally conditioned
to deal with the problem of the Pashtun. If anyone could be a Pashtun, or
more properly “Pathanized,” then why the need for a legal regime sup-
posedly conditioned to their cultural and social peculiarities? It is no
wonder the FCR erected such a bar for entry into colonial court, making
49
it a rarity indeed. For it was precisely in this space where the inherent con-
tradictions of the Regulation, and by extension the colonial enterprise,
could be put fully on display.
If the cultural specificity of the Pashtuns was not the driving force
behind the Regulation, then what was? While many of the Regulation’s
proponents, most vocal among them George Elsmie, a judge of the Chief
Court in Peshawar and head of the committee that drafted the revised
1887 version of the Regulation, insisted that the FCR was a culturally con-
ditioned response to the problem of the Pashtun, specifically the issue of
frontier violence and murder, the history of the Regulation points else-
where.88 Contrary to the arguments of colonial officials, the origins of the
FCR lay not in the dysfunctional operations of the colonial judiciary, but
rather in taxation—the most basic operation of any state, colonial or
otherwise.
The original version of the FCR was an outgrowth of the Hazara Set-
tlement Rules of 1870. Those rules, themselves based on the Agror Valley
Act III of 1870, foreshadowed the employment of jirgahs:
Where a person is accused of murder or other heinous offence, and
proof is not forthcoming, but the parties agree to abide by the
Pathan usage of awarding money compensation for injuries, the
Deputy Commissioner may cause the case to be decided according
to such usage, and cause such decision to be carried into effect as
if it were a sentence of a Court.89
here was considerable debate within the Government of India about
T
these rules, which were enacted by the Government of the Punjab. Not
only was there a question as to whether the Lieutenant Governor of the
Punjab had the legal authority to make such rules, but also the Viceroy
Lord Mayo, as well as other central administrators, felt the rules to be
overly draconian.90 Yet the origins of these rules lay not in the need for
a culturally conditioned governance of the frontier, nor in the require-
ments of curtailing the violent dispositions of the Pashtun tribesmen.
Rather, they lay in the need to clearly delineate property ownership.
The Agror Valley Act, like the Hazara Settlement Rules and the later
Hazara Settlement Report, which was authored by E. G. Wace, a disciple
of Henry Maine, established the legal lines of ownership as part of the
colonial state’s attempts to create a colonial rule of property along
the frontier.91 The FCR was thus a criminal regulation whose origins lay
in property rules.92
50
The focus on property had a dual function for the colonial state. Prop-
erty ownership as mediated through law was a mark of civilization. And
under a Mainian understanding of the progressive legal development of
history, more advanced societies—civilized societies—enjoyed individual
as opposed to collective ownership.93 Moreover, lines of property owner
ship both facilitated and reflected the penetration of global capitalism in
this space. Through the Hazara Settlement Rules, and subsequently the
FCR, the state attempted to regulate and govern the lives of its subjects,
or in this case its objects, through economic activity. That economic
activity—mainly crop production and animal husbandry—was socially
mediated through relations of production and in particular ownership. In-
deed, it was the Raj’s confusion about the latter, especially the institution
of vesh—a form of communal ownership marked by the “periodical repar-
tition on ancestral shares”—which led to the treatment of frontier Pash-
tuns as a collective being and identity.94 Nonetheless, the legal regime put
in place along the frontier was an attempt by the colonial state to channel
economic intercourse, structure social relations, and institutionalize state
authority.
The sequencing of these laws followed the pattern established else-
where in British India, where the IPC was preceded by the three revenue
settlements employed by the East India Company.95 The Hazara Settle-
ment Rules and the FCR represented a continuation of the same arrange-
ment. The former defined the colonial state’s understanding of local
concepts, practices, and institutions of property. It then sought to assign
rights over such defined property to colonial subjects who lived on the
frontier. Once established, those rights required the protection of the co-
lonial state, e ither epistemically through the judicial system, or physically
through colonial policing. The FCR institutionalized both. In terms of
epistemic violence, the FCR subjected disputes with the potential for
bloodshed to colonially mediated arbitration in the form of jirgahs. In
terms of actual violence, it codified the practices of collective punishment
that marked cross-border governance prior to its inception.
The attempt to clearly delineate property rights in the Hazara Settle-
ment Rules, and the use of that delineation as the foundation of criminal
law in the FCR, was part of a larger colonial project that sought to inte-
grate and subjugate those within the sphere of the colonial economy to the
rule of a new global economic order. By creating judicial linkages, and ex-
clusions as the FCR did, these laws bound the frontier tribesmen to the
colonial economic sphere. This was more directly and explicitly undertaken
51
through other contemporary administrative practices, such as the recruit-

ment of frontier tribesmen into tribal militias to police the frontier.96
Additionally, like their pre deces
sors, the Sikhs and the Mughals, the
British relied heavily on subsidies to frontier tribes to maintain order, a
practice that created its own inequitable economy of power.97 The re-
cruitment of Pashtuns into imperial circuits of labor, both around British
India and throughout the empire, integrated the frontiersmen into the
burgeoning global economy which Britain sat atop.98
Arguably the most important labor practice put in place along the fron-
tier was the extension and structuring of the military l abor market in this
space. While frontier dwellers had long provided their labor of violence
throughout the Indian subcontinent, the colonial state sought to capture
and channel that labor. And the man to do it was Sir Robert Groves San-
deman, who put in place the system carrying his name along the Baluch
frontier, though it affected the entire length of British India’s northwestern
limit.99 The Sandeman system was predicated on recruiting the tribesmen
to police themselves in the form of tribal levies and militia. In return, they
would largely be left to their own devices, under the watchful personal
oversight of a frontier officer well versed in the tribesmen’s ways. San-
deman sought to enlist the tribesmen in their own subjugation and, in so
doing, entwine their interests and fate with that of the colonial state.100
Some colonial administrators went so far as to characterize their service
in the various frontier militias and bodies of scouts as akin to a feudal
obligation.101 But there was a decidedly capitalist strain to Sandeman’s
design. Sandeman recruited frontier dwellers into tribal militias that po-
liced the area’s inhabitants—their kinsmen and tribesmen. And he paid
them for their labors.102 In one fell swoop he both monetized and moni-
tored them. And in so doing, he fundamentally subdued them to the rule
of the colonial state as well as subjugated them to the demands of the co-
lonial economy.
If the FCR institutionalized frontier governmentality, Sandeman per-
sonified it. Whereas the FCR took a cultural approach to frontier rule,
Sandeman took a personal one. He famously declared that “to be suc-
cessful on this frontier [Baluchistan] a man has to deal with the hearts
and minds of the people, and not only with their fears.”103 While the FCR
was authored to deal with the problem of the Pashtuns in the north, San-
deman field-tested the system that would later bear his name farther south
among the Baluch. This paternalistic system paired cultural competency
with colonial violence cheaply enforced by the tribesmen themselves. San-
52
Figure 2.1. Sir Robert Groves Sandeman. Frontispiece of A. L. P. Tucker, Sir

Robert G. Sandeman, K.C.S.I.: Peaceful Conqueror of Baluchistan. London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921.
deman’s system was often contrasted with the Punjab system of adminis-
tration, a differentiation that had more basis in active imperial imagina-
tions than the daily reality and expressions of power on the ground.
Sandeman constructed his system of frontier rule simultaneous with the
first advent of the FCR in the Punjab. And, when made the Agent of the
Governor General in Baluchistan in 1877, he extended the Regulation
there as well. The extension of the FCR to Baluchistan and Sandeman’s
tribal militias along the entirety of the frontier marked the maturation of
frontier governmentality along British India’s northwestern limit.
Collectively, t hese practices led to significant injections of cash into the
frontier economy over time. In so d oing, they fundamentally reshaped
frontier society as economic relations between the tribesmen themselves,
53
not to mention with the colonial state and the colonial subjects in the set-
tled districts, became increasingly monetized. Yet it was not only moneti-
zation that mattered. New forms of credit emerged and became embedded
here, wielded by new economic actors, in particular Hindu bania mer-
chants acting as moneylenders.104 The emergence of these new forms of
credit and introduction of a new class of rentiers to the frontier displaced
existing patterns of exchange. Authoring a new credit and political
economy of the realm caused significant social and economic dislocations,
leading to greater resistance against the colonial apparatus of control, as
well as instability within the tribes themselves.105 It was also central to
frontier governmentality as it subjected the tribesmen to the new realm
of regulation and governance, namely the political economy.106
The combination of colonial legislation and administrative practice—
the FCR and Sandeman’s tribal militia system, respectively—had a de-
fining effect on the social and economic fortunes of the frontier’s inhabit-
ants. The FCR effectively excluded the tribesmen from the spaces of the
colonial state. Blockades, codified by the Regulation, physically barred
them from entering the settled districts. At the same time, the elevation of
jirgahs as a tribal court system excluded them from access to the colonial
judiciary. The tribal militia system drew its recruits into the colonial
economy by monetizing their labor, as did the subsidy policies that injected
cash into tribal economies through local maliks and khans. Yet, simulta
neously, the restrictions the FCR placed on them meant t hese newly minted
economic objects of empire could not fully participate in the colonial eco-
nomic sphere. They w ere thus rendered dependent on the colonial economy
while at the same time being largely excluded from it.
The pernicious effects of this exclusion and dependency were doubly
damning as many of the tribesmen living beyond the administrative frontier
of the settled districts had agricultural lands in those districts. The block-
ades severed the frontiersmen not only from colonial markets, but more
importantly from their own agricultural lands.107 Colonial administrators
were well aware of this, and they believed it made blockades all the more
effective. In the words of one administrator, “coercion is discriminating
mercy, which the instructions of government inculcate.”108 Colonial admin-
istrative techniques put the economic squeeze on the frontier tribesmen,
immiserating them to compel compliance. Such practices of governance, as
well as the theories of economy and violence underlying them, w ere a core
aspect of frontier governmentality. In the end, however, it simply encour-
aged their further recalcitrance against frontier administration.
54
Taken as a w hole, these practices of frontier governmentality rendered

the tribesmen a new and different type of specimen. Not fully colonial
subjects like other South Asians inhabiting the British-administered areas
of India or even the princely states, they were imperial objects. While the
colonial arena was awash with a miscellany of juridical subjects, them-
selves reflecting the variegated legal and political terrain of colonial rule,
they were all ultimately legally justiciable beings under the rule of the
Crown.109 The tribesmen subject to the FCR were different. They were
“independent,” and that independence had both political and legal rami-
fications. While they shared legal legibility in the sense they could be rec-
ognized in court and by the law—just as any foreigner may be recognized
as subject, in a limited sense, to the law—the tribesmen’s distinction lay
in their liminality. They were subject to the law, not subjects of the law. In
the main the tribesmen w ere denied access to the venue where other co-
lonial subjects contested their claims as subjects of the Crown, namely the
courts. Rather than being constituted as fully legible colonial subjects, they
were rendered partially legible imperial objects. Though objects of legal
and political action by the colonial state, that same abjured any respon-
sibility to protect these people as they were “independent.” They were
made reliant on the colonial sphere through a multiplicity of linkages
spawned by colonial law, administrative practice, and economic policy.
However, those linkages acted unidirectionally. Economically dependent
upon, though physically blocked from, the colonial sphere, they occupied
a peripheral space the colonial state conceived as the “frontier.” These were
people who w ere acted upon. The Crown owed them nothing, and stressed
this position by maintaining the conceptual, political, and legal fiction of
their “independence.”
nNnNnN
The “independent” tribesmen of British India’s North-West Frontier were
not the only imperial objects of the South Asian realm. For all the talk of
the FCR being a culturally conditioned answer to the perennial problem
of the Pashtun along the North-West Frontier, it quickly proved an admin-
istrative template for frontier rule applied to other similarly situated
spaces. The Regulation had an important imperial life, with multiple mani-
festations throughout Britain’s global empire, and it continues to have a
significant postcolonial afterlife.110 Within British India, its first replication
was in the Baluchistan Agency, where it was initially promulgated in 1876
and then again in 1890.111 There, combined with Sandeman’s personalized
55
system of tribal administration, frontier governmentality achieved its

full maturity. The system’s “success” in the northwest quickly drew the
attention of colonial administrators along British India’s other frontiers,
in par tic
ular in the northeast where the Raj’s limits abutted those of
Burma, China, and Tibet.112 As with the North-West Frontier, the extent
of those limits lacked clear definition and instead of a demarcated border
this space evinced a frontier that encapsulated the gradual yet uneven
assertion and recession of state power.
The administrative structure of the North-East Frontier was first de-
marcated by the Bengal Regulation of 1873, which was better known as
the Inner Line Regulation.113 Decreed by the Viceroy with the same legal
authority he issued the FCR the previous year, the Inner Line Regulation
bifurcated the frontier between an “inner” and “outer” line, which cre-
ated a space of imperial influence rather than direct colonial control. Just
as with the tribal agencies on the North-West Frontier, “the Inner Line
indicated the limits of the administrative area and no way defined the
actual boundary of British possessions.”114 And just as with the bifurca-
tion of the frontier along its northwestern limits, the Raj was sensitive to
the activities of foreign powers on the outer limits of its suzerain claims.115
The Inner Line Regulation thus did to the North-East Frontier legally what
the practice of frontier governmentality did substantively on the North-
West Frontier. The Regulation s topped state administration at the Inner
Line, and British subjects required permits to proceed beyond this point.
Beyond the Line lay the tribals of the hills, uncivilized “savages” with a
penchant for violence and unprepared for the technicalities of regular ad-
ministration.116 The Raj claimed influence over these p eoples of the pe-
riphery, rather than control, much like with the Pashtuns and Baluch to
the northwest. But to muddy the murky w aters of imperial rule further,
whereas frontier administrators—and Parliamentary peers—stressed the
“independence” of the Pashtun tribesmen, no similar assertions were made
about the tribals of the northeast.
With the passage of time, the Raj sought to bolster the skeleton of the
1873 Regulation with more legal musculature. And the FCR from its other
“savage” frontier provided the ideal graft for the administrative body of
frontier rule there. By the 1890s, questions of jurisdiction and the manifest
power of the state had been sufficiently settled for the Raj to formalize its
practices of rule along this frontier in law, which prompted discussion
from 1892 w hether to replicate the FCR in the Kachin tracts abutting
56
British and Chinese spheres of influence.117 The Regulation was finally

copied verbatim for the Kachin Hills in 1895 and then the Chin Hills the
following year.118 These regulations were buttressed by the Burma Frontier
Tribes Regulation (No. II of 1896), which allowed for the blockade and
collective punishment of frontier tribals, as well as for the use of preventa-
tive detention against potential troublemakers.119 All three elements were
directly lifted from the FCR, by this time in its second administrative incar-
nation. Despite the distance, to frontier officials—who themselves rarely
travelled between the two edges of imperial authority—the administrative
principles were the same. Courtenay Ilbert, then legal member of the Vice-
roy’s council, noted as much, writing that “the circumstances of Burmese
and Pathan crime differ materially, but if some of the experimental pro-
posals made in the Punjab Regulation work well, they may be worth trying
in Upper Burma.”120 Penned in 1886, his words proved prescient.
The replication of the system of frontier governmentality along the
Raj’s North-East Frontier was the culmination of a longer history of ad-
ministrative duplication, which joined this imperial extremity with its
northwestern counterpart.121 Just as the Raj copied its legal and personnel
framework for administration of the “savage” tribes, so too did it repli-
cate the convoluted process that ultimately produced this outcome. The
problem of the uncivilized barbarians inhabiting the hills, lurking just be-
yond the extension of regular administration, was compounded by the
bureaucratic problem of divided administration.122 The highlands these
supposed “savages” occupied were at the limits of three colonial adminis-
trative units—Bengal, Burma, and Assam. Further, and perhaps more im-
portantly, they bordered foreign polities. For the state to domesticate and
civilize these wildlings, it first had to tame its unwieldy bureaucratic
arms.123 Just as the FCR was partially about disciplining the frontier “men
on the spot” of the colonial state, so too were the Hill Regulations of the
northeast about taming the imperial administrative apparatus. Order was
to be made in the hills—civilizational as well as bureaucratic. There was
a debate among colonial authorities if administration of the hills should
be the responsibility of Bengal, Burma, or Assam. A conference convened
in Calcutta in 1892 decided in favor of a single responsible party for ad-
ministrative efficiency, but this decision’s implementation was deferred.124
This debate about split administration, complete with a dedicated con-
ference to clarify lines of authority, mirrored the bureaucratic fights rav-
aging the North-West Frontier.125
57
The FCR’s replication in similarly situated and similarly conditioned

spaces tells us something important about the way imperialism functioned.
These frontiers of empire presented a common set of challenges for impe-
rial administration and were in large part commonly conceived as liminal
spaces whose inhabitants were imperial objects as opposed to colonial
subjects. Yet these spaces were not inherently such. Rather, they w ere
constructed to be so. The comparable cultural dispositions, social institu-
tions, and administrative challenges the colonial state found in these
locales were not the consequence of a lack of modernity or common tribal
past. Instead, they w ere the products of the processes of imperialism, which
rendered these places peripheries. The economic dislocations caused by
European colonialism, the corpus of colonial knowledge that actively con-
structed and maintained them as “tribesmen” or “tribals,” and the ad-
ministrative calculus that these people would simply be too expensive to
govern combined to exclude these frontiers from the colonial enterprise
while nonetheless binding them to the imperial project. Colonial au-
thorities opted to govern frontier inhabitants through their own tradi-
tions, purposefully occluding them from the structures and spheres of
formal administration. At the same time, they thickened the web of ties
binding them to colonial economic order, and thence the emerging global
imperial economies. In so doing, frontier dwellers were created as objects
to be acted upon, devoid of the obligations latent in the status of colonial
subject.
The FCR and the practice of frontier governmentality it embodied was
by no means unique. It effectively created the frontier as a reservation for
the seminomadic natives inhabiting this imperial periphery. Such reserva-
tions, spaces where regular administration did not penetrate, became glob-
ally ubiquitous as European imperialism expanded. Though spaces of
juridical and sovereign exception, these areas themselves were neither ex-
ceptional nor “states of exception.”126 Such spaces were not exceptional
because they w ere widespread along the limits of the expanding imperial
and state system of the late nineteenth century. Reservation like spaces
could be found almost anywhere modern states established their rule.
Though the British called them “tribal agencies” along the Afghan fron-
tier, they differed substantively little from native reserves dotted throughout
Britain’s global empire, including its colonies of settlement such as Canada,
Australia, and South Africa.127 The Native American reservations of the
United States, though clothed in the dubious legal language of “domestic
dependent nations,” were in substance tribal agencies, just as the tribal
58
agencies were in essence reservations.128 And such administrative arrange-

ments could be found at the limits of Japan’s imperial expansion into
Taiwan, under Republican authorities in southwest China, and at the edges
of the pampas and Patagonia in Argentina.129
Nor w ere these spaces “states of exception.” Conceiving them as
such presupposed a norm from which they derogated—something they
should have been but for the “political-juridical removal of legal protec-
tions and affordances that would otherwise be available to them.”130
That norm is modern sovereignty, carrying with it the package of po
litical goods the modern state form is associated with—most impor-
tantly a universal legal order applied equally to all subjects. The reserva-
tion spaces of the frontier did not exhibit these traits. But nor did the
colonial order more generally.131 The frontier realms represented not a
departure from some idealized sovereign norm, but instead a constituent
part of the colonial order that was marked by a multiplicity of legal sta-
tuses (and thus protections), political orders, and administrative struc-
tures.132 The frontier agencies and reservations were simply one of many
such arrangements both contained in and constituting the colonial re-
gime. They did not diverge from the norm, but rather comprised a
radically different one—one premised in governance through difference
rather than the governance of difference.
nNnNnN
The FCR’s imperial life has had a lasting postcolonial afterlife. The Regu-
lation was repealed only in 2018 through a constitutional amendment in
Pakistan. It has yet to be seen how fully and faithfully that repeal will be
honored and implemented. The FATA along the Afghan border, composed
of the former tribal agencies of the Raj, will merge with the Khyber-
Pakhtunkhwa Province.133 The FCR’s creation of peoples as objects has
carried over into the postcolonial setting of the Pakistani state far too long,
creating a difficult legacy to undo. A number of critics, chief among them
the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, charge that a significant part of the
problem of the frontier is Pakistan’s continued treatment of the people of
these areas as second-class citizens, with limited rights and restricted ac-
cess to the normal judicial and administrative apparatus of the Pakistani
state.134 The fact that it has taken more than seventy years for Pakistan
to repeal this colonial holdover indicates its inability, as well as its un-
willingness, to extend its formal administration to the area.135 The vio
lence of the last few years, combined with the low esteem in which many
59
of the tribesmen hold the Pakistani state, does not bode well for a peaceful
integration of these areas in the near future.
The demands of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement amount to nothing
less than an undoing of the legacy of frontier governmentality in Paki-
stan. By claiming their rights as Pakistani citizens, the movement threatens
to reveal the truth in plain sight, namely that the state of Pakistan is a
postcolonial one with the emphasis decidedly on the “colonial” part.136
Far from fitting the expectations of modern states, liberal democratic or
otherwise—expectations that include the universal application of the law
and the hierarchal and exclusive character of sovereignty—by design the
Pakistani state is something different. Pakistan could be seen as a hold-
over from a different time; a malformed nation-state that never success-
fully grew out of its colonial childhood. Yet it could also be recognized as
maintaining the bedrock of the imperial foundations that lay at the heart
of the modern international system. E ither way, Pakistan’s fundamental
difference is most clearly illustrated on its limits and the continued exer-
cise and legacy of frontier governmentality. And its success or failure at
addressing that legacy, and delivering justice for Naqeebullah Mehsud, is
a harbinger of the future fate of frontier peoples.
60
N3n
The Imperial Life of the Frontier
Crimes Regulation
I n November 1923, shortly after Palestine had been made into a British

mandate, the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, wrote to his su-
periors in London requesting the approval of an extraordinary l egal mea
sure to deal with the menace of tribal unrest in the Southern District.1
The proposed measure, though only lasting one year in the first instance,
would enforce collective responsibility and collective punishment on the
inhabitants of the southern and central hill country. The High Commis-
sioner stated that section 5 of the measure was designed specifically to
deal with the issue of tribal blood feuds, a bane of colonial administra-
tion when dealing with tribal peoples.2 Samuel noted the provenance of
ordinance, citing a similar regulation in force in Iraq, another British man-
date where the danger of tribal disorder seemed to be omnipresent. But
the Iraqi law on which Samuel based his own proposed ordinance did not
have its genesis in the marshlands of southern Iraq. Rather, it was born
along British India’s North-West Frontier. For the Tribal Civil and Crim-
inal Disputes Regulation proclaimed by the Indian Expeditionary Force
(IEF) “D” occupying Mesopotamia in the summer of 1916 was itself
nothing more than a slightly modified version of the Frontier Crimes Reg-
ulation (FCR) of 1901.3
Iraq and Palestine were only two of the many destinations where the
FCR traveled along imperial administrative circuits. Within Britain’s global
empire, the Regulation was formally replicated on British India’s North-
East Frontier, in colonial K enya, as well as in mandatory Iraq and Pales-
tine. Substantively, the ideas and practices of frontier governmentality that
61
DOMINION OF GREAT
CANADA BRITAIN
AT L A N T I C Iraq
Palestine
OCEAN Trans-
Jordan Kuwait Nepal
Bahrain Bhutan
Egypt Qatar
INDIAN
Oman EMPIRE Burma
PAC I F I C
British
OCEAN
Honduras Anglo- Aden
Gambia Egyptian
Portuguese Guinea Sudan British
British Nigeria Somaliland
Sierra Leone Gold
Guiana Coast North
Malay States East
Uganda New
Kenya Singapore Guinea
Tanganyika
Territory
Terr. Of
Papua
Northern Nyasaland
Rhodesia INDIAN
Southern
AT L A N T I C South-west Rhodesia OCEAN
PAC I F I C Africa Bechuana-
OCEAN Land AUSTRALIA
OCEAN
Swaziland
SOUTH Basutoland
AFRICA
British Territory NEW

ZEALAND
League of Nation Mandate
Map 3. British Empire, c. 1920.

Imperial Life of Frontier Crimes Regulation
the law embodied found fertile ground even more widely. Just as laws re-
sembling the FCR proliferated around the empire, men like Robert San-
deman inhabited the far reaches of the imperial periphery, where they
erected regimes of rule that, though named differently, w ere forms of fron-
tier governmentality. The system of indirect rule made famous by Lord
Lugard during his days in Nigeria and used throughout Britain’s African
empire traces its roots to British India’s North-West Frontier. And even
the systems of tribal administration advocated by some colonial gover-
nors in southern Africa, most importantly Sir Bartle Frere—Commissioner
of the Cape Colony for a short but disastrous period—had their origins
among the inhabitants of the British Indian frontier with the emerging
Afghan state.
The spread of the FCR around the British Empire represents not simply
the imperial career of a colonial legal code, but also the administrative
replication of a specific form, practice, and ethos of governance that found
expression globally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The imperial story of the Regulation, and more pointedly the forms of
frontier governmentality it entailed, expands our understanding of the me-
chanics of imperial governance. How was this legal code, and its under
lying ideas of administration, transmitted through time and space? How
did an administrative regulation drafted to meet the ostensibly particular
challenges facing the Raj along its Afghan frontier become a template for
imperial governance along its frontiers globally? What were the chains of
transmission and reproduction? Beyond such questions about the actual
workings of imperial rule lay more profound queries regarding the na-
ture of that rule in the form of frontier governmentality. The bastardized
reproduction of the Regulation in what administrators saw as similarly
situated spaces inhabited by similarly “savage” and “barbarous” peoples
had profound implications not only for those subjected to such punitive
forms of rule, but also for those who administered them. What were the
lasting effects of such not only on t hose subjected to such regimes of au-
thority, but also on those—the individuals and institutions—wielding
them? To put it another way, how did the exercise of frontier governmen-
tality shape the empire itself?
The answers to such questions are necessarily multiple and more often
than not richly layered. In some cases they are frustratingly incomplete
or themselves productive of yet more questions—if not both. Yet at least
one of their most important implications is clear from the outset. The story
of the Regulation fundamentally challenges the notional dichotomy of the
63
“center-periphery,” which infused so much contemporary understanding

of empire, as well as much subsequent scholarship. Places such as the Af-
ghan frontier w ere considered imperial hinterlands, and were exoticized
as such. But the FCR’s imperial c areer demonstrates that the “periphery”
was a space of administrative innovation as well as an incubator of rep-
licable regimes of rule with global resonance. This was no space of ex-
ception subjected to a state of exception. Rather, it was a space where
regulatory regimes could be tried and tested with minimal oversight and
even less concern. The “frontier” was the laboratory of governance and
administration, which Benthamite utilitarians once envisaged all of British
India to be.4 But unlike that e arlier, though never realized, vision of a space
for social and institutional experimentation, the frontier did in fact be-
come a testing ground for forms of imperial rule. Once perfected there,
the formula of authority was transferred to and replicated in likewise
permissive environments—scaled up to meet the needs of Britain’s world-
wide imperial enterprise. As this chapter shows, the FCR became the Em-
pire’s standard operating procedure along much of its outlying rim. Thus
far from being a singularly unique “backwater,” the Afghan frontier was
a space where governance manifested its cutting edge.
nNnNnN
While the North-West Frontier of British India was the key laboratory of
imperial power along the periphery, it was hardly the only one. The forms
of governmentality authored, perfected, and exported from h ere were ad-
justed as they were deployed on other “tribal” frontiers of empire to
meet the requirements of the service and exigencies of local circumstance.
These other frontier peripheries thus themselves became administrative
incubators, creating feedback loops affecting the development of impe-
rial governance globally. Indeed, it was along these frontiers that the ethos
of the empire’s African governance was developed by Lord Frederick
Lugard and that the foundational underpinnings of its Middle Eastern
mandates w ere planted by the likes of Sir Henry Dobbs. By examining the
imperial career of the Regulation in such far-flung locales as Basra, Pales-
tine, Nigeria, and K enya, this chapter demonstrates the centrality of the
Regulation both to the development of frontier governmentality as well
as to the administration of an empire on which the sun never set.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the British Empire faced a
global challenge to its supremacy on a scale never before seen. With the
metropolitan’s attentions and efforts focused on the fields of Flanders and
64
France, defense of the imperial realm fell to its constituent, colonial parts.
The Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war in November 1914 opened a
new front, or rather fronts in the war, which became the focus of the at-
tentions and efforts of imperial defense. While the troops of the Australia
and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) famously cut their teeth, and
formed their national identities on the Gallipoli peninsula, the British
Indian army—the empire’s single largest military asset—sought to assert
the subcontinent’s long-standing claims of supremacy over the Persian
Gulf by invading Basra. On the larger war planning canvas, the invasion
of Basra was only the opening gambit of the conquest of Mesopotamia,
which offered a backdoor into the Ottoman Empire. The success of British
Indian forces here would knock a third of the Central Powers’ triumvi-
rate out of the war and secure the paramount position of the British
Empire, and more particularly the British Indian Empire, in any postwar
settlement.5
With the arrival of the IEF “D” in Basra in November 1914, the British
Indian military administration recognized the need to put in place some
sort of legal architecture to buttress their occupation. While a number of
elements were simply continuities with the retreating Ottoman power,
others were radically different.6 One of the most important in this latter
category was the British blueprint for how to deal with the rural tribes of
Iraq. Fortunately, for administrative economy and ease, the British Indian
administration had a time-tested and ready-made design at hand. The FCR
dealt with a similarly conditioned “barbarous” p eople on British India’s
North-West Frontier. Though the Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen subjected
to the Regulation inhabited an impenetrable mountainous terrain, their
Iraqi counterparts were no more amenable to state authority, as they
occupied no-less-impassable marshlands.
The replication of the FCR in Iraq as the Tribal Civil and Criminal
Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) is in many ways unsurprising. After all,
nearly the entirety of the Mesopotamian civil administration was staffed
by seconded Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials. The most important of
these, with regard to the TCCDR, was Sir Henry Dobbs, who served as
the Revenue Commissioner for the civil administration.7 Dobbs was in-
strumental in the replication of the FCR in Mesopotamia. Before his
posting to Basra in the waning days of 1914, Dobbs had been the For-
eign Secretary for the Government of India. He had risen to this position
after a c areer largely defined by his long service along the Afghan frontier
in Baluchistan.8 It was during this junior service that Dobbs was exposed
65
to and became familiar with the workings of the FCR, originally extended
to Baluch Agency as early as 1876.9 In the Basra vilayet, Dobbs and his
superiors, including Chief Political Officer Sir Percy Cox, another India
hand, believed they recognized a society nearly identical to that they knew
from the Afghan frontier, at least in regards to its rural, tribal aspect.10
Consequently, in designing the systems of governance with which they
would rule this newly conquered Ottoman land, they relied upon the prac-
tices they thought most suitable to the “tribal” inhabitants of southern
Iraq.11
Yet as with the FCR on the British Indian frontier, the TCCDR, which
was first deployed in Basra and then followed British Indian forces on their
march northward to Baghdad and beyond, less codified a social reality
on the ground than constituted a new one. And that newly constituted
social reality reflected British beliefs about Iraqi society—both urban and
rural. In keeping with the traditions of the British Raj in India, the ICS
men building the foundations of British rule in Mesopotamia looked to
establish a conservative government designed to safeguard the traditional
elements of society from the corrupting and weakening influences of mo-
dernity.12 Nowhere was that modernity more pronounced than in the cities
of Iraq, especially Baghdad, the former Ottoman provincial capital. And
no one better personified that modernity and its debasing dangers than
the urban intelligentsia and professionals, whom British officials viewed
as fundamentally compromised by the reforms of the late Ottoman pe-
riod. These w ere the men of business and law with political aspirations
with whom the British would have to contend, but who were most likely
to become the chief opponents of British rule. In this they resembled their
urban Indian counterparts who were becoming the backbone of an in-
creasingly agitational All-India Congress. And just as the British were more
and more dismissive of Congressmen, infantilizing and effeminizing them,
caricaturing urban Indian “babus” as softened and corrupted by moder-
nity, so too w ere the imperial officers equally contemptuous of these Iraqi
urbanites. In contrast, the tribesmen of rural Iraq represented the authentic
and unspoiled body politic. This body needed to be protected from the
debasing ills of urban modernity.13 Thus, rather than being governed by
the commercial, civil, and criminal legal codes that the British promul-
gated for the cities of occupied Iraq, the tribal countryside would forego
the formalities of colonial courts and instead be ruled by their “native cus-
toms and traditions,” as understood by the officers of the occupying
power.
66
The TCCDR was first promulgated by the IEF “D” in 1915 as part of
the Iraq Occupied Territories Code.14 The initial version was an attempt
by the thinly spread British military administration to disperse govern-
mental authority to the tribal shaykhs it believed both embodied local
power in the Iraqi countryside and could be relied upon, through a com-
bination of sanction and sacrament, to maintain order there. Though
noting its reliance on the FCR, the initial version of the TCCDR did not
replicate the Indian regulation in its entirety.15 Indeed, the 1915 version
of the TCCDR most closely resembled the original 1872 version of the
FCR rather than the 1901 version then in force along the Afghan fron-
tier. Yet while the details differed slightly, the underlying ethos remained
the same. The TCCDR assumed the collectivity of Iraq’s tribes, which it
defined as teleologically self-evident. Consequently, they were liable to col-
lective responsibility as well as collective punishment. Any crimes com-
mitted within the tribal areas were to be tried by a majlis or tribal council,
much like the FCR’s Council of Elders. The most important offense, which
the TCCDR was designed to deal with at some (relative) length, was the
“blood feud”—the bane of colonial administration and the seeming foun-
dation of tribal society and identity.16 Importantly, unlike the FCR, which
clearly stipulated its jurisdictional heads (territorial, personal, and subject-
matter), the TCCDR did no such t hing. It did not even leave it to the ex-
ecutive, which promulgated the Regulation in any case, to determine its
reach through notification, as was the case with its Indian antecedent. In-
stead, the TCCDR applied to all “tribal” issues as determined by the
“man on the spot.” While such l egal ambiguity may have enabled judicial
efficiency in the eyes of the occupying, and subsequently mandatory,
power, it hardly cultivated the “rule of law,” which was necessary to civi-
lize Iraqi society to the point of self-sufficiency, and thus independence
under the mandatory regime.
The TCCDR was amended and again promulgated by the British oc-
cupying authority in the summer of 1918.17 This second version of the
Regulation, as with subsequent versions of the FCR, was considerably
more detailed. It furthered the process of the establishment of the rule of
law, but paradoxically did so by carving out a space of legal exception to
which it applied. It is important to note this second version was the product
of the British occupying force rather than the mandatory administration,
which came into existence only in 1919. One can wonder if following
the uprising against British authority in 1919, such a Regulation would
pass even a supplicant mandatory government, which included the Iraqi
67
rbanites the TCCDR was meant to protect the rural residents from.
u
Regardless, it was on the books by the time the mandate came into being.
More importantly, the key figure of the mandate period, Henry Dobbs,
who served as high commissioner from 1923 to 1929, was the author of
the original Regulation in 1915. Thus not only was the TCCDR embedded
in the country’s administrative architecture when the mandate was birthed
in 1919, but the key administrator of the mandatory period was himself
the central agent of the Regulation.
For all of its borrowing from the FCR, the TCCDR differed in at least
one important respect. While the former required issues of adultery to be
dealt with by the colonial judiciary, a clear emasculation of Afghan man-
hood, the TCCDR made no such claim. Perhaps part of their reason for
this was the comparative weakness of the Iraqi administration, firstly
under the IEF “D” and subsequently as a mandatory government. While
this seems a minor point, it nonetheless opens the question of the differ-
ential aims, or at least consequences, of the FCR and TCCDR in their re-
spective realms. Whereas the former reflected the colonial state’s calcula-
tion to exclude the Pashtun and Baluch frontiersmen from the colonial
realm, the latter reflected the weakness of initially the military and subse-
quently the mandatory administration, which not only failed to penetrate
“tribal society,” but also had a weak grasp of, and even weaker presence
in, Iraqi society. The FCR was the product of an intentional colonial cal-
culus of costs and benefits driven by the requirements of the imperial
ledger. Though related, the TCCDR was a tacit acknowl edgment of
imperial frailty. In both cases, the state abjured direct rule in f avor of the
infrastructure of indirect rule.
The replication of the FCR throughout Britain’s other Middle Eastern
mandates proved more meandering than in Mesopotamia. It bled into
mandatory Palestine in 1924 as the “Prevention of Crime in Tribal Areas
Ordinance,” which High Commissioner Samuel acknowledged to be
“modelled on provisions in legislation issued in ‘Iraq since the British Oc-
cupation for dealing with the tribes.”18 Though the ordinance was ini-
tially limited to one year, in 1925 it was consolidated with the Collective
Responsibility for Crimes Ordinance (1921) into a piece of standing leg-
islation.19 The Colonial Office’s model for the consolidation of the legal
framework for collective punishment was Nigeria.20 Yet Nigeria itself,
molded by the sure hand of Frederick Lugard, was modeled on the older
legal infrastructure of British India’s North-West Frontier. The subsequent
Collective Punishments Ordinance (1926) remained in effect u ntil it was
68
replaced with the Bedouin Control Ordinance (1942).21 These ordinances

presumed that collective responsibility and punishment w ere a part of
“tribal customs” of local people.22 While the British mandatory govern-
ment considered extending the ordinances to cover the Jewish population,
especially in the 1930s, the Jewish Agency vociferously and successfully
objected to such extensions.23 It was rhetorically out of respect for such
tribal “customs and traditions” that colonial administrators justified their
departure from the individuated universal rule of law that the empire
ostensibly stood for and with which it justified itself. Yet as on British
India’s Afghan frontier, this was a wholly unconvincing stylistic slight
meant to obscure the dual pressures of belief in the local inhabitants’
barbarity and the need for imperial administrative economy.
The reproduction of the FCR, albeit in highly attenuated and modi-
fied form, in Palestine was simply the formal replication of the frontier
governmentality that the Regulation itself both embodied and repre-
sented. In addition to the fact that the Bedouin were subject to the Collec-
tive Punishments Ordinance, and later the Bedouin Control Ordinance,
they were also recruited into policing themselves and their fellow tribesmen.
Just as the British Indian government joined the FCR with the innova-
tions of the Sandeman system, particularly its tribal militias and police,
the Palestinian mandatory government combined legal injunction with le-
thal policing to create a clearly identifiable form of frontier governmen-
tality along its “savage” periphery. The tribesmen formed the core of a
camel-mounted police force that patrolled the Negev and kept its popu-
lation in line.24 As with the Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen along the
Afghan frontier, mandatory authorities created Bedouin-based bodies of
colonial violence with the dual aims of monitoring them (and having
them monitor their fellow tribesmen) and at the same time monetizing
them, rendering them dependent on the mandatory state.
Finally, the British also utilized Bedouin tribal courts that relied on
tribal “tradition” as the institutional mainstay of the administration of
justice.25 The courts w ere subject to the oversight of the Assistant District
Commissioner, as with the tribal jirgahs along the British Indian frontier.
Further, they were seen as particularly well equipped to deal with crimes
the British thought culturally specific to the tribal Bedouin, most impor-
tantly “honour and blood dispute cases.”26
The effect of the legal ordinances and recruitment into tribal militias
was much the same for the Bedouin of the Negev as it was for the tribesmen
of the North-West Frontier. Namely, they were rendered imperial objects,
69
as opposed to colonial subjects, who w ere economically dependent on,

though denied participation in, the colonial economic sphere. While t here
was no de jure or even rhetorical recognition of their sovereignty or inde
pendence, their de facto independence was ensured by the mandatory gov-
ernment’s disinterest in them, at least until the Second World War. And in
the postcolonial world a fter Israel’s creation in 1948, the Jewish state con-
tinued the colonial treatment of the Negev Bedouin who remained. They
were placed under Israeli military administration on a “reservation,” con-
tinuing and in many ways expanding the regime of frontier governmen-
tality under which they continue to struggle.27
nNnNnN
While Samuel and the Colonial Office tipped their administrative hats to
Iraq and Nigeria, respectively, for the coercive infrastructure of collective
responsibility based on “custom,” the true intellectual and administrative
origins of the Palestinian ordinances lay along the Afghan frontier. But
the extent to which the FCR became both a mode and model of gover-
nance in Britain’s wider interwar M iddle East is rather more muddled than
this relatively linear legal genealogy indicates. Indeed, the FCR failed to
clinch an administrative trifecta in the M iddle East when Britain’s third
regional mandate, TransJordan, pursued a parallel, though somewhat dis-
tinct strategy for governing its tribal inhabitants.28 Rather than repli-
cating the Iraqi TCCDR as the Palestinian mandatory government did,
the TransJordan mandatory government put in place two related gov-
erning apparatus to deal with the tribes. The first was the Arab Legion,
which was in effect the TransJordanian army. This force was tasked with
securing the mandate’s frontiers, ensuring the safety of its roads and po-
licing its tribal population as necessary. The second was the Tribal Con-
trol Board, which implemented the Law of Supervising the Bedouin.29
Both the legion and the board were arms of, rather than substitutes for,
central state control.
On its face, TransJordan appears to have opted for a different model
of tribal governance, one that was the reverse of the TCCDR / FCR indi-
rect template. Instead of outsourcing central state authority to customary
tribal institutions, the legion and board subverted such institutions to cen-
tral state control.30 The state did not rule through the tribe, rather the
tribe ruled through the state, though the former was a creature created
and maintained by the latter, making TransJordan in effect a tribal state.31
While this may seem at odds with the forms of governance put in place in
70
mandatory Iraq, it was in fact a variation on a theme rather than a com-

pletely different tune. Palestine served as the bridge between the two
models, a mediatory mandate linking Mesopotamia and TransJordan.32
In the former, under the TCCDR, authority was devolved from the Deputy
Commissioner (DC) to the tribal council or majlis. While the Prevention
of Crime in Tribal Areas Ordinance in Palestine was based on the Iraqi
regulation, it did not replicate this particular judicial model. Instead, ju-
dicial authority remained with the DC. This arrangement was completed
in TransJordan with the Tribal Control Board. The board was a state-
constituted judicial body including an officer from the Arab Legion as well
as a member of the mandate’s civilian Arab government.33 But this gov-
erning structure ultimately proved short-lived and was soon replaced by
one much more akin to the systems in place along the Afghan frontier and
in southern Iraq.
Although the TransJordanian government did not replicate the FCR
or the TCCDR as black-letter law, the forms of frontier governmentality
these regulations embodied were reproduced in this Middle Eastern man-
date. But rather than looking to the law to see such reproduction, one
needs to look to the executors of policy—namely the men. The key player
in TransJordan was John Glubb, better known as “Glubb Pasha,” who
became the de facto ruler of the desert Bedouin tribes.34 Having originally
cut his teeth in Iraq, where he developed many of the ideas and practices
of governance he later deployed in TransJordan and where he was exposed
to the workings of the TCCDR, Glubb was recruited in 1930 initially to
stem the tide of cross-border raiding affecting the frontier between the
British mandate and the neighboring Saudi lands.35 Serving as F. G. Peake’s
adjutant with the Arab Legion, Glubb was essentially left to his own
devices in the desert wilderness. There he constructed a set of ruling prac-
tices with the clear imprimatur of Robert Sandeman’s system from Balu-
chistan.36 Glubb was explicit about Sandeman’s influence on his own
policies in the desert, writing that “Sandeman’s policy with the Baluch was
tested in the Afghan War of 1878, and emerged triumphant. . . . [I]n
dealing with our tribesmen, let us take a leaf from Sandeman’s book and
remember: SYMPATHY, SUBSIDIES, TRIBAL LAW.”37
It was not only the ethos of Sandeman that inflected Glubb’s work, but
also the form. The system of desert administration Glubb constructed
closely resembled Sandeman’s work in Baluchistan from half a century
before. He recruited the Bedouin into a tribal militia known as the Desert
Patrol, which he then deployed to police the desert and secure the frontier
71
against marauding Saudi tribes.38 He subjected the Bedouin to the rule of

tribal courts, which used local custom and tradition, a practice codified
in the Tribal Courts Law and the Bedouin Control Law in 1936.39 Though
these courts were more formally, and firmly, institutions of the state than
the jirgahs employed by Sandeman under the FCR, Glubb’s governance
bore all the same hallmarks of the frontier governmentality that shaped
the British Indian border with Afghanistan. Through the tribal courts, the
desert Bedouin were channeled into an alternative judicial system where
they were not afforded the rights of colonial subjects, but rather w ere
acted upon as imperial objects, ruled by the executive authority of man-
datory officers. The Desert Patrol signified the economic dependence of
the tribesmen. Like the frontier militias of Baluchistan, it affected the twin
aims of monetizing tribal labor while monitoring them.40 And Glubb’s
favoring of the Bedouin shaykhs meant authority was exercised indirectly
through them. If there was a difference with Sandeman’s frontier govern-
mentality, it is that Glubb’s rule did not de jure recognize the sovereignty
of the desert Bedouin. But in the case of TransJordan at least, this was
beside the point as the “tribal values” of the Bedouin, if not the desert
Bedouin themselves, seem to have essentially taken over the mandatory
state.
Why did the FCR serve as a template of frontier governmentality along
certain quarters of the imperial rim but not others? Especially when the
people inhabiting these quarters were themselves the same? Only the ad-
vent of state borders with the intrusion of the colonial, or in this case man-
datory, power demarcated t hese people as somehow different. Indeed, the
Bedouin tribesmen of TransJordan and Palestine had much in common
with each other, as well as with the Bedouin of both Saudi Arabia and
Mesopotamia. Yet they w ere governed differently, even within the same
empire. Why? The answer lay not with the governed, but rather with the
governors. The laws and regulations applied to these spaces were authored
by men with institutional memories and administrative training. There
were two central sources for both in the Middle East—India and Egypt
(as well as, to a lesser extent, the Sudan). These sources w ere themselves
interrelated, with much of the Egyptian w ater department u nder Lord
Cromer manned by old India hands, of which he was himself one.41 But
they gave rise to two different experiences of administration, if not ad-
ministrative schools. The influence of Egyptian and Sudanese officials who
had seen “tribal” service in the administration of the interwar mandates
has been well documented.42 For example, Frederick Peake, the founder
72
of the Arab Legion, was an officer of the Sudan Camel Corps, part of the
British Imperial Egyptian Army.43 Such experience stood in contrast to the
governing cadre of Mesopotamia, who had been recruited en masse from
the British Indian service.
Yet it is not so simple as to say that one administrative school came
from Egypt and another from India, for within the imperial realm, these
places and the personnel governing them were in constant communication.
Many men served in both. Peake was in India before the First World War.
His successor, John Glubb, though seeing no service in India, had a stint in
mandatory Iraq before being posted to TransJordan. Yet they opted for a
different model of administration than that created by the FCR / TCCDR.
Part of the explanation, no doubt, comes from an awareness of the limits
of determinism. Simply because a man was posted in a particular locale
did not mean his subsequent administrative life personified the governing
values of that locale. Even if he did adopt the modalities of governance of
a certain administrative school, in India at least there were a number of
such schools from which to choose. The frontier represented a very partic
ular strain of administrative routine and values, which was in fact con-
tested, as well as looked down upon by others on the subcontinent. The
imperial career of ideas and administrative practice thus does not map
perfectly onto the imperial c areers of the Crown’s servants.
Perhaps the determinism to be considered, if any, is not that effecting
the men enforcing the forms of frontier governmentality, but rather the
spaces in which such forms were enforced. For each of the spaces where
formally or substantively the FCR and Sandeman system w ere replicated
lay on the periphery of imperial power. In many cases, beyond that pe-
riphery lay an amorphous, and potentially hostile indigenous potentate
whom the tribesmen subject to frontier governmentality showed an un-
healthy affinity for, or at least a willingness to transgress porous, poorly
defined, and even more poorly policed boundaries. Glubb’s Desert Patrol
sought to stanch the flow of people and goods between TransJordan and
the Saudi kingdom just as Sandeman’s tribal levies tried to police the ill-
defined frontier between British India’s Baluchistan Agency and the na-
scent Afghan state. But this political buffer against agnostic if not hostile
native foreign powers was not universally the case. The Bedouin of the
Negev slipped over the line not into some hostile territory, but rather into
the lands of another British-controlled mandate.
nNnNnN
73
What did unite the tribesmen of southern Palestine, TransJordan, and

mandatory Iraq with t hose of Baluchistan and British India’s North-West
Frontier more broadly was the land—specifically its poverty in the eyes
of colonial administrators. All of these peoples of the periphery, as well
as those to come, inhabited marginal, wild spaces at the edges of imperial
authority. These spaces were, in the eyes of colonial administrators, eco-
logically and thus economically barren. They were simply not worth the
expense of extending “regular” administration. As spaces that were not
agriculturally productive, they were not spatial candidates for state con-
trol, save in a pressing and passing defensive posture. The arid hills and
impenetrable marshlands occupied by the objects of frontier governmen-
tality were the spaces where p eople could potentially retreat from state
power. But rather than retreating from state power, they w ere in fact en-
capsulated by it. The peoples of the periphery did not practice the art of
not being governed, but rather were governed indirectly and on the cheap.
And this strategy of state control was an outcome of a noxious combina-
tion of administrative inertia creating universally applicable standard op-
erating procedures, the security calculus of buffer zones, and ecological
impoverishment, which bordered on environmental determinism.
The M
iddle East was not the only imperial arena where frontier gov-
ernmentality was at play. When contemplating the Collective Punishment
Ordinance for Palestine, the Colonial Office looked elsewhere for exam-
ples of its successful application, and thus supposed transferability to the
southern districts of Palestine. Though Samuel himself noted the ordi-
nance’s origins in the TCCDR of Iraq, Leo Amery, then Colonial Secretary,
instead pointed to Nigeria, which first passed a Collective Punishment
Ordinance in 1912.44 In many ways, Nigeria was the ideal and obvious
place to look, for it was there that Lord Lugard most famously developed
his system of indirect rule, which in his eyes at least, as well as some other
colonial administrators, was a model for imperial governance.45 Yet in
looking to Nigeria for administrative guidance, Lloyd was actually seeing
British India, and more specifically the experiences of administration along
the North-West Frontier. For Lugard’s system of indirect rule was both
consciously and unconsciously constructed on the foundations of Indian
administration.
While it has long been acknowledged that much of Lugard’s system,
most famously expounded in his 1922 work The Dual Mandate in British
Tropical Africa, resembled forms of rule in British India, it has for an equal
amount of time been distinguished from those forms.46 Lugard’s indirect
74
rule has been compared both to the system of indirect rule represented
by the Indian princely states, as well as to the system of village pan
chayats (councils), which in effect gave much of the Indian countryside
autonomy in the eyes of imperial Indian administrators.47 Lugard him-
self distinguished his system from the former by insisting the princely
states were “independent”—a position not shared by British Indian
officials—representing a separate, albeit subservient governing authority
for t hose spaces in India, which were nonetheless subjected to the doctrine
of paramountcy.48 In contrast, he envisaged his system of native adminis-
tration not so much as separate from the regular machinery of colonial
governance but rather subsumed within it. Local chiefs and rulers w ere not
an authority unto themselves, limited only by the presence of the resident
as he characterized the Indian princes to be. Rather, in the Nigerian con-
text they were the indigenous face through whom colonial authority exer-
cised itself.49 While t oday, Lugard’s differentiation of his system of indirect
rule from the princely states of India, as well as those of Malaya, sounds
somewhat like a distinction without much substantive difference, to his
colonial contemporaries this was an important and telling point.50
But while Lugard and his contemporaries—both critics and adulates—
compared and contrasted his form of indirect rule with that found in the
Indian princely state, as well as that found in the Indian countryside
(though this was a less developed and more fleeting comparison), his
system had distinctive elements that most closely resembled the forms of
governmentality found on the North-West Frontier.51 Most prominent
among these was his penchant for collective responsibility and collective
punishment, an issue he addressed in his Political Memorandum (1906)
where he discussed punitive expeditions against the native tribes.52 The
legal architecture for collective punishment, though substantively authored
by Lugard before his posting to Hong Kong, was erected in his absence
just before his return from the Far East. In 1912, the Collective Punish-
ment Ordinance was promulgated for the colony and protectorate of
Southern Nigeria by the governor, Sir Walter Egerton. It was extended to
northern Nigeria following Lugard’s amalgamation of the colonies in
1914. Further, it was buttressed by other ordinances such as the Unset-
tled Districts Ordinance, which allowed for the banishment of unsavory
characters—usually educated Africans who posed challenges to the social
order in the eyes of colonial administrators.53 The Native Courts Ordi-
nance established a highly regimented system of courts that oversaw the
natives using their own colonially sanctioned customs and traditions.54
75
hese courts were empowered to adjudicate as much business as possible,

T
with only the more severe criminal issues reserved for the Provincial
Courts. From such courts, no meaningful appeal lay. Instead, they w ere
subject to the oversight of the District Commissioner who could remove
a case to the Provincial Courts at any time and, in effect, for any reason.55
Collectively, these ordinances constructed a system that, while distinct,
was nonetheless strikingly similar to the frontier governmentality delin-
eated by the FCR.
What accounts for this similarity, though unacknowledged in Lugard’s
private correspondence, journals, and writings, is at least partly his expo-
sure to the theories and workings of the FCR on British India’s North-
West Frontier. Lugard cut his teeth as a young subaltern along the Afghan
frontier at the very same time the system of frontier governmentality cre-
ated by the FCR embedded itself there. Stationed to Peshawar in 1878
with his regiment, the Ninth Norfolk Foot, Lugard spent nearly three years
on the frontier.56 Too sick to participate in the fighting of the Second Af-
ghan War, he spent the majority of his frontier station around the admin-
istrative center of colonial governance in the region, Peshawar. While
there is little to indicate the young subaltern took much interest in any-
thing apart from fighting, polo, and hunting, at the very least he was ex-
posed to the problem of the tribesmen inhabiting the area. When he did
join his regiment in Afghanistan in 1879, he navigated the Khyber Pass
and in so doing the liminal space of imperial authority that had previ-
ously, and would in future, cause so much difficulty for the Raj. My argu-
ment here is not that Lugard directly modeled his later Nigerian admin-
istration on the FCR for, unfortunately, there is no documentary evidence
supporting such a link. Rather, it is that he was exposed at a formative
stage of his career to the problems of frontier governance, as well as the
solutions put in place by the British Indian Raj. It was an administrative
milieu he encountered during his Indian service that had a profoundly
formative effect on him as a young colonial officer. When later faced by
seemingly similar problems in Nigeria, his proposed solutions unsurpris-
ingly resembled what he had seen previously during the course of his
imperial career.
Yet rather than a caveat to the argument of frontier governmentality,
this is more of a nuance. For while Lugard’s Nigerian administration dif-
fered in important respects from that along the Afghan frontier—most im-
portantly, his insistence on the subservience and integration of native
administration to the colonial state as opposed to the fiction of the Pashtun
76
tribesmen’s “independence”—taken in its totality, it was a variant, rather

an aberration, of the system of frontier governmentality deployed else-
where in the empire. The form of Lugard’s system of native administra-
tion may have differed, but the substance remained the same. The four
central elements of frontier governmentality—indirect rule, sovereign plu-
ralism, imperial objecthood, and economic dependency—are all readily
discernable in Lugard’s system of administration. He was considered the
“father” of indirect rule by his colonial contemporaries. Though he in-
sisted on the ultimate authority of the colonial state, he did so using the
language of suzerainty.57 Natives were ruled by their own “customs and
traditions” through Native Courts, which though porous to the colonial
judiciary nevertheless imposed a significant impediment to access colo-
nial justice, rendering them imperial objects rather than colonial sub-
jects. And Lugard’s insistence on taxing the Native populace, especially
after the amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria, impoverished
them while at the same time it tied them to a monetized economy with
limited opportunity for employment.58 Finally, the fact that Lugard’s system
of indirect rule / frontier governmentality was most felt in the interior of
Nigeria rather than at the colony’s limits illustrates that frontiers w ere prac-
tices manifest in particular places, rather than fixed locations on a map.59
Lugard’s position as a key link in the chain of transmission of frontier
governmentality from the Afghan hills to the Nigerian interior had a
second incarnation that reinforced his importance in the diffusion and
maintenance of frontier governmentality within the British Empire—both
formal and informal. After his retirement from the colonial service in late
1918, he was subsequently named as the British member to the League of
Nations Permanent Mandates Commission in 1922.60 From this perch,
Lugard encountered and oversaw the operations of the TCCDR in Iraq,
which he both wholly approved of and defended against the parries of
fellow commissioners.61 Lugard was exposed to the FCR and its imperial
offspring at both the beginning and end of his administrative career. It is
unsurprising, then, that the frontier governmentality that the FCR and
TCCDR embodied was itself a central part of his own architecture of in-
direct rule, though in different form, in tropical Africa.
The Native Administration of Nigeria championed by Lugard not
only represents the extension of the frontier governmentality within the
British Empire, but also provides important linkages outside the impe-
rial sphere to realms where it was practiced in modified form. This is
most clearly evidenced when looking at the Native Courts. Whereas the
77
FCR substantively excluded the tribesmen from the jurisdiction of colo-

nial courts, the Native Courts Ordinance in Nigeria worked in the re-
verse. Rather than limiting the jurisdiction of colonial courts, it limited
the jurisdiction of the Native Courts, which themselves were consider-
ably more regimented than their Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian, TransJorda-
nian, or Kenyan counter parts. Instead, the Nigerian Native Courts
most closely resembled the tribal courts used on Native American reser-
vations in the United States. The 1934 Native Courts Ordinance out-
lined the limited jurisdiction of the Nigerian courts, essentially granting
them remit over minor offenses and reserving serious crimes to the colo-
nial judiciary.62 In this aspect at least, the ordinance looks much like the
Major Crimes Act (1885), which likewise l imited the jurisdiction of the
Court of Indian Offenses in the United States to minor transgressions.
nNnNnN
Nigeria was not the only outpost of the British Empire in Africa where
frontier governmentality was to be found. Kenya even more fully em-
braced it. While this regime of rule arrived in the west African colony
through the imperial circulation of personnel, most importantly in the
person of Lord Lugard, it arrived in Kenya through circuits of imperial
knowledge and administrative practice. K enya evinced not only the style
of governance found on the North-West Frontier of British India, but the
same legal infrastructure as well. The FCR of 1901, originally authored
as a culturally specific solution to the problem of governing the Pashtun
tribesmen, was found by Kenyan authorities to be equally applicable to
the Somali tribesmen inhabiting the Northern Frontier Province (NFP).63
Accordingly, the K enyan government passed an only slightly modified ver-
sion of the FCR entitled the Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance
(SDAO).64 With the exception of the substitution of “Somali” for “Pa-
than and Baluch,” the K enyan law differed very little from its British In-
dian counterpart. But while the Government of Kenya acknowledged the
debt owed to its British Indian counterpart, it did not fully acknowledge
the rather circuitous and tortured route of the Regulation’s arrival to His
Majesty’s east African possessions.65
The SDAO was not the first attempt by the K enyan government to deal
with recalcitrant tribesmen. Indeed, the colony first passed a Collective
Punishment Ordinance (CPO) as early as 1909, which was used as a model
elsewhere, including in both Nigeria and mandatory Palestine. Interest-
ingly, and rather confusingly, when the Kenyan CPO was revised in the
78
ABYSSINIA
Lake
Rudolf
UGANDA
SO MA LILAN D
NORTHERN
ITA LIAN
FRONTIER PROVINCE Wajir
Lake Garissa
Victoria
Nairobi Tana
R.
TANGANYIKA Galana R.
INDIAN
TERRITORY
OCEAN
0 150 miles
Mombasa
0 300 km
Map 4. Colonial Kenya, c. 1934.
1920s, the K enyan colonial government cited the Nigerian CPO as its
model.66 The CPO was not geographic ally, ethnically, or tribally specific. It
applied with equal force to the Kikuyu as to the Somalis. But the resump-
tion of civilian control over the NFP in the late 1920s quickly convinced
authorities in Nairobi that the CPO was insufficient to the task they faced
in an area that encompassed nearly half of the colony. The NFP was enor-
mous, totaling nearly 95,000 square miles. But it was sparsely populated,
with authorities estimating the number of inhabitants at a mere 65,000.67
Much of the region was arid, bordering on desert. Those living there were,
in the main, pastoral nomads who herded their flocks with more concern
for rains and grazing lands than regard for the borders separating Abys-
sinia, Italian Somaliland, British Somaliland, and K
enya from one another.
79
As on the Afghan frontier, the unregulated mobility of the frontier

eoples was unacceptable to the colonial state. Migrations, or the un
p
regulated movement of p
eople, was the first issue raised in support of the
SDAO upon its second reading in council. The Chief Native Commis-
sioner made the case:
The difficulties, Sir, which the Administration have to face in the
Northern Frontier Province are, as a rule, migrations, which bring
bloodshed in their train, blood feuds and vendettas, outbreaks of
stock diseases, wrongful possession of grading grounds and the
return of the outlaws, who, a fter committing offences in K enya,
cross over to the other side, and return to K enya when all is quiet.
These difficulties have been further increased by certain political
circumstances of the country, the extent of the area, the aridity of
the country which causes the populations to be nomadic, the im-
penetrability of the bush which provides asylum for offenders, and
finally the presence of two long international frontiers, which en-
able malefactors to cross over and hide themselves in one or other
of these territories.68
The Kenyan government pursued plans to denote “tribal grazing areas.”69
Officials believed this would lessen violence and competition in the re-
gion, which resulted from competition for scarce resources. As, if not
more, importantly, it would tie collectivities, in this instance tribes, to spe-
cific plots of land. Doing so would hopefully, in the eyes of the colonial
overlords, constrain the nomads’ movement. In the long term, it could
encourage, if not force, them to settle permanently on state-designated
plots of land. Such hopes, however, were severely circumscribed by the
state’s near total absence on the ground in the NFP. With the exception of
a few companies of King’s African Rifles and a few district officers ruling
an area the size of Michigan, the Kenyan colonial government was mainly
missing. This in turn complicated attempts at administering the space,
even with such blunt instruments as the CPO, which was passed again in
1930.70 In 1932, colonial administrators finally concluded that even this
draconian piece of colonial legal handiwork was insufficient for the chal-
lenges faced in the NFP. They thus drafted a special ordinance for the
province designed to accommodate the unique combination of state ab-
sence and tribal recalcitrance, a bill that was “intended to provide rough
and ready, but especially ready procedure.”71
80
When the SDAO was first proposed in 1932, though it generally met
with approbation, there were reservations regarding its passage. Some
thought insufficient time had been allowed for the workings of normal
administration in the NFP and thus urged caution.72 While such voices won
the day in 1932, by 1934 their hesitance had been overcome. The SDAO
was promulgated in 1934 following its second reading in council. Though
the 1934 bill was meant to sunset at the end of 1935—just as Samuel’s
Palestine ordinance was only supposed to be a short-term measure—it
was extended in 1936 on a permanent basis.73
Whereas many of the other corners of the empire that replicated the
regime authored on India’s North-West Frontier had a personnel connec-
tion to that space—Dobbs in Iraq, Lugard in Nigeria—Kenya had no such
discernable link. Yet K
enyan officials were aware of the Indian, and even
Iraqi, provenance of the practices they were emulating.74 The Attorney
General noted that while it was not the practice of the K enyan govern-
ment to replicate Indian laws, the NFP required an exemption to this rule.
He stated,
The hon. member is perfectly correct when he says it has been our
policy, especially with regard to commercial laws in East Africa, in
recent years, to break away from India. But we should hardly look
to England for the requisite law to discover how to deal with the
Northern Frontier Province. It is necessary for us to go to older
colonies which have similar troubles to our own to find the law that
they have found to have suited their book and which have appar-
ently acted very well. Instead of experimenting on our own, which
is always a dangerous thing, we have adapted our law from that of
India.75
The colonial government a dopted the FCR w holesale as the model to
be applied to the NFP, and the particular problem of Somali pastoral
tribesmen. In the eyes of the government, “in dealing with primitive no-
madic tribes, all law as we understand it goes by the board.”76 As with
the FCR, the SDAO continued with the by then well-established tradition
of collective punishment. It likewise established “tribal courts” designed
to try transgressors by their own “customs and traditions.” Further, it
noted the prevalence of “blood feuds” among the tribesmen, a practice
colonial administrators long associated with the “savage” and uncivilized
character of the frontier’s inhabitants.
81
The SDAO’s nearly identical replication of the FCR, on a geographi

cally distant hinterland inhabited by “savages” of similar character be-
speaks to the imperial character of frontier governmentality through time.
The original FCR was passed in 1872 while the SDAO was passed sixty-
two years later. By the time the latter was enacted, the Apache, who are
the subject of Chapter 5, had been made American citizens through the
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The world in 1934 was no longer the mid-
Victorian one of Sandeman’s days, but rather the modern industrialized
one that would be consumed by a global conflagration a mere five years
later. Yet Kenyan colonial administrators saw themselves faced with the
same challenges as their British Indian counterparts, even if later in time
(though the FCR was still fully in force and operational along the Afghan
frontier). The uncontrolled and unmonitored movements of nomadic pas-
toralists inhabiting a barren land remote from the centers of colonial
authority w ere both annoying and unnerving.77 It presented a problem
that had to be dealt with, one that was most economically farmed out to
the expertise of the “man on the spot”—the frontier officer, whose mas-
culine character well suited him for the task at hand.78
Just as the FCR was part of a constellation of frontier governmentality
along the Afghan frontier, so too was the SDAO a part, as opposed to the
whole, of a regime of rule in northern K enya. Alongside the SDAO, the
CPO technically remained in effect. However, the augmented fines and
punishments of the SDAO meant that the invocation of the CPO was es-
sentially nonexistent in the NFP.79 More importantly, the SDAO was en-
forced by local frontier officers, who were themselves assisted by a force
of tribal police. While tribal police were raised throughout the colony, as
on the Afghan frontier they assumed a particular character and impor-
tance in the NFP. Raised originally by Gerald Reece, an NFP District Of-
ficer (DO) whose colonial career included the governorship of Somaliland
after the Second World War, the tribal police in the NFP were known as
dubas, or “red hats.”80 Though initially started by Reece in Mandera dis-
trict where he was DO from 1928, the dubas spread throughout the NFP
and became a mainstay of frontier administration, much like Sandeman’s
tribal militias among the Baluch and Pashtuns. And as with Sandeman’s
militias, though the dubas w ere partly purposed to appeal to the tribes-
men’s “hearts and minds,” as well as increase the effectiveness of adminis-
tration (few frontier officers had much faith in the K enyan police in the
region), the institution also served to monetize the tribesmen. Recruitment
into the tribal police paid fifteen shillings a month, rendering the dubas
82
wage laborers in a colonial economy of violence, but in position of priva-

tion.81 The NFP thus evinced the same constellation of colonial power
with regard to frontier governmentality as the North-West Frontier of
British India.
But the reach of such a constellation was not limited to the NFP, or
even to colonial Kenya. For elements, if not the totality, of the system of
frontier governmentality w ere copied from this space to neighboring
regions in eastern Africa. In particular, the CPO proved a mainstay of co-
lonial government throughout the area. Both British Somaliland and man-
datory Tanganyika copied the draconian Kenyan legal code.82 Interestingly
though, just as K enyan colonial authorities got the chain of transmission
wrong, erroneously looking to Nigeria’s CPO as a model for their 1930
revision when their own 1909 CPO had been the template for Southern
Nigeria’s 1912 ordinance, the authorities in Tanganyika likewise looked
to Nigeria rather than their northern neighbor.83 With the passage and
enforcement of the CPOs in Tanganyika and Somaliland, virtually all of
British East Africa was subject to the central normative plank of frontier
governmentality—namely collective responsibility and its corollary, col-
lective punishment. Further, both governments deployed native police
forces to augment state authority and the application of the precepts and
black-letter law of collective punishment.
Interestingly, the Kenyan experience bookends the imperial spread of
the FCR, and more broadly frontier governmentality beyond the Indian
subcontinent. On the one hand, the original Kenyan CPO dated from 1909
and itself proved a model for legislation in other Crown colonies. Though
the K enyan CPO shared with the FCR a focus on collective punishment
and responsibility, which was born of a characterization of those subject
to the law as “uncivilized” and “savage,” the former was not explicitly
modeled on the latter. On the other hand, the SDAO, fully implemented
as it was in 1934, proved the last replication of the FCR within the British
Empire, and more broadly was the last self-conscious replication of the
system of frontier governmentality. In the interval between these two laws,
the FCR was planted and flowered in soils as diverse as mandatory Iraq
and Palestine, while the CPO bloomed in Nigeria, Tanganyika, Somaliland,
and likely even farther afield.
But frontier governmentality was more than a single law, even one re-
produced around the empire. Rather, it was an administrative constella-
tion, the substantive reproduction of which may or may not take the form
of black-letter ordinance and regulation, but definitely had a personal
83
champion. After all, frontier governmentality was a system that put a pre-
mium on the knowledge, abilities, and judgments of the “man on the
spot.” Thus, though the FCR was not formally replicated in TransJordan,
Glubb Pasha nonetheless substantively reproduced the system of frontier
governmentality among the desert Bedouin. In doing so, he closely resem-
bled Robert Sandeman in ambition, outlook, and disposition. But Glubb
was neither the first nor only to fabricate in substance frontier govern-
mentality while abjuring its form. That honor lay to the south and in the
past, in mid-nineteenth-century Natal.
nNnNnN
Theophilus Shepstone, the long-serving Secretary for Native Affairs of
Natal, was one of the most consequential colonial administrators in Af-
rica of the Victorian age.84 Shepstone has variously been celebrated and
vilified by commentators and scholars over the years who viewed his
“Shepstone system” as either an administrative regime of cultural sensi-
tivity designed to accommodate the tribesmen of Natal or one of cultural
relativism that was inherently predicated on separateness, and thus un-
derlay the later emergence of the apartheid regime in South Africa.85 Re-
gardless of t hese posthumous assessments of Shepstone’s legacies, one of
the most striking aspects of the man and his administrative system is their
uncanny resemblance to Robert Sandeman and his own system of fron-
tier governmentality on the Baluch frontier. Both Shepstone and Sandeman
authored systems of rule predicated on the maintenance of tribal identity
and integrity, which effectively encapsulated the subjects of such systems
to colonially sanctioned “customs and traditions.”86 Yet Shepstone began
constructing his system at the mid-point of the nineteenth c entury, nearly
a quarter of a c entury before Sandeman’s system and the concomitant FCR
regime emerged. Shepstone’s system thus did not have its genesis through
the imperial chains of transmission found farther north. Rather, what
emerges from this episode is the seemingly independent development of a
mirrored system of frontier governmentality along the edges of empire.87
By the time of his appointment as Diplomatic Agent to the Natives in
1845, Shepstone was well versed in local culture and languages. Having
grown up in a mission station in the Cape Colony, he was fluent in a
number of native languages, including Xhosa and Zulu, which gave his
opinions considerable weight and legitimacy in the eyes of colonial au-
thorities.88 That said, the scheme he initially proposed for the governance
of the tribes of the newly annexed Natal colony crashed on the shoals of
84
imperial economy. As head of the Locations Commission of 1847, Shep-

stone argued for the reservation of sizable productive lands (nearly two
million acres) in Natal for the native inhabitants, as well as facilities for
their education, and eventual assimilation as a civilized p eople.89 Ac-
cording to this design, indigenous law, custom, and leaders would be
eventually supplanted by colonial law, white settler norms, and colonially
appointed Africans who would be directly accountable to the state rather
than independent with their own reservoir of authority.90 But the Colo-
nial Office decried the expense of the scheme, rejecting it on the grounds
of imperial economy. In the wake of this administrative defeat, Shepstone
went on to construct what over time became known as the “Shepstone
system,” a system of indirect rule closely resembling the later “innova-
tions” of Lugard in Nigeria.91
The Shepstone system placed the indigenous inhabitants of Natal on
Crown and mission reserves where they were ruled by their chiefs, who
wielded tribal custom and tradition. In turn, the chiefs were overseen by
Native Magistrates, white officials resembling the Political Agents of the
tribal agencies along British India’s North-West Frontier. The chiefs and
Native Magistrates served as the interlocutors between the colonial state
and native society.92 As with the system of frontier governmentality along
the Afghan frontier, the Shepstone system encapsulated Natal’s indigenous
inhabitants within their colonially sanctioned customs and traditions on
physically delimited (and poor) spaces. The status of the spaces within
the colonial order was at one and the same time clear and confused. Shep-
stone’s initial title was “diplomatic agent” to the natives, a title that by the
early 1850s drew the rebuke of the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, Ben-
jamin Pine, because the tribes of the district could no longer be viewed as
independent.93 Shepstone viewed his own position as that of Supreme
Chief, the paramount power exercising ultimate sovereignty over a collec-
tion of subsidiary allies and chiefs.94 This language was important for, in
Shepstone’s own rendering, he was not simply an imperial bureaucrat—the
Secretary of Native Affairs—responsible for the administration of the
Queen’s benighted subjects. Rather, he fashioned his office, his role, and
himself in an altogether African vernacular, reliant in many cases on the
symbolism of the great Zulu empire builder Shaka, whom he sought to
emulate and self-consciously considered himself to be an heir to. Shep-
stone sought to identify himself as a “transcendent political authority”
who could bridge the colonial and native worlds by subsuming the latter
within the former. Part of that claim entailed a particular understanding
85
and assemblage of sovereignty in which, according to Shepstone, Shaka

recognized the paramount authority of the British Crown over the Zulu
themselves. Such recognition was binding on Shaka’s political progeny in
Shepstone’s vague construction.95
While Shepstone’s system, and the colonial government in Natal, de-
murred the formal recognition of sovereignty or independence for the na-
tive reserves and chiefs seen along the Afghan frontier, in reality these
were effectively observed. The practices he embedded in Natal eventually
assumed their full legal form of differentiation u nder the apartheid re-
gime.96 After 1948, the white South African government sought to for-
malize the colonial practice of separate legal systems, which lay at the
heart of the Shepstone system, with the recognition of the formal inde
pendence of the African reserves in the form of the infamous “Bantustans.”
The most closely associated with Shepstone’s Natal was the Republic of
Transkei, which was only recognized by the South African government
itself.97 Thus full realization of all the elements of frontier governmen-
tality, while sown by Shepstone in the mid-nineteenth century, did not for-
mally come about u ntil the mid-twentieth century with the advent of
apartheid.
Nevertheless, Shepstone’s system both relied on and entailed the sub-
stantive and formal hallmarks of frontier governmentality evinced else-
where. The inhabitants of native reserves were judicially subject to native
courts, which applied customary law. These courts w ere overseen by Na-
tive Magistrates, who, in cases involving customary usage, relied on the
council of chiefs and elders, overseeing a judicial venue akin to the FCR’s
Council of Elders.98 There was a right of appeal, rarely exercised, to the
Secretary of Native Affairs (Shepstone himself), who heard such appeals
on behalf of the Lieutenant-Governor.99 The customary law applied in
such judicial venues was subject to the unevenness of individual knowl-
edge and expediencies of local practice. As such, the system afforded the
“man on the spot,” and most particularly Shepstone himself, maximum
autonomy, much like Sandeman in Baluchistan. This changed, however,
with the passage of the Natal Native Code in 1878, which put on paper
what had formerly been limited to the personal knowledge of the “native
expert.”100 Shepstone opposed the codification of native law, as he saw
such a move as bound to unnecessarily rigidify local practice. Transcribing
practice—giving it a written legal form—would likely make it “much more
difficult to amend.”101 Further, it would curb Shepstone’s powers. As Sec-
retary of Native Affairs, he essentially combined executive and judicial
86
authority, meaning that he could both declare what customary law was
and enforce his understanding of it. Such expansive authority would be
significantly circumscribed if laws assumed an in de
pendent, accessible
textual form. The passage of the Code, which was substantially revised
in 1891, in addition to politically clipping Shepstone’s wings, may be
seen more broadly as part of the bureaucratization and regularization of
the colonial state in the late nineteenth c entury.102 In addition to the na-
tive courts applying local custom, Shepstone relied on a native police
force of Africans commanded by indunas to enforce his rule. These men
were rewarded for their service with b attle prizes and fines, usually in
the form of c attle and women.103 This tribal police force worked as
wage labor—becoming monetized in the process—while at the same
time they served as sentinels over their fellow tribesmen by monitoring
them for the colonial state.
The economic effects of Shepstone’s system were the same as those in
other places where frontier governmentality was administratively affected.
Encapsulated on their agriculturally poor reserves, the indigenous inhab-
itants of Natal struggled to maintain a subsistence economy. Yet their col-
lective right to land at one and the same time gave them a limited au-
tonomy vis-à-vis the surrounding settler economy. Or more properly, it
rendered them dependent on that economy without integrating them into
it. Consequently, some white settlers opposed Shepstone’s governance on
the grounds it allowed the African inhabitants of Natal to escape the de-
mands of the wage labor market.104 But in the end his system produced a
captive labor reserve for large plantation owners who needed African
labor, as opposed to small farmers who wanted tenant rent (and labor).105
The Shepstone system not only produced a labor market for large planta-
tion land owners, but also produced a sizable tax base for the colonial
state. Shepstone enforced a hut tax on the inhabitants of the native re-
serves.106 They thus w ere not only made dependent on the settler economy,
but also were subject to the demands of the colonial one as well.107
Further, his system was predicated on the collectivity of the tribe, and
consequently the collective ownership of their land. This necessarily mili-
tated against their civilization, as that required individual property owner
ship. Yet the natives could not be trusted to run their wealth properly, and
so their lands w ere governed by a white-run, colonially staffed trust, the
Natal Native Trust (established in 1864), placing the natives in a wardship
relationship vis-à-vis the state, much like American Indians.108 While the
natives w
ere collectively incapable of overseeing the appropriate disposition
87
of their wealth and resources, they were at the same time collectively re-
sponsible for the transgressions of colonial norms and law.109 As else-
where, the principle of collective responsibility was at least partly predi-
cated on the needs of imperial economy as it supplanted “the place of a
largely military force at Imperial expense, and an enormous police estab-
lishment at the cost of the Colony.”110 The collectivity of the tribe—and
concurrently its collective responsibility and punishment—thus lay at the
heart of the Shepstone system as it did everywhere else frontier govern-
mentality was practiced.
An additional aspect of Shepstone’s system bearing an arresting like-
ness to that seen not only on the Afghan frontier but also in northeast
Kenya, Basra, the Negev, and elsewhere was the location it was manifest
in. At the time of the creation and enforcement of the Shepstone system,
Natal was the precarious frontier of British south African settlement. To
its north, it faced hostile Boers in the Transvaal (a polity Shepstone him-
self would attempt to annex, an ill-fated political move that preempted
the disastrous Anglo-Zulu War).111 To its northeast it faced a potentially
aggressive Zulu kingdom.112 Indeed, the Zulu kingdom was responsible
for much of the indigenous populace of Natal in Shepstone’s (and other
contemporaries’) eyes. He viewed the native population of Natal not as
indigenous to the district, but rather as refugees from the mfecane, which
was a consequence of Zulu expansion u nder Shaka at the beginning of
the c entury.113 Natal thus lay on the imperial periphery, with dangerous
and destabilizing native polities beyond its limits, themselves interceding
between the British and even more dangerous European—or in this case
white—powers.114 It was, in other words, a buffer to the imperial center,
like nearly all the other areas of empire subject to forms of frontier
governmentality.
Though Shepstone’s system would persist, his star began to wane at
the moment Robert Sandeman’s waxed. And his fortunes w ere tied to an
imperial administrator well versed in the challenges Sandeman faced in
Baluchistan. The arrival of Sir Bartle Frere in 1877 as Lord Carnarvon’s
man to affect the south African union had deleterious consequences on
the reputations of both Shepstone and Frere, but ones largely self-
inflicted.115 Frere’s imperial ambitions, along with those of his political
masters in London, allowed him to stumble into an inglorious disaster that
would shape memories and understandings of the British imperial project
in Africa and abroad. The Anglo-Zulu War he started in 1879 at least
partly resulted from the advice of Shepstone, who encouraged him to
88
annex the Zulu kingdom in order to head off the menace of Zulu milita-
rism.116 And Frere partly rationalized the Anglo-Zulu War on the success
of the Shepstone system in Natal and the belief it could usefully be ex-
tended to Zululand, whose inhabitants w ere, in his eyes at least, the “same
race” of men.117 The calamitous Anglo-Zulu War was forced to compete
for print space and public attention with the near-contemporaneous and
equally disastrous Second Anglo-Afghan War. The empire faced defeat
along its barbarous limits ruled by frontier governmentality. This was no
accident, for violence was a constituent and enduring part of the system.
Frere’s and Shepstone’s public humiliations, along with the dual impe-
rial defeats at Isandlwana and Maiwand, offer an opening to consider the
deeper questions both underlying them and linking them together. Though
the defeats differed in their details, they were connected by imperial per-
sonnel, Frere foremost among them. More importantly, they were con-
nected by imperial practice. For while the Anglo-Zulu and Second Afghan
Wars w ere on the one hand complicated by their own layered rationales
and origins, on the other they shared the fact that they w ere waged against
indigenous polities bordering regions ruled by systems of frontier govern-
mentality. This was no accident. Rather, it speaks to the dangers of the
“barbarous” periphery that occasionally erupted—at times in spectacular
fashion—to endanger the civilized centers. These wars w ere ostensibly un-
dertaken to c ounter the geopolitical threat of European states on the far
side of these “savage” kingdoms. But they were also waged to tame the
imperial imagination.118 That imagination reveled in the image of the dan-
gerous and violent native—the “savage”—inhabiting the wilderness be-
yond the limits of colonial order. It is to that savagery, or rather the specter
of that savagery, we turn to next.
nNnNnN
Frontier governmentality enjoyed an imperial career that continued right
on through to the postcolonial era. Shepstone’s system laid the founda-
tion stone for the later apartheid regime. The SDAO was not formally
withdrawn from the K enyan legal code u
ntil 1997.119 Since then, both the
Kenyan government and its American allies in the War on Terror have con-
tinued exercising elements of frontier governmentality in what is today
the North East Province of the country.120 Grotesque violence has ensued,
culminating, though not ending, with the massacre at Garissa University
in 2015. The CPOs, widespread throughout colonial Africa, continue to
inform the administration of justice in many of the postcolonial states
89
where they w ere colonially present. The TCCDR in Iraq remained on the
books until 1958. Saddam Hussein returned to many of its injunctions
and techniques with his resurrected tribal policies in the interval between
the first and second Gulf Wars.121 And while the ordinance that Samuel
endorsed for Palestine as early as 1923 ultimately ended with British au-
thority over the mandate, that did not mean the Bedouin of the Negev
subject to it escaped its clutches in the newly founded state of Israel. Rather
the Negev was subject to martial law and military administration, which
continued the collective negation of the rights of these people of the pe-
riphery. The imperial career of frontier governmentality was a remarkable
one, the ghost of which continues to haunt the (post)colonial present.
90
N4n
The Colonial Specter of “Savagery”
I n 1881, following his ignominious recall by the newly elected Liberal

government, Sir Bartle Frere did something both extraordinary and
desperate in order to save his tattered reputation. He published a series
of letters between himself and William Gladstone, the Prime Minister, as
well as a number of accompanying documents concerning Afghanistan
and South Africa. Having served as a senior imperial administrator along
the bounds of the former and in the latter—the Commissioner of Sindh
and the Governor of the Cape Colony, respectively—Frere’s fortunes
were closely tied to both locales. And in 1881, neither ranked highly on
the scale of imperial success. Indeed, Gladstone led the Liberal party
back from the political wilderness to victory in the summer of 1880
through a dazzling campaign that launched a searing critique of the poli-
cies of Benjamin Disraeli, the Tory prime minister, and the Conservative
government that had seemingly overreached itself. The Anglo-Zulu War
(1879) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), though both
ultimately “won” by the British Empire, nonetheless w ere marked by di-
sastrous imperial defeats. The stains of Isandlwana and Maiwand refused
to be expunged by either Rorke’s Drift or Roberts’s occupation of Kabul.1
Disraeli felt the stinging rebuke at the ballot box as Gladstone’s star r ose
once again. Frere’s publication of his correspondence with the then in-
credibly popular Prime Minister clearly ran contrary to prevailing public
sentiment. It was no surprise that Frere’s machinations did little if any-
thing to recover his public standing.
91
nNnNnN
Frere had served the empire loyally through an illustrious global career.2
He had negotiated the end of slavery with the ruler of Zanzibar in 1873
as well as regularized the administration of Sindh, one of the unrulier
provinces of British India. His appointment as the Governor of the Cape
Colony was supposed to be the fitting capstone to a distinguished public
life, which had resulted in Frere’s knighthood as well as elevation to a bar-
onetcy. Instead, it proved a calamitous coup de grâce from which he
would never publicly recover. The disasters of the Anglo-Zulu War, fairly
or not, w ere laid at Frere’s feet. Upon his recall to London, he was pub-
licly censured and disgraced. Unjust as he may have felt this to be, it was
nonetheless irregular for a civil servant to so publicly criticize his political
masters, particularly the Prime Minister. And while Frere may have been
no enthusiast of the Liberal Government’s policies, he was no Tory toady.
He had faithfully served a number of governments of different political
stripes without public protest.3 Frere’s actions were thus not based on
mere political calculus, but rather on a deeply felt sense of personal injus-
tice and dishonor. He saw himself as the sacrificial lamb, unfairly forfeited
by conniving politicians to the ever-shifting winds of public opinion.
The correspondence between Frere and Gladstone, centering on Af
ghanis tan and South Africa, reveals the importance of the language with
which these spaces were framed. For the lexicographical terrain upon
which these men engaged in a war of words was the same enclosing the
inhabitants of these frontier spaces. That terrain was the dialectical di-
vide of “civilization” and “savagery.” The empire embodied the former
while the frontier dwellers—the “natives”—invariably personified the
latter. In Frere’s wounded invective as well as Gladstone’s passionate elo-
quence lay the contours of how imperial officialdom conceived the p eoples
of the periphery. Their pugilistic correspondence presents a public recita-
tion of the colonial specter of savagery, a way of understanding the world
particular, though not specific, to European high imperialism, and part of
a longer historical trend dividing the world between the “civilized” and
“savage.” While by the nineteenth c entury the specter haunting Europe
may have been communism, that troubling the imperial realm was the
blood-lusting barbarism of the uncivilized “savages.” And just as in-
flated fears of the former served as rhetorical foils to justify class vio
lence, amplified fears of the latter likewise inspired and justified colonial
conquest.
92
Figure 4.1. Sir (Henry) Bartle Frere (“Men of the Day,” No. 68), by Sir Leslie
Ward. Published in Vanity Fair, September 20, 1873. © National Portrait Gallery,
London.
The colonial specter of savagery provided the means by which empires

made the first and most important division between their subjects along
the axis of civilization. Those on one side of that axis could be redeemed
through the paternal tutelage of regular colonial administration while
those on the other side existed beyond the pale, requiring an altogether
different governing method. While no colonial subject was fully civilized,
some were more advanced along the scale of civilization than others. And
some fell off that scale altogether into the abyss of savagery.4 As H. Rider
Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines, quipped, “A savage is one
thing, and a civilized man is another; and though civilized men may and
do become savages, I personally doubt if the converse is even possible.”5
93
Nowhere were men more “savage” than along the imperial limits. It was
the savagery of the p eoples of the periphery that justified their subjugation
to frontier governmentality. Regular colonial administration was too com-
plicated for t hese peoples collectively driven by their violent base instincts.6
The colonial specter of savagery was deftly deployed h ere by imperial ad-
ministrators to vindicate this regime of rule along the edges of authority.
By the nineteenth c entury, there was a clear criterion for the club of
civilization demarcated by the specter of savagery. The mark of civiliza-
tion was the rule of law. And the object of that rule, indeed of the law
itself, was property.7 Civilized people w ere t hose who recognized and re-
spected the right of individuated property holdings. While some colonial
projects additionally elevated Christianity as a prerequisite of civilization,
generally Christ proved an addendum to such projects, rather than being
at their core.8 The white man’s burden was to make God-fearing men not
of the heathen peoples of the earth, but rather individual property o wners
with a real interest in land. Fee s imple absolute—the permanent, unen-
cumbered ownership of real estate by an individual—was the gospel of
civilization for European imperialism, the Beatitudes be damned. Indi-
vidual property owners were collectively “civilized,” whereas communal
property owners were individually (and collectively) “savage.”
The link between civilization and property, mediated through the rule
of law, which the European and neo-European empires of the nineteenth
century made, was neither inadvertent nor inconsequential. Rather, it re-
flected one of the animating impulses of the colonial project: the expan-
sion of global capitalism. Central to the structures of the colonial empires
was a fiscal calculus that required subject p eoples and places to be a net
debit to the imperial exchequer. This was mostly, though not exclusively,
accomplished through agrarian taxation. Even if the agricultural produce
was not directly taxed, state officials encouraged agricultural productivity
for a panoply of reasons. Such state patronage reflected that it was in the
state’s interest to make the most of that productivity. Nineteenth-century
liberal economics propounded the key to maximization lay in the indi-
vidual profit motive. Personal property rights needed to be secured in
order to create an incentive structure for investment in land productivity.9
Forms of communal property rights, at least in the eyes of colonial ad-
ministrators, worked against these aims and needed to be done away
with.10 Civilized people were rational economic actors. This meant they
maximized the utility—productivity—of their land. Those who did not
94
forfeited their normative claim to the land as they perpetuated waste.

Legally then, they became the dispossessed.
Civilization was intimately tied with capitalism; the extension of one
necessarily entailed the expansion of the other. Yet the ideologues of em-
pire rarely made either the claim, or the link, between civilization and cap-
italism explicit. Instead, they couched the justification for empire in the
language of civilization and savagery wherein colonial expansion brought
the former, extinguishing the latter. If that expansion brought with it the
advance of capitalism, this was a silent but no less positive development.
Neither Frere nor Gladstone was unique in their reliance on the dis-
course of savagery. That discourse provided a universal motif with which
imperial and neo-imperial administrators of nearly every stripe painted
the hostile hordes inhabiting the limits of their expanding realms. Frere
offers one example of the colonial specter of savagery in the context of
the British Empire. He is joined by others—administrators, politicians,
academics—who repeated this trope of savagery and in so doing justified
the conquest and governance of frontier dwellers. Their savagery neces-
sitated their subjugation. At the same time, it negated the possibility of
extending regular administration over them. They w ere simply, but defi-
nitely unequipped to deal with the complications of western legal order.
Consequently, they w ere to be governed by their own order, overseen be-
nevolently by the imperial state. Encapsulated in their own colonially
sanctioned traditions, the peoples of the periphery were to be ruled by
forms of frontier governmentality.
Beyond the confines of Britain’s global empire, administrators and in-
tellectuals in the United States and Argentina likewise deployed the colo-
nial specter of savagery to rhetorically justify their treatment of the p
eoples
of the periphery. Many used the language of savagery to refer to Amer-
ican Indians and Argentine indios, as did two prominent and important
public intellectuals, Frederick Jackson Turner and Domingo Sarmiento.11
Their respective writings, The Frontier in American History and Facundo,
together with Frere’s Afghanistan and South Africa, offer a literary and
linguistic triumvirate of the colonial specter of savagery. They afford a
window onto a universal language of otherness that justified acts of
imperial violence along the limits of the expanding state system of the
nineteenth century. This was the normative bedrock on which frontier
governmentality rested. While the colors of Frere’s fight with Gladstone
may have been unique, the outlines were most decidedly not.
95
nNnNnN
During the general election campaign of 1879–1880, Gladstone thun-
dered to his audience, “Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him.
Remember that the happiness of his h umble home, remember that the
sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows,
is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.”12 His
speech went on, noting those rights transcended the “boundaries of Chris-
tian civilization.” With an eye to contemporary events, and the embar-
rassment caused the government by them, he lobbed the “naked bodies”
of the Zulus in rhetorical censure of the Conservative government just as
they had thrown themselves at “the terribly improved artillery and arms
of modern European science.” Likewise, “the hill tribes of Afghanistan
who enjoy more or less political independence”—language Gladstone
copied from imperial administrators ruling British India’s North-West
Frontier—found themselves the victims of British imperial aggression,
though they “had committed no real offence against us.”13 While Glad-
stone’s oratory evoked the sympathy, horror, and disapproval of his
audience—and was designed to do precisely that—it neither challenged
the trope of nor fundamentally rehabilitated the “savage” in the popular
imagination. Rather, it rendered them victims of the insatiable appetite of
British imperialism, that harbinger of civilization.
Gladstone’s speech reads as an indictment of imperialism rather than
the civilization animating it. Instead of questioning the division of the world
between savagery and civilization, it assumed the division as a natural and
immutable one. But it critiqued a world wherein the civilized acted savagely
while the “savages” acted civilized. In this topsy-turvy realm, the order of
things had been inverted. Gladstone promised his constituents that upon
his election to office, he would return things to their proper equilibrium.
While Gladstone represented a significant innovation in British politics, he
reinforced the dichotomous division of the world—between civilization
and savagery—upon which imperialism both rested and was justified.
Read as an affirmation rather than subversion of the imperial order
he supposedly sought to condemn (but would go on to expand as Prime
Minister), Gladstone’s “Rights of the Savage” speech offers an entrée into
the world of words constructing, maintaining, and buttressing the colo-
nial specter of savagery. Two years l ater, when he corresponded with Frere
regarding the latter’s actions in Afghanistan and South Africa, both writers
reaffirmed the binary worldview of civilization and savagery at the same
96
time they traded political jabs regarding the spectacular imperial failings
of the moment. In his correspondence with Gladstone published as a pam-
phlet entitled Afghanistan and South Africa, Frere asserted that Glad-
stone’s mischaracterization of his views t oward Afghanistan intentionally
undermined his standing on questions regarding South Africa.14 Frere
charged Gladstone to have “condemned [him] as an unsafe advisor ‘who
knew not the spirit by which the British government ought to be regu-
lated or controlled.’ ”15 Consequently, Frere emerged in the public imagi-
nary as responsible— administratively for one, intellectually for the
other—for the two simultaneous imperial disasters of the day, namely the
Anglo-Zulu and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars.
While the thrust of Frere’s pamphlet centered on questions of imperial
policy, mainly regarding Afghanistan, it also revealed the way the civili-
zation of the imperial project was conceived, and conversely how the
savagery of the other was depicted. Throughout, Frere referred to the
“improvement” of the “uncivilized” and “barbarous” races. He bemoaned
his own fall from political grace as premised on
old calumnies and misrepresentations of fact . . . [which led to] the

ruin of the prosperity, of a region which might otherwise have be-
come a southern home of men of European races, discharging a
great duty in civilizing and raising in the scale of humanity millions
of natives of Africa, who for many great ages past have never known
what permanent peace and civilization might mean.16
The Zulus’ savagery was put on display by their practice of blood money,
one they shared with many other uncivilized people on the edges of the em-
pire, including the Pashtuns, Baluch, Somalis, and Bedouins among others,
which Frere argued must be extirpated by British administration.17 He in-
sisted that his charge as Governor of the Cape Colony was to promote “as
far as may be possible, the good order, civilization, and moral and religious
instructions of the tribes [along the frontier].”18 Frere further viewed it his
responsibility to protect “uncivilized” races, essentially from themselves:
The true causes of the Zulu, as of the Afghan war, are neglect of
neighbourly duties and responsibilities, incumbent on a rich, civi-
lized and powerful nation, towards poor barbarous tribes on its
borders. We have allowed a noble p eople capable of rapid and per-
manent advancement in civilization, to grow in numbers, whilst
they festered in barbarism, till they became a serious danger to us.
97
We have shut our eyes and turned our backs on their wants and
defects, left them as much as possible to themselves, endeavoured
to see and know as little of them, and to let them see and know as
little of us as was possible, and then we are surprised to find that
they have grown into a danger, only to be averted by war.19
Frere characterized the policy of noninvolvement—or “masterly inac-

tivity” as it was called along the Afghan frontier—as a “selfish policy of
isolation and . . . neglect.”20
In rebutting what he considered the unfair charges leveled against him
by Gladstone, Frere declaimed he had “some practical acquaintance with
the modes of converting such lawless savages into peaceable and indus-
trious subjects.”21 To him and the broader “civilized” world of the nine-
teenth century, civilization was marked by individual economic activity
and, most importantly, individual property ownership. As both a public
intellectual and imperial administrator, Frere wanted to “extend the right
to individual tenure of property,” as he saw this as the “means of advance-
ment and civilization to the aboriginal groups.”22 It was the protection of
that regime of ownership that inevitably entangled the civilized powers
with the barbarians beyond their frontiers. Frere laid out his theory of
civilizational advance in his discussion of the expanding Tsarist Empire
and its potential annexation of the “savage hordes intervening between
them and India.” “How the annexation comes about” was that the sav-
agery of the uncivilized barbarians invited, if not necessitated interven-
tion by the civilized powers bordering them.23
With annexation affected, the issue of administration inevitably arose.
Here too the “savage” nature of frontier peoples mitigated against civi-
lized governance, and thus civilization itself. Consequently, rather than ex-
tending the legal and bureaucratic rule of the conquering imperial re-
gime, Frere subscribed to the cult of the “man on the spot.” He argued
that the frontier tribes would be best governed not by institutions, but by
individuals. Thus, “you must manage to train up men in the spirit of your
Malcolms, Elphinstones, and Metcalfes of times past, and of Sir George
Clerk in later days;—men who by their character and the confidence the
Native have in them, can hold their own without the immediate presence
of battalions and big guns.”24 Frontier administrators’ effectiveness de-
pended on their charismatic authority, much like the traditional holders
of authority—the elders, maliks, pirs, and saints they replaced along the
frontier. In essence, one chief was to replace another.
98
Afghanistan and South Africa stands as an exceptional example of the

civilizational rhetoric of empire, especially when the context of its pro-
duction as well as the position of its author are taken into account. That
context was one in which Frere was responding directly to Gladstone’s
“Rights of the Savage” speech.25 Though the language of civilization and
savagery may have been eclipsed by the details of the Raj’s actions along
the Afghan frontier, nonetheless the substance of this distichous world-
view was at the core of the issue.26 Frere’s career in imperial administra-
tion and the positions he held render his words of particular consequence.
Frere had not only been the Governor of the Cape Colony and High
Commissioner for Southern Africa (1877–1880), but also served previ-
ously as the Commissioner of Sind (1850–1859), which, at the time he
served, constituted the British Indian frontier with the Afghan polity. He
had been a key frontier administrator in India in the days before the pas-
sage of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR).
Frere subscribed to, and in part authored the system of administration
that the FCR eclipsed, the so-called Sind frontier system.27 Unlike the
system of frontier governmentality constructed by the FCR and the San-
deman system, the Sind frontier system, referred to by l ater authors as the
“Frere-Jacob system” in reference to John Jacob, Frere’s military coun-
terpart during his time as Chief Commissioner, sought to entail rather than
encapsulate the unruly inhabitants of the frontier region.28 That is, Frere
wanted to civilize the “savages” and integrate them into the colonial order.
This assimilative blueprint is one that Frere himself noted came from the
Roman conquest of Britain.29 It is also one that was evident in part in
other places of Frere’s contemporary administrative world. The educa-
tional impetus in American Indian policy, for example, was the core as-
similative drive t here. Frere clearly believed in the universality of the dis-
course of civilization and savagery, and thought the prescriptive solutions
for the problem of barbarism w ere eminently transferable from one
“savage” peoples to another, both through time and space.30
While Frere may have agitated for the assimilation of frontier “sav-
ages,” this was not the administrative approach favored in the late nine-
teenth century. Nonetheless, Frere’s importance with regard to frontier
governmentality is multifaceted. His belief in the universality of the civili-
zation / “savage” divide, and the concomitant policy prescriptions to over-
come it, reflects administrative standard operating practices, which w ere
becoming the norm in the bureaucratized empires of the late nineteenth
century. Though his policy prescriptions may have fallen out of favor,
99
Frere’s position, as well as that of his verbal nemesis Gladstone, at the

heart of the imperial structures of power, endows their utterances and
polemics with special weight. Frere’s role in both Afghanistan and South
Africa, lending as it does a personnel link in the administrative chain of
transmission of frontier governmentality, is important. His imperial career
helps map the movement of this regime of rule around the British Em-
pire. Likewise, his words provide a window into the ways it was both jus-
tified and rhetorically cloaked. The rights of the “savage” gave rise to the
regimes of rule keeping them “savage.”
nNnNnN
Whereas Bartle Frere was a failed British imperial administrator whose
disgraceful downfall prompted a now-forgotten public fray in the press
with the Prime Minister, Frederick Jackson Turner was an American aca-
demic whose pronouncement of the closure of the American frontier at
the 1893 American Historical Association conference in Chicago has
proven a durable cornerstone of American self-conceptions. Turner’s for-
mulation has largely proven definitional of understandings—academic and
otherwise—of frontiers.31 Like Frere, Turner employed the rhetorically re-
petitive use of the civilizational / savagery divide, writing, “The frontier is
the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civi-
lization.”32 But his importance lay not in his emulation of Frere’s lin-
guistic acrobatics. Rather, it derives from the bridging position he holds
between the formally imperial and national worlds of the nineteenth
century. For while Frere talked of the “savages” lurking on the edges of
empire, Turner discussed t hose the expanding nation-state would swallow
up in its inexorable march westward across the continent. Turner offers
a means to escape the limits of the British imperial world of the time and
enter upon the expanse of the larger global canvas.
For Turner, the frontier proved a space of generative destruction. The
“perennial rebirth,” offered by the proximity to “primitive society, fur-
nishes the forces dominating American character” and history.33 Consti-
tutive of national character, Turner famously insisted that “the frontier is
the line of most rapid and effective Americanization.”34 That generation
of American character, however, was predicated on the destruction of two
things: the Eu
ro pean character of frontier settlers and the “savage”
wilderness (including its indigenous inhabitants). While he meant the
former in figurative terms, the latter he meant in quite literal ones. On
the frontier, civilization was initially made “savage” so that savagery could
100
be subsequently tamed by civilization. Turner wrote the frontier “strips

off the garments of civilization” as the wilderness is “too strong for man.”
But “little by little he transforms the wilderness,” not replicating Euro
pean civilization but creating a new being—an American.35 The Indian
trader gives way to the shepherd and stockman, who in turn is succeeded
by the pioneer farming family and finally the industrial-based capitalist
economy dominating American life.36
Turner’s vision of the frontier is a decidedly progressive one, where the
savagery of the Indian, personifying the wilderness as he does, is subju-
gated and transformed by the adamantine pressures of trade, agricultural
settlement, and ultimately capitalism.37 Indeed, “Indian trade pioneered
the way for civilization.”38 It did so, however, by destroying the wilder-
ness and “savages” it encountered—the key “disintegrating forces of civi-
lization [which] entered the wilderness.”39 This progressive narrative of
history echoes the stadial theory of civilization deeply embedded in Frere’s
own work, reflecting its intellectual ubiquity in the late nineteenth-century
world. Turner, like Frere, argued the experience of the frontier was a uni-
versal one, and thus both cumulative and transferable. He wrote that
“the settlement of . . . questions for one frontier served as a guide for the
next.”40
Turner’s association of civilization with capitalism was neither implied
nor passing, but rather explicit and central to his thesis. In his rendering,
“business” was the distinguishing feature of development; a “primitive so-
ciety can hardly be expected to show the intelligent appreciation of the
complexity of business interests in a developed society.”41 He traced the
capillary-like action of commerce spreading civilization along the geolog-
ical veins determined by the environment and initially exploited by the
Indians.42 In so d oing, he rendered a fundamentally social, contestable,
and exploitive process as a natural one ordained by the uncontestable laws
of creation. For Turner, and his late nineteenth-century readership, what
made the Indians “savage” and the frontier they inhabited wild was the
fact neither had been subjugated fully to the national, or more properly
global, capitalist economic order. It was only when that subjugation was
complete—when the “manufacturing system with the city and factory
system” was omnipresent—that Turner could decisively render the verdict
that the American frontier had closed.43
Though the conquest of the frontier may have been concluded, its clo-
sure had not been affected. For the integration into, or rather exploita-
tion of, the frontier and its “savage” inhabitants by the global capitalist
101
economy remained decidedly deficient. By 1893, the year Turner delivered

his verdict, one he actually backdated to the 1890 census, the indigenous
inhabitants of the continental United States had all been encapsulated on
hundreds of Indian reservations. Native Americans no longer had to “face
east from Indian country” to see the encroachment of white settler society
for by now they had been fully engulfed within it.44 Yet the spread of that
settler society was uneven and peripatetic. And while the Indian “savages”
may have been limited in their geographic range, their subjugation to the
white capitalist economy was far from accomplished. Even with the ad-
vent of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, designed in the words of T. R.
Roosevelt as “a mighty pulverizing machine intended to break up the g reat
tribal mass,” savagery remained.45 The wilderness had not been fully trans-
formed into fee simple absolute, and the “savages” w ere not individual
property owners. Consequently, and despite Turner’s pronouncement to
the contrary, the frontier was not closed, but rather was practiced right
across the country upon its uncivilized victims. Only the triumph of capi-
talism in the guise of property ownership would complete the process
Turner claimed.
While much has been written about Turner’s formulation of the role
of the frontier in the genesis of America, less attention has been paid to
the relationship between civilization and savagery. Yet suffused throughout
Turner’s prose lay deeply rooted and firmly held ideas accommodating,
reflecting, and reinforcing the colonial specter of savagery. In Turner’s for-
mulation of civilization, just as in Frere’s, capitalism holds pride of place.
Christianity is at best an addendum, ancillary to the domestication of the
wilderness and its “savages” as homo economicus. Though Turner and
Frere meditated upon different imperial enterprises, the context—the ex-
pansion of civilization by those enterprises—was largely the same.
nNnNnN
Whereas Turner portrayed the conquest of the American wilderness as a
seemingly natural consequence of the intrusion of Europeans into it—with
traders followed by farmers, themselves followed by cities and industry—
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, an Argentine literary figure and statesman,
painted a rather darker picture of the relationship between Europeans
and the wilderness. Sarmiento’s prose, and his indictment of Argentine
society, is marked not by the conquest of the wilderness, but rather of the
conquest by the wilderness.46 Sarmiento rendered a reality where Euro
peans, more particularly Spaniards, w ere transformed by the Argentine
102
environment, rather than transforming it. Though the original sin lay
with the Indians, the Europeans had also been corrupted by it. He wrote,
“The American aborigines live in idleness, and show themselves incapable,
even u nder compulsion, of hard and protracted labor. . . . [T]he Spanish
race has not shown itself more energetic than the aborigines, when it has
been left to its own instincts in the wilds of America.”47 According to
Sarmiento, the “unfortunate . . . incorporation of the native tribes . . . [into]
the process of civilization” infected and ruined the entire enterprise.48 Thus
the Spaniards w ere conquered by the wilderness, and rendered into fac-
similes of the personification of that wilderness—“white-skinned savage[s],
at war with society.”49
While Turner offered a vision of the colonial specter of savagery from
the vantage of academia at the end of the nineteenth c entury, and Frere
from the perspective of an imperial servant, Sarmiento’s perch combined
the two while at the same time staking out new ground. Domingo
Sarmiento was one of Argentina’s most important political figures of the
century. A member of the so-called Generation of 1837, Sarmiento was a
politician who served as Argentina’s seventh president, an educator who
was instrumental in the establishment of universal primary education,
and a journalist whose writings against the dictatorial Juan Manual
Rosas regime assumed the form, most famously, of his book Facundo.50
A meditation on the nature of Argentine society, and an impeachment of
Rosas and the politics he both embodied and represented, Facundo ac-
complished both tasks through the biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga,
a caudillo (strongman) of the province of La Rioja. Writing from exile
in Chile, Sarmiento’s narrow aim in the tract was the critique of his po
litical enemies. But Facundo served as an indictment not simply of
Quiroga or Rosas, but rather more broadly of the society that produced
and empowered such men.
In Facundo, Sarmiento constructed a dialectical society where the rural
embodied by the most Argentine of characters (the gaucho) represented
barbarism, whereas the urban centers embodied by the most European
male fashion (the frock coat) represented civilization. It was the b attle be-
tween rural and urban, barbarism and civilization, that marked the con-
tours of Argentina’s political progress. Clearly in Sarmiento’s construc-
tion, Rosas, Quiroga, and the provincial caudillos lay on the side of
barbarism, while he and his frock-coated allies of the Generation of 1837
lay on the side of civilization. With the defeat and exile of Rosas at the
battle of Caseros in 1852, Sarmiento and his political allies—and more
103
Figure 4.2. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, c. 1873. Archivo General de la Nación

Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
importantly the civilization they embodied—eventually won the day.51 But

this all transpired after he authored and published Facundo, which first
appeared in 1845. Facundo is no mere political tract, but rather is an
existential interrogation into the very nature of Argentine society.
At the core of that interrogation w
ere the categories of “civilization” and
“barbarism.” Sarmiento placed these on spatial, personal, and lifeway regis-
ters, with the former associated with European immigrants to Argentina’s
cities who practiced industry and commerce and the latter with the gauchos
in the countryside who practiced seminomadic husbandry. It was the last of
these registers, lifeways, that most firmly embodied the rupture between
civilization and barbarism in Sarmiento’s calculus. Civilized life was impos-
sible without the sense of a common civic community, necessitated by the
104
proximity of urban life. Sarmiento wrote, “All civilization, w hether native,

Spanish, or European, centres in the cities, where are to be found the manu-
factories, the shops, the schools and colleges, and other characteristics of
civilized nations.”52 He went on: “The inhabitants of the city . . . live in a
civilized manner, and possess laws, ideas of progress, means of instruction,
some municipal organization, regular forms of government, etc.”53
For Sarmiento, the city provided the two definitional markers of
civilization—commerce and education. It is in the latter vein, as an edu-
cationalist, that his tract is usually read. Sarmiento bemoaned the diffu-
sion of gaucho society as preventing the cultivation of a sense of civic
solidarity—civitas—nurtured by education. He wrote, “Where can a
school be placed for the instruction of children living ten leagues apart in
all directions? Thus, consequently, civilization can in no way be brought
about.”54 But to see his writing as equating, or even privileging, educa-
tion alone with civilization, one has to ignore his treatment of the city of
Cordoba and its seventeenth-century university. His description of the city
as “the Pompeii of mediæval Spain” is less an architectural than ideo-
logical characterization of it, and not a flattering one at that.55 The civi-
lizing effects of education, something echoed by his American contempo-
raries who saw it as the means of “saving” the Indians, were a necessary
but insufficient element of civilization itself.56
What truly made cities the cradle of civilization were “the manufacto-
ries, the shops.” Civilization was marked thus not by religion, or learning
or government, but by commerce or, rather, capitalism. Though Sarmiento
did not use this word, his meaning is clear. This is no surprise, as the paired
comparative language of civilization versus barbarism came into being
with the ascendance of capitalism. While “barbarism” has a long history
of use vis-à-vis the non-European world, “civilization” only came into
widespread use in the latter half of the eighteenth century at the same mo-
ment of the adolescence of modern capitalism.57 It was the commercial
life that both necessitated and facilitated law, municipal organizations, and
regular forms of government. Capitalism, which begets material consump-
tion, is central to civilization. Without it, life descends to a state of
“natural indolence.” Sarmiento argued that “a dearth of all the amenities
of life [material goods] induces all the externals of barbarism.”58 The so-
cial life of things was transformed into the defining aspect of civilization
in Sarmiento’s rendering.
Yet it was not material possessions themselves that made civiliza-
tion, but rather the ownership of them that did. Like his Anglophonic
105
contemporaries, Sarmiento understood that the dividing axis between

the civilized and the “savages” was individual ownership, most impor-
tantly of land. He wrote that “there can be no progress without perma-
nent possession of the soil”—individuated and protected by the full
force of the law.59 Roosevelt echoed this view precisely in his assess-
ment of the Dawes Act in the United States. The rule of law was predi-
cated on the protection of capital, which itself resulted from the accu-
mulation of surplus guaranteed by permanent possession of the soil. It
was an interlinked and interwoven mosaic that collectively composed
the fabric of civilization.
In contrast to the cities, the nearly limitless expanse of the Pampas—the
Argentine grasslands—meant the gauchos’ lifeways mediated toward in-
dividualism and mitigated any sense of community. Here, Sarmiento as-
serted, “Barbarism is the normal condition.”60 The vacuity of the Pampas
allowed for the unchecked flourishing of the individual—unhindered by
the needs or demands of communal society. For Sarmiento, civilization
stood as a collective undertaking and his indictment of his fellow Argen-
tines fundamentally rested on their valorization of the individual coun-
tryman, rather than the collective city dweller. He stands in stark contrast
to Turner, who celebrated the wilderness as the incubator of the rugged
individualism at the core of American character and success. Sarmiento be-
lieved so powerfully in the civilizing effect of the city that he favorably
compared the by-then minuscule population of black Argentines to the gau-
chos: the former, “mostly inhabiting the cities, has a tendency to become
civilized.”61
Sarmiento’s vision of the Pampas as an empty wasteland, which in turn
wasted the character of the nation, was intentionally blind to the fact that
it was already populated by a people predating the gaucho. He wrote,
“The vast tract which occupies its [the Argentine republic’s] extremities
is uninhabited . . . . wastes containing no human dwelling,” echoing a
well-established rhetorical extermination of the existence of the indios,
the indigenous p eoples whose physical extermination would follow with
the desert campaign of 1875–1885, but was ever only partially com-
plete.62 The “wandering savages” traversed the “immea sur
able and
boundless spaces” of the Argentine interior but w ere incapable of its oc-
cupation as that would both require and imply proprietary ownership,
something well beyond them.63
Yet Sarmiento could not fully escape the presence of the indios, refer-
ring to them as the “savage horde,” “blood-thirsty and rapacious,” and
106
“ever on the watch.”64 Consequently, Sarmiento, like nearly all of his con-
temporaries, thought their eradication—literary as well as a ctual—was a
decidedly good thing. Defending the Spanish, in 1844 he wrote,
Let’s be fair to the Spaniards; by exterminating a savage people
whose territory they would occupy, they simply did what all civi-
lized p
eople do to savages, what the colony did deliberately or non-
deliberately with the indigenous: it absorbed, destroyed, extermi-
nated. . . . It may be very unjust to exterminate savages . . . but
thanks to this injustice, America, instead of being abandoned to sav-
ages, incapable of progress, is today occupied by the Caucasian
race, the most perfect, most intelligent, the most beautiful, and the
most progressive of those who people the earth.65
Sarmiento at least partially blamed the state of Argentine society and the
failure of civilization on racial miscegenation and the integration of the na-
tives into rural society. While the gaucho had been laid low by the infusion
of “savage” blood, his society was still advanced over that of the indio. The
gauchos w ere the barbarians of the Argentine Pampas, the missing indios its
“savages.”
Yet Sarmiento’s categories of barbarism and savagery were fundamen-
tally unstable. He quoted Sir Walter Scott approvingly that “the vast
plains of Buenos Ayres [sic] . . . are inhabited only by Christian savages
known as Gauchos.”66 Like Sarmiento, Scott negated the presence of the
indios. But more important was Scott’s reference to “Christian savages,”
a reference reaffirming the fact that during the nineteenth c entury at least
on the Pampas—just as on the American, South African, and British In-
dian frontiers—adherence to religion, or more precisely Christianity, was
not the measure of civilization. Rather civilization was a function of
property and its protection. The juxtaposition of Scott, as a lowland
Scottish romantic who valorized the life of the countryside (albeit in a
decidedly atemporal manner) then in retreat in the face of Britain’s in-
dustrial revolution, with Sarmiento—an unapologetic municipal booster
of civilization who denounced the countryside as a morally corrupting
wilderness—is a jarring one Sarmiento himself did not reflect upon. But
the real marker of savagery for both Scott and Sarmiento was the appalling
poverty that marked the countryside of the Argentine interior and the
Scottish Highlands. Poverty, a fter all, was a consequence of the moral failing
of its victims. The poor showed no industry and were lazy. They lacked
the work ethic fundamentally necessary to succeed in a capitalist society.
107
onsequently, they
C were little more than social detritus— “savages”
standing in the way of the progress of civilization.
Sarmiento’s invocation of Scott invites a consideration of the intellec-
tual milieu in which to situate the former’s narrative. Scott has been cred-
ited with introducing the stadial ideas of civilizational development
marking the Scottish Enlightenment into the romantic fiction of the early
nineteenth century.67 The Scotsman’s denunciation of the “savage” Scot-
tish highlanders, most famously in his novel Waverly, must be simulta
neously set against his celebration of their bravery and capacity for moral
purity.68 Scott’s ambivalence toward the barbarians was shared by
Sarmiento, but more importantly so too was his stadial, progressive vi-
sion of human history—”savage” barbarian to agriculturalist to industri-
alist.69 Sarmiento’s Facundo may be read as a form of philosophical history
common in the Scottish Enlightenment, but one layered over by a number
of other literary genres and political motives. Related to Scott’s influence is
Sarmiento’s repeated Orientalizing of the gaucho—and the political life of
the Argentine republic. Throughout his text he referred to the Turk, Bed-
ouin, Cossack, and Arab, and he compared the Pampas to biblical Pales-
tine.70 He went so far as to state that the relative flatness of the Argentine
interior made the body politic topographically prone to despotism, giving
the Republic a “certain Asiatic coloring.”71 Like many of his contempo-
raries, including Scott, Sarmiento understood certain terrains to be genera-
tive of freedom, and others as incubators of repression. He noted that
“many philosophers have also thought that plains prepare the way for des-
potism, just as mountains furnish strongholds for the struggle of liberty.”72
But while Sarmiento denounced the tyranny of his native land as com-
parable to the Asian despots of the Orientalist imaginary, he actually
spoke more highly of non-Argentine native society than he did of gaucho
culture itself.73 His repeated use of Orientalist imagery, which made Ar-
gentine barbarism legible to his nineteenth-century reading public, none-
theless placed the gauchos lower on the hierarchy of civilizations than
their contemporary Asiatic barbarian brethren.74 Sarmiento repeatedly
evoked the image of the Cossacks and the Bedouins as nomadic tribes not
unlike those inhabiting the Argentine interior.75 But though uncivilized,
they were not altogether barbarous, simply neglecting moral progress
rather than lacking it altogether. The diffusion of the gauchos over such
a vast, vacant land (the presence of the indios notwithstanding) meant
that their culture, unlike that of the Asiatic nomads, “admits of no social
reunion.”76 Sarmiento saw gaucho society as so democratic—or more
108
properly anarchic—in character that “even the savage [indio] tribe of the
Pampas is better organized for moral development than our country dis-
tricts.”77 It is “the disorganization of society among the gauchos [which]
deeply implants barbarism in their natures.”78
Asia was not the limit of Sarmiento’s comparative frame. He invoked
North America as a touchstone for the Argentine experience of barba-
rism, conjuring the writing of James Fenimore Cooper and his depictions
of savagery in The Last of the Mohicans and The Pioneer.79 His evoca-
tion of Cooper’s language of civilization and savagery was physically lo-
cated on “the border land between civilized life and that of the savage.”80
In this space, Sarmiento recognized the characters, customs, and condi-
tion of civilization (or lack of it), which Cooper authored as very much
akin to that of the Pampas. He wrote that Cooper’s “accounts of prac-
tices and customs . . . seem plagiarized from the Pampa.” Sarmiento also
linked North America with the Orient by noting the American herdsman,
purloined as he was from the Pampas, was virtually the same as the Arab.
The reason for this was “that analogies in the soil bring with them anal-
ogous customs, resources, and expedients.”81 Like begot like; the same
environment produced the same savagery.
Sarmiento insisted that the “struggle between civilization and barba-
rism” that he documented in the Argentine interior resembled its contem-
poraries across the globe. The Bedouin tribesmen of the Algerian frontier,
the African “goom” [man?], and the “clouds of Cossacks . . . give an exact
idea of the Argentine montenera.”82 He saw himself and his allies united
in a universal fight against savages, whose appearances, though condi-
tioned by the locality they inhabited, w ere undeniably analogous.83 His
compression of time and space in order to embody barbarism was both
complete and intentional.84 Sarmiento created a global, if not universal,
register for the specter of savagery, which joined together the disparate
corners of the world in their common oppression by the barbarian hordes.
In the words of one author, “Sarmiento’s mission, then, was to insert
Argentina into the framework of universal history.”85 He accomplished
this mission with stunning brilliance.
nNnNnN
Sarmiento, Turner, and Frere all agreed upon the outlines of the universal
history they both authored and relied upon, one fundamentally framed by
civilization and savagery. All three, in their respective guises, advocated for
the triumph of the former over the latter, bitterly denouncing the roadblocks
109
to the natural advancement of history where they appeared. Theirs was

an uncomplicated vision of the progress of humanity, deeply indebted to
and ingrained with Enlightenment ideas of the hierarchy of civilization
and stadial theory of civilizational development. “Savages” were on the
bottom rung of that hierarchy, the civilized on the top. This required no
explanation, no defense or apology. For this was the natural order of
things. The states t hese men served, represented, and observed w ere har-
bingers of civilization in a dark world. Their literary works placed these
polities within that universal history, as driving forces of progress and
the betterment of humanity.
The underlying architecture of the universal history these men relied
on was the colonial specter of savagery. All three divided the world be-
tween civilized and “savage,” incarnate in the European societies and in-
digenous ones, respectively. Hardly original in their rendering of the world,
these men reflected widely held contemporary understandings upon which
colonial / imperial actions rested and were fundamentally justified. Their
common definition of civilization, or rather what made certain p eople civi-
lized and others not, was individuated property ownership, most notably
in land. From this, all other markers and elements of civilization flowed.
Property was the origin point of civilization.86
What of the peoples of the periphery—the frontier dwellers—who had
no discernable systems of individual property ownership? Clearly, these
people were rootless “savages,” transient beings beyond the pale of civili-
zation.87 What to do with them then? Embedded in these three men’s writ-
ings is an assimilative impulse. Frere clearly believed the frontier to be a
space not of accommodation, but rather incorporation by the civilized
power of the “savages” beyond the direct reach of their realm (thereby
extending the reach of that realm). Turner characterized the natural course
of events to inevitably lead to the absorption of the Indian into the Amer-
ican body politic. That act of digestion was generative of the new Amer-
ican man. And Sarmiento noted how the integration of the indios of the
Pampas shaped gaucho culture, much to his disgust. Yet while all three
recognized the assimilative consequence of the progress of civilization,
none w ere particularly enthused by the prospect. Instead, in different ways
and through different renderings, each preferred the eradication and dis-
appearance of the native. At its most benign, that might have been rhe-
torical, such as when Sarmiento wrote about the deserted wastes of the
Pampas. In reality though, the erasure of the Indians seldom proved l imited
to the violence of the written word.
110
If assimilation was not the answer, what was? Eradication was indeed
a morally acceptable possibility. But in truth it was a rather expensive
proposition to undertake. Instead, what ultimately happened was an al-
together different strategy—encapsulation. The people of the periphery
were almost invariably fenced in on the marginal lands the state could
force them onto, and, once there, policed through their own colonially
sanctioned “customs and traditions.” They were subject, in other words,
to frontier governmentality. That subjugation may have carried with it the
promise or potentiality of either assimilation or eradication, but this was
not necessarily its original aim or end goal. Rather, the frontier dwellers
were meant to be kept separate and apart, but kept nonetheless.
As the imperial career of the FCR and its associated Sandeman system
of frontier administration moved around the British realm in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial servants carried with them
knowledge of administrative practices they could apply to similarly situ-
ated places against similarly disposed peoples. Bartle Frere, as Commis-
sioner of Sind and later Governor of the Cape Colony, was one such link in
the imperial chain of transmission. But administrative practices in the gov-
ernmentally bureaucratized nineteenth-century world knew few, if any, po
litical or geographic bounds. What worked against the Afghans and the
Zulus along the edges of the British Empire was likely to work just as well
(or poorly) against the Apache and Mapuche facing the American and Ar-
gentine republics. After all, these indigenous frontier dwellers shared the
same savagery, just as the republics shared the empire’s light of civilization.
Frere, Turner, and Sarmiento provide the intellectual connective tissue
of a singular, though admittedly uneven understanding of the world that
rests on the colonial specter of savagery. The strength of that understanding
is that it is at one and the same time universal and infinitely particular.
The details may differ, sometimes substantially so, without unsettling the
fundamental principle of frontier governmentality. The colonial specter
of savagery is thus marked by both a remarkable plasticity and resilience.
It was activated along the frontiers of the ostensibly nonimperial spaces
confronting Turner and Sarmiento. For on the bounds of these expanding
republics, a parallel story to that already documented along the limits of
the British Empire was playing out in the Americas, transported by the
prose of an academic and politician-cum-public intellectual.
111
N5n
Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in
America’s Desert Southwest
A fter nearly a decade of pursuit, they finally had him. They had tracked
Geronimo to a relatively remote mountain hideaway where his chances
of escape w ere limited at best. Nobody was sure how long he had been
hiding in this particular locale, one of a number of refuges he had availed
himself of during his years on the run. But nobody cared at this point.
After years of waging a bloody war against him and his small band of fol-
lowers, one which gripped the attention of the press, public, and politi-
cians alike, the United States had arrived at Geronimo’s day of reckoning.
“Geronimo E[nemy]. K[illed]. I[n]. A[ction],” crackled the radio re-
lating the kill. The date was May 2, 2011. Members of Seal Team Six
confirmed to President Obama and his national security team gathered in
the White House situation room that they had just killed Osama bin
Laden, whom they had code-named “Geronimo.”1 They had tracked bin
Laden to a compound in the Pakistani hill station of Abbottabad—a mil-
itary town named after James Abbott, a frontier officer of the British Raj
who had been instrumental in governing the Afghan borderlands.
Military planners claimed the designation of America’s most wanted
enemy with the name of one of its most famous Native American warriors
was a fluke of military acronyms. Intentional or not, naming bin Laden
“Geronimo” has disturbing implications for how Americans associate the
ongoing War on Terror against foreign Muslim extremists with the war of
conquest against the country’s indigenous peoples. On the one hand, it
likens a modernist political movement with a premodern, “uncivilized,”
and “savage” p eople. On the other, it equates a sophisticated indigenous
112
Ruling the Chiricahua Apache
group resisting the violent expansion of a settler society with the “fanati
cism” of a group of religious radicals wanting to take the world back to the
age of the Caliphate.2 Both images are unsettling and profoundly wrong.
The linkages between Pakistan’s northwest and the American South-
west go beyond the chance, or choice, of US military acronyms. The op-
eration to kill bin Laden at least partly resulted from surveillance and
tracking efforts undertaken at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona.3
Today one of the largest intelligence installations of the US military, the
fort was originally established as a cavalry outpost along the ill-defined
border with Mexico to police and corral local Indians.4 While the per-
sonal connection between these frontiers—bin Laden and Geronimo—
provides an interesting anecdote, their administrative and conceptual
linkages are far more substantive and arresting. The historical parallels
intertwining them are deep, though largely unrecognized and essentially
unexcavated. The way that the Americans dealt with the original Geronimo
and his fellow Apache tribesmen at the end of the nineteenth century
shares much in common with the way their contemporary British counter
parts dealt with the inhabitants of the Pakistan / Afghan frontier.
Geronimo’s treatment by the federal government was at one and the
same time emblematic of and aberrational from the norm of federal-Indian
relations at the time. His surrender effectively ended the Indian wars that
had greatly defined the nation’s westward expansion. As such, his cap-
ture marked the final subjugation of “independent” indigenous peoples
to the juggernaut of white settler colonialism. A mere seven years later,
Frederick Jackson Turner declared the American frontier closed, and with
it the “victory” of civilization over “savagery”—natural and Indian.
Geronimo’s experience, and that of his band of Chiricahua Apache, of-
fers a detailed glimpse not only of federal-Indian relations, but more
importantly of the forms of frontier governmentality the United States
deployed to rule what white settler society viewed as its problematic
population of natives.
There are a number of stories nested within the saga of Geronimo’s
resistance and capture. These stories not only speak to the violent and un-
just history of American relations with its Indian subjects, but also place
those relations in a broader global context of the subjugation of the
peoples of the periphery. The experiences of Geronimo and the Chiricahua
Apache closely mirror those of many other liminal, borderland inhabit-
ants. Though the details are distinct, the intellectual and administrative
space separating the Apache from the Afghans is remarkably slender. The
113
practices of administration, norms of governance, and violence of rule the

British first developed along India’s North-West Frontier with Afghani
stan in the 1870s find an uncanny doppelganger in the Desert Southwest
of the expanding American republic at the very same time.
nNnNnN
Through the institutional structure of the Frontier Crimes Regulation
(FCR) and the person of Robert Sandeman, the British in India had au-
thored a system of borderland administration that was subsequently writ
large across their global empire. Frontier governmentality spread across
that realm during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
through the imperial careers of individual administrators as well as ad-
ministrative practices passed along imperial circuits of knowledge. The
British applied almost identical systems of frontier rule to the unruly pe-
ripheries of their empire, peripheries invariably inhabited by “uncivi-
lized,” “savage,” “tribal” p eoples. Facilitating this application was the
colonial specter of savagery, ubiquitously applied to “barbarous” tribesmen
and benighted tribals occupying inhospitable lands. The combination of
barren lands and “barbarous” people made the extension of “normal”
administration to such spaces cost-prohibitive. In its place, the empire
had extended its system of frontier governmentality encapsulating the
“savages” in their own state-sanctioned customs and traditions and ex-
cluding them from the colonial sphere while entailing them within the
imperial one.
Both Sandeman and the FCR spawned administrative offspring
throughout the empire—be it Henry Dobbs and the Tribal Civil and
Criminal Disputes Regulation in mandatory Iraq, Frederick Lugard in
Nigeria, or the Special Districts Administration Ordinance in K enya. But
they also had their governing counterparts outside the British imperial
realm. One of those counterparts, a man named John Philip Clum, played
a central role in the story of Geronimo and the Chiricahua. Clum was the
Indian agent to the San Carlos Apache reservation from 1874 to 1877, at
precisely the same moment Sandeman authored his system in Baluch-
istan and a mere two years after the initial promulgation of the FCR. On
the reservation, Clum fashioned a system of administration mirroring the
practice of rule concurrently constructed along the Afghan frontier. Un-
like in the British imperial dominion or the Argentine lands, there is no
evidence that there was any cross-pollination of ideas or practices be-
tween American Indian agents and British Indian frontier administrators.
114
Nonetheless a remarkably coherent nexus of frontier governmentality si

multaneously emerged on the geographically distant, though similarly
situated peripheries of these colonial empires. The fact that Clum and
Sandeman created comparable regimes of rule for similarly “savage”
peoples inhabiting similarly desolate and poor lands at the same moment
is striking. And the fact they did so unbeknownst to one another makes
it doubly so.
Clum was a brash young easterner named to run the San Carlos Apache
reservation in southern Arizona in the waning days of 1873.5 Though he
accepted his appointment in December of that year, he did not arrive at
the reservation until nine months later in August 1874. Clum’s appoint-
ment was recommended by the Dutch Reformed Church, which, as part
of President Ulysses S. Grant’s peace policy, had assumed responsibility
for a number of reservations throughout the Southwest, including San
Carlos.6 Grant’s policy left it to the church to bring “civilization” to the
Indians, though not necessarily through proselytization.7 The churches
were offered the opportunity to appoint agents and oversee them with a
supervisory board in order to avoid the double dangers of military domi-
nance of the reservations and the political patronage system, which had
made the Indian service amongst the most corrupt, venal, and reviled. In
the eyes of church leaders, their appointees had to be less men of the Book
than men of good character. Clum fit this description perfectly. Though
from a farming family in the Hudson River Valley, Clum’s connections
with the Dutch Reformed Church w ere slight. He had attended Rutgers
College for a year, which at the time was affiliated with the church. How-
ever he left for a position in the army’s fledgling meteorological service in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was reportedly active in the Presbyte-
rian community. Though Clum may have lacked a missionary’s zeal for
the conversion of his new Apache charges at San Carlos, he nonetheless
had a clear vision of how to civilize them and an unshakable faith in his
own ability to oversee it.8
On his arrival at San Carlos, Clum stepped into a world contoured by
a quarter c entury of relations between the US government and the Apache.
Their lands proved one of the last frontiers to be both created by and sub-
jugated to the forms of frontier governmentality practiced by the Amer-
ican government. Though annexed to the United States following the
Mexican-American War in 1848 and the subsequent Gadsden Purchase
in 1854, New Mexico and Arizona did not gain statehood u ntil 1912.
During the conquest of the region’s Native Americans, the territories were
115
Figure 5.1. Indian agent John P. Clum with Diablo and Eskiminzim, at San

Carlos Agency (in a photograph taken in 1875). Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division / LC-USZC4-7938.
116
still under federal jurisdiction and lacked state governments.9 While t here
were multiple Indian groups and communities in the region, among the
most important were the Apache. Athabascan speakers who originally mi-
grated to the Desert Southwest in the sixteenth century, the Apache are
an ethnolinguistic grouping who, upon their arrival to the area, splintered
into a number of discrete groups, such as the Chiricahua, Western, Lipan,
and Mescalero, to inhabit different environments.10 These groups spread
over a wide area, including much of southern New Mexico and Arizona,
as well as northern Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico. Many of the Apache
bands developed a political economy of plunder based largely on raiding
area settlements and ranches. The response of local authorities, though
modulating with time, was predictably violent.11
The United States assumed control of the region and its inhabitants
with the invasion of Mexico in 1846. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
ending the Mexican-American War, and the Gadsden Purchase trans-
formed what had previously been a Mexican, or more precisely a Chi-
huahuan and Sonoran, problem into an American one.12 Contact did not
necessarily entail conflict. The small number of Americans in the region
limited the potential for clashes with the Apache. At first, the United States
sought to establish relations with the Apache on the same treaty founda-
tions it had with other indigenous groups. In July 1852, E. V. Sumner, com-
mander of the New Mexico military department, arrived at an accord
with a number of prominent Apache chiefs, most notably Mangas Colo-
radas, a leader who had been a thorn in the side of Mexican authorities
and would later prove to be so to the Americans.13 The treaty acknowl-
edged the Indians were under exclusive US jurisdiction. As a consequence,
they would neither associate with nor aid any other tribe or power at war
with the United States. In keeping with the obligations of Guadalupe Hi-
dalgo, the accord required the Indians to refrain from raiding in Mexico
or otherwise attacking Mexican persons or property. It further promised
that the US government would delimit the Apache’s territorial boundaries,
and pass the necessary laws to operate within them. In return, the Apache
would receive regular “donations, presents and implements” from the gov-
ernment as well as any other “liberal and humane measures” deemed
proper.14 While the treaty of 1852 provided a framework for relations, it
was necessarily subject to local accommodations between the Apache and
American authorities. The US Army turned a blind eye to Apache raiding
in Sonora and Chihuahua that left American citizens and property
117
nharmed. In return, the Apache limited their violence to the area south
u
of the border.15
The international border between the United States and Mexico—a
legal fiction created by American military success—facilitated a reality mu-
tually beneficial to both the Americans and Apache at the cost of Mexi-
cans. The Apache continued their political economy of plunder, which
they had long practiced against Spanish and later Mexican settlers.
They used not only the physical refuge of inhospitable terrain they had
mastered, but also the legal refuge provided by the international state
system they were too “savage” to partake in. Though they may not have
had a legible state of their own in the eyes of e ither Mexican or American
authorities, the Apache proved a dept at navigating the interstices of in-
ternational law to the g reat frustration of its state participants.16 They
alternatively transgressed international boundaries and used them to se-
cure refuge, knowing full well that though they did not respect such legal
fictions, the states pursuing them did. At the same time, the proximity of
the border provided American authorities with an opportunity to manage
and divert a threat to their security, and possibly state integrity. It was in
the interests and to the advantage of both the Americans and the Apache
to maintain an ambivalence about the border, which allowed them to live
peaceably with one another. The Americans looked the other way to Apache
cross-border raiding and in turn the Apache kept the violence south of
the fictive line that had no meaning for them. But that ambivalence was
necessarily fleeting, for once the underlying dynamics, most importantly
the relative absence of American authorities and settlers, upon which it
rested changed, so too did the calculations of both the Americans and the
Indians.
The critical moment followed the end of the American Civil War in
1865 when the newly reunited nation was poised to fulfill the promises
and potential of its “manifest destiny.” While the Arizona and New Mexico
territories where the Apache lived boasted little in the way of prime agri-
cultural land, which drew many white settlers to the West, other interests,
including cattle ranchers and miners, eyed Indian lands there. In order to
satisfy the demands of settlers, capitalists, and mining industrialists, the
army sought to confine Indians to their ever- shrinking reservations
throughout the West, returning Indian lands to the public domain through
manufactured consent or force if necessary. Although many openly called
for the extermination of Indians, the US government opted for a different
course of action.
118
nNnNnN
From 1868 onward, Grant’s administration moved away from the pre-
vious policy of force employed against Indians and toward its so-called
peace policy. The policy sought to initially acculturate and subsequently
assimilate Indians into the expanding republic. It was driven by a combi-
nation of normative calculations and the needs of economy. The policy
promised to becalm relations between the federal government and the
Apache, which had turned particularly violent in the 1860s. The treaty of
1852 had been ignored by both parties, with the Apache raiding within
US territories and the army aggressively tracking them down. Whereas the
Apache had previously used the international border to thwart Mexican
authorities, they w
ere increasingly using it to thwart American ones. De-
spite the enforced hiatus of hostilities caused by the bloodletting of the
Civil War, between 1861 and 1869 the government continued to pursue
a costly strategy which expended men and material out of proportion to
the realized returns.17 There was a palpable appetite for another less costly
approach to Indian relations, especially with the Apache.18 The peace
policy set the general parameters of federal-Indian relations. Indians would
be placed on reservations, separating them from the hostile white settlers
and preventing violence. Once there, they would be provided with rations
and encouraged to take up settled agriculture. They would also receive
Christian instruction from agents, men like Clum, who were almost ex-
clusively appointed from religious denominations. While this was the
carrot of the Grant administration’s policy, the stick was that any Indians
refusing reservation life would fall under the purview of the military and
be dealt with by force until such time as they complied.
The peace policy capped an explosion of treaty making between the
US government and Indian groups, with over one hundred treaties con-
cluded between 1848 and 1867.19 The proliferation of treaties finally drew
Congressional ire as the legislative body tired of the expense such treaties
entailed. So in 1871, Congress banned their f uture use. While existing trea-
ties would be respected, future relations would be mediated through
statute or executive order. The treaty system, though honored more in
breach than observance, created a legal pretense wherein Indian consent,
even if fraudulently manufactured, was nonetheless required. The post-
1871 situation did away with this entirely. This had important implica-
tions for the Apache as they entered a more intense period of relations
with the federal government, one based on a new and hitherto untested
119
foundation. Unlike many of the plains Indians with whom relations were
treaty-based, the Apache were bound by local accommodations. Even the
1852 treaty, by now a dead letter, applied to only a relatively narrow band
of Apache, leaving those not under the supposed authority of the signa-
tory chiefs outside the ambit of any legally structured relationship with
the American government.
As in the past, the local accords upon which this new era of relations
rested were themselves largely contingent on the personalities involved.
The most important of these brokered understandings was arrived at in
October 1872, between General O. O. Howard, the military commandant
of the Arizona department, and Cochise, one of the greatest of the Chir-
icahua Apache chiefs. The Chiricahua w ere among the most important
and subsequently famous band of Apache inhabiting southern New
Mexico and southern Arizona, the Apache heartlands. Their location made
them a particular concern for American officers like Howard as they
abutted and regularly raided across the Mexican frontier, provoking in-
ternational tensions. Though relatively small in number, the Chiricahua
nonetheless assumed an outsized role in relations between the federal gov-
ernment and Southwest Indians.
The Apaches’ raiding and warfare, both across the international border
and within the United States, earned them a reputation for “savagery” in
the minds of governmental officials and the public alike. Even an agent as
seemingly and condescendingly “pro- Indian” as Clum referred to his
charges’ “savage natures” in his official correspondence, and in his private
reminisces described them as “wild, savage and turbulent.”20 The military
had a number of violent run-ins with the Chiricahua over the years, most
notably the Bascom Affair in 1861 and the B attle of Apache Pass the fol-
lowing year. These incidents led to the establishment of a permanent
21
military presence throughout the Arizona and New Mexico territories,

with a key outpost—Fort Bowie—strategically located at a chokepoint in
the Chiricahua lands. These violent interactions, mediated more often than
not through military engagements, cemented the image of the Apache as
rapacious “barbarians” out for blood. Those Apache, however, would
point out that it was the US government and white settlers who w ere in-
vading their lands, contravening the spirit if not letter of the original 1852
treaty. Relations between the military and Apache were marked by flaring,
though fleeting episodes of violence punctuated by periods of peace, such
as that a fter the agreement between Howard and Cochise.
120
The agreement between Howard and Cochise was an oral one that the
latter believed more binding than the former’s superiors. It ended more
than a decade of hostilities. Apache success at largely evading and ha-
rassing the US army meant Cochise negotiated from a position of relative
strength and equality with Howard. The costs of continued war against
the Chiricahua outweighed the costs of peace in the calculus of the fed-
eral treasury—both in political currency as well as silver specie—making
Howard pliable to negotiations. The Apache leader virtually dictated the
size and location of the reservation he and his band of Chiricahua would
be confined to. Cochise’s spatial imaginary entailed much of the group’s
traditional territories, covering almost the entirety of southeastern Ari-
zona. Surprisingly, Howard acceded to this vision. Cochise ensured that
the reservation would be overseen by someone sympathetic to the Apache
in general, and Cochise’s band in particular. Tom Jeffords, a well-known
advocate for the Apache who was instrumental in facilitating the negoti-
ations that led to Cochise’s surrender, was appointed as agent to the newly
formed Chiricahua reservation.22
The reservation, one of four the Apache were confined to, was estab-
lished in December 1872 by executive order.23 The fact it was an execu-
tive creation ensured Cochise’s diplomatic victory would be short-lived.
Absent the legal security of a treaty, the reservation proved susceptible to
the capricious behavior of the US government, itself subject to the pres-
sures of multiple interest groups. Cochise lived out his remaining two years
on the reservation he extracted from Howard, under the guardianship of
his friend Jeffords. But his survivors w
ere shortly thereafter forced to leave
the Chiricahua reservation for San Carlos to the northwest. This forced
removal was part of the attempted concentration of the Indian popula-
tion, leading to the dissolution of the reservation in 1876. That dissolu-
tion left the Chiricahua no practical or legal recourse. The veneer of legal
protection afforded other tribes whose relations w ere treaty-based was
completely denied the Chiricahua due to their timing, itself partly a func-
tion of their ability to fend off the distracted appetite and limited abilities
of the American government until the early 1870s.
The San Carlos reservation had been established contemporaneously
with the Chiricahua reservation and, like it, was the creature of an execu-
tive order.24 As with the Chiricahua reservation, San Carlos was subject
to repeated takings by the government, having lands clipped off and re-
turned to the “public domain” as mining, ranching, and timber interests
121
R.
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Map 5. Arizona Territory, c. 1877.
convinced officials of their value.25 Unlike its short-lived neighbor, how-

ever, San Carlos survived, mainly because its territories were so unat-
tractive. The reservation was hated by many of its inhabitants, particu-
larly the malaria-infested riverbed lands on which they were settled.
Nonetheless, it became a virtual dumping ground for a number of dif
ferent, mainly Apache, Indian groups, many of whom had enmity-filled
relations with one another. Originally created for the Aravaipa (Western)
Apache, by the late 1870s the reservation had been inundated with other
Indian groups forcibly relocated.26 General George Crook, military com-
mander of the Department of Arizona, warned that throwing together
122
such a diverse population of Indians, including not only Aravaipa but also
Tonto and Chiricahua Apache as well as Mojave, on the relatively poor
land of San Carlos was a r ecipe for disaster.27 In this he proved prophetic,
with a number of tribal breakouts from the reservation commencing in
1877.28 From that point onward, Indians bolting from the San Carlos res-
ervation became a regular occurrence. Once off the reservation, they
were subject to military jurisdiction, turning their flight into open hostili-
ties with white settlers and the US military. This led to nearly a decade of
renewed warfare between the US government and Apache Indians, which
only concluded with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886.
Clum stepped onto this stage in August 1874. Supremely confident of
himself, Clum believed the Indians could be civilized through hard work
and a strong bond to the land. In this, he echoed Thomas Jefferson’s vi-
sion of a republic of yeoman farmers, a vision that served as the bedrock
of the Homestead Act and, in the case of the Indians, the later General
Allotment Act (1887), also known as the Dawes Severalty Act. With a
Congressional appropriation of $50,000 to get the San Carlos reserva-
tion in order, Clum set about building permanent agency structures along
the bed of the Gila River.29 Rather than dispersing them throughout the
reservation, which was roughly the size of Connecticut, Clum wanted the
Indians settled near their riverbed fields, adjacent to his agency. Such set-
tlement had the dual advantage of providing close supervision, as well as
making the Indians permanent agriculturalists rather than seminomadic
ones who would necessarily be harder to police. He allowed Indians to
move about the reservation, and even off it in search of game with his
prior permission. But to hunt, the Apache had to retrieve their weapons
from Clum, with whom they w ere required to deposit them u nder normal
circumstances. 30
Upon his assumption of the agency, the reservation’s population was

roughly eight hundred Indians. However, by the time he departed in
July 1877 the population nearly sextupled to around 4,500.31 The first
increase came with the closure of the Camp Grant Agency, which brought
approximately one thousand Yavapai Apache in early 1875. Shortly there-
after, Clum relocated nearly 1,200 White Mountain Apache from Camp
Apache, which, though technically part of the San Carlos reservation, was
for all intents and purposes an autonomous if not fully independent en-
tity.32 The removal of the Chiricahua in June 1876 from their reservation
to the southeast brought another 350 charges to San Carlos.33 Though
he successfully removed the bulk of the tribe, a number of Chiricahua,
123
Figure 5.2. San Carlos Agency buildings. Photograph by author.
including the Southern Chiricahua with a band led by Geronimo, refused

to go and instead escaped over the US-Mexico border to Sonora. Such
constant disregard for the line by the Chiricahua weighed heavily in Wash-
ington’s decision to relocate them away from it and terminate their reser-
vation.34 Clum transferred another band of Chiricahua, including some
of the Southern Chiricahua renegades, from the Warm Springs / Ojo
Caliente reservation in New Mexico in March 1877. With this removal,
the total Chiricahua population of roughly 283, out of 4,727 Indians on
the reservation, was concentrated at San Carlos, settled among friend
and foe.35
The arrival of the Chiricahua at the San Carlos reservation was part
of a larger policy concentrating the Apache population, which Washington
had decided upon in the waning days of 1874.36 The policy’s central aim
was to physically cluster Indians on as few reservations as feasible. The
need for economy was a paramount justification, at least bureaucratically.
Concentrating the Apache on two rather than four reservations, with their
124
attendant agency establishments, lessened the burden on the federal gov-

ernment’s already-strained coffers. More importantly, the closure of the
Chiricahua and Ojo Caliente reservations meant the lands they contained
could be exploited by any number of white economic interests. Chief
among these were mining interests, which sought access to valuable min-
eral deposits, including silver and copper, discovered on Apache grounds.
These interests pressed relentlessly for the opening of remaining Indian
lands. They successfully lobbied to have lands of the San Carlos reserva-
tion “returned to the public domain” on five separate occasions by the
close of the 1870s.37 One of the most important of these was the return
of the reservation’s southwest corner, t oday the site of the Morenci mine,
one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest copper mines and formerly one
of the crown jewels of the Phelps Dodge mining empire.38
Additionally, it was hoped that concentrating the Indian population
in general, and the Apache population in particular, would make them
easier to control. Though Cochise and Howard’s accommodation of 1872
brought peace to the Arizona territory, it also created new challenges that
were becoming increasingly unmanageable. The Chiricahua reservation’s
southern limit lay along the ill-defined US-Mexico border, allowing un-
hindered access to raiding grounds in Sonora and Chihuahua. Following
the tradition established by the 1852 treaty, the Apache abstained from
plundering the American side of the frontier in return for peace with the
US government. However, while this arrangement may have worked for
both sides two decades prior, it no longer satisfied either the requirements
or policy vision of the American government. Such raiding had to be
stopped. This necessitated not only the physical removal of the Chiricahua
from the border, but more importantly the permanent end to their political
economy of plunder. Concentration on the San Carlos reservation prom-
ised to fulfill both t hese ends. It lay well inside US territory and could be
the proving ground for the Chiricahua’s acculturation to a life of settled
agriculture.
nNnNnN
With the increased number of his charges due to the concentration policy,
Clum’s overriding focus was to ensure complete civilian control over the
reservation and its inhabitants. This quickly led him into bureaucratic and
jurisdictional disputes with the army, which for its own reasons, philo-
sophical and otherwise, sought exclusive control over San Carlos and sur-
rounding reservations. Clum navigated his relationship with the military
125
largely through bluster and sheer force of w ill.39 Both sides availed them-
selves to their supporters in the Arizona press, with Clum favored by the
Arizona Citizen out of Tucson and the military favored by The Miner out
of Prescott, which was not coincidentally the military department’s head-
quarters in the territory.40 Clum also had the support of the territorial
governor, Anson Safford. Ultimately, the willingness of the Secretary of
the Interior to back his man for the moment led to Clum’s seeming vic-
tory over the military in the summer of 1875. All military forces removed
five miles outside the reservation and the civilian agent was invested with
complete authority.41
Clum’s struggle for unitary control of reservation life resembled Robert
Sandeman’s bureaucratic brawl with his superior, William Merewether, for
sole authority over the Baluch tribesmen along the Afghan frontier.42 Just
as Clum leveled attacks against the seemingly failed policies of military
rule on the reservations in the Arizona and New Mexico territories, San-
deman decried the established system of frontier administration as an
ossified orthodoxy. Though Clum never used the words, he would have
no doubt recognized Sandeman’s call to construct a regimen of rule ap-
pealing to the “hearts and minds” of the tribesmen, rather than solely their
fears.43 The bureaucratic victory of t hese two men, both in their twenties
at the time, was neither assured nor expected. Indeed, it surprised many
of their contemporaries. While Sandeman’s success outlasted Clum’s—
Sandeman stayed on as a frontier administrator u ntil his death in 1892,
ensuring the maintenance of his system whereas Clum quit the Indian
service in 1877 and left the military to resume control over San Carlos by
1883—both proved transformative of their respective political masters’
frontier policies and were central to constructing and embedding frontier
governmentality in these spaces.
With the army off the reservation, Clum faced the issue of ensuring
control of the reservation absent the troops. In their place, Clum raised
what would become a cornerstone of his administration—a body of In-
dian police manned by respected tribal leaders and balanced to reflect the
various groups populating the reservation.44 Clum claimed to his supe-
riors that “the Indian police system is my g reat hobby in the management
of wild Indians.”45 With each wave of new arrivals removed to the San
Carlos reservation, Clum allowed the immigrants to appoint a set number
of their own men to the force. Beginning with only four Indians, the force
grew to twenty-five by the time of Clum’s departure in 1877. Each po-
liceman received $15 a month in compensation.46 Commanding them was
126
Clyde Beauford, an ex-Confederate Virginian who had also served in the

US army after the Civil War. Though the tribal police were charged with
keeping the peace on the reservation in the absence of military troops,
their remit ran beyond the confines of San Carlos. Clum regularly em-
ployed the police off the reservation to execute orders he received from
Washington.47 They w ere present at the Chiricahua agency in 1876, to
“facilitate” the removal to San Carlos of the reservation’s Indians. Like-
wise, an augmented force accompanied Clum to Ojo Caliente in the spring
of 1877 when he captured Geronimo and relocated that reservation’s pop-
ulation to his own domain in Arizona. At one point during Geronimo’s
raiding in late 1876, Clum convinced the territorial governor to enlist a
company of sixty San Carlos police into the territorial militia u nder the
command of Beauford. And the federal government approved the arming
of up to three hundred police and army scouts to counter the Chiricahua
breakout.48 The police, though an arm of the agent and thus civilian au-
thority on the reservation, was a paramilitary force that closely resem-
bled and often worked with the Apache scouts employed by the US army.49
As with Sandeman’s tribal militias, and other tribal paramilitary forces
policing the frontiers of the British Empire, such as John Glubb’s Desert
Patrol, Clum’s advent of the tribal police force on San Carlos had the
dual advantage of both monitoring and monetizing the Apache. Clum
made the Indians responsible for maintaining order on, and to a certain
extent off, the reservation. Failure to do so would ensure the swift re-
turn of military rule, which governed the Indians collectively rather
than individually. While Clum characterized the native police force as a
civilizing innovation to his superiors, in truth it was an instrument by
which to ensnare native men of social standing in their own subjugation,
as well as that of their p eople. It necessarily implicated them in the colo-
nial endeavor of the US government. More insidiously, it recruited the
most able-bodied men of the reservation into a military labor market,
which integrated them in a dependent position into the surrounding wage
economy. The former political economy of plunder was being replaced by
a political economy of policing. The transition introduced the most perni-
cious aspect of the modernizing capitalist agenda, the commodification of
labor relations, unmooring them from their embedded social relations.
Like Sandeman and his fellow British frontier administrators, Clum
succeeded in simultaneously ruling the Apache indirectly while at the same
time subjugating them to the expanding capitalist economy of white set-
tler society. Such tribal militias and police forces time and again proved
127
one of the most important institutional structures of frontier governmen-

tality. They rendered tribesmen, and indirectly their families and larger so-
cial networks, economically dependent on the colonial economy, in the
case of Arizona the surrounding white settler economy. H. L. Hart, Clum’s
replacement at San Carlos, noted in his first annual report in 1878 the
“numbers of Indians . . . constantly employed” by surrounding towns and
settlements, providing labor for mining camps and ranches. The govern-
ment provided insufficient rations for the Indians on the reservation, pre-
sumably to “encourage” such work.50 At the same time, police and militias
served as arms of indirect rule whereby the tribesmen policed themselves,
but only u nder the watchful eye of the Indian agent or political officer. This
was as true in the Arizona desert as it was in the Afghan one.
Clum’s force was not the first Indian police force to be raised on an
American reservation. There had been previous incarnations through the
1860s, including the Modoc Indians on the Klamath reservation in Or-
egon.51 But the main precedent Clum followed, consciously or not, was
the Navajo Constabulary created by General Howard in 1872.52 Though
defunct by the time Clum established his own force, the Navajo experi-
ence provided Clum a working template. However, policing the San Carlos
reservation presented a different set of challenges than those found else-
where, largely due to the fact that San Carlos held such an eclectic, an-
tagonistic mix of Indians. By allowing each resettled band to appoint its
own officers to the police force, Clum sought to balance the different and
often distinct interests and sensibilities of the reservation’s diverse popu-
lations. The force worked not only as an experiment in enforced unity
among the various bands of the reservation, but also as an arm of accul-
turation on the reservation, both regularizing and enforcing white legal
concepts on San Carlos. Clum and his successors uniformly praised the
performance of the police service in their annual reports, stating that
nothing preceded the men’s sense of duty in the exercise of their office.53
Such was the seeming success of Clum’s police that it provided the model
for a much wider experiment in Indian policing when such forces were
authorized on all reservations by Congressional statute in 1878.54 Within
three years, two-thirds of reservations had Indian police forces, totaling
over eight hundred men and Congress allocated upward of $70,000
annually.55
The police w ere only one part of Clum’s administrative structure and
judicial calculus, and in many ways the less important one at that. Once
the police apprehended an Indian, a seeming Pandora’s box of possibili-
128
ties opened. What exactly constituted a crime? How was a crime to be

judged—against what standard and by what institution? How was pun-
ishment to be assessed and enforced? Congress’s power to answer these
questions, even in theory, was legally suspect at the time.56 The issue had
not been pressed when the military was in charge of the reservation, but
with the ascendance of civilian control over San Carlos in the hands of
Clum, martial law was in abeyance. Clum had l ittle structure or guidance
for his little experiment. The only law on the books was the 1834 act regu-
lating Indian commerce. While it specified some commercial transgres-
sions and crimes, t hese were in the main aimed at affected whites rather
than Indians. The act was s ilent as to an explicit criminal or civil code to
be applied to reservation spaces.
nNnNnN
egal questions such as jurisdiction, venue, and even the operative legal
L
standard and code could be seen as little more than meaningless road-
blocks to the dispensing of rough-and-ready frontier justice. And, in-
deed, the instances in which authorities themselves seemed to give little
serious consideration to such considerations grossly outnumber those
where they did. However, the law was seen by many as one of the driving
forces civilizing the Indians. The law justified the conquest, subjugation,
and takings the Indians suffered at the hands of white settlers and the
American government.57 Law not only contained, but also justified vio
lence, at least to those who employed it. Further, it was a mark of civi-
lization. Only through its exercise would Indians be transformed from
“barbarians” into “civilized” subjects, and eventually citizens. The con
temporary silences on legal matters, while practically understandable,
are normatively troubling as they obscure the central importance of ques-
tions of law in federal-Indian relations and to the very character and defi-
nition of the republic itself.
The law was the ultimate expression of nineteenth-century positivism
and governance. It lay at the foundation of a just society and successful
civilization. The national and colonial projects of the time promised em-
pires of law, and thus liberty, as opposed to the past (in the European case)
or present (in the case of everyone else) barbaric practices of despotism.
Law stood as a powerfully defining normative and governing discourse
of the American state. While there was a profound disconnect between
the legal and lived policies affecting the Indians, the law was taken seri-
ously by its guardians (the Court), its executors (the President), as well as
129
its enactors (Congress). It is not enough to say the legal opinions of the
time were the outcome of a “lawyerly desire for consistency.”58 Such as-
sertions give insufficient credence to law’s import, minimizing the impact
of the dissonance between rhetoric and practice and what it reveals about
the nature of the American state itself.
The state of American law regarding the Indians was articulated by
the Supreme Court, which wrote, “The relation of the Indian tribes living
within the border of the United States, both before and since the Revolu-
tion, to the p eople of the United States, has always been an anomalous
one, and of a complex character.”59 The Court’s characterization of rela-
tions between the federal government and Indian tribes represents the
uniquely American penchant for claims of exceptionalism. But how the
US government dealt with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent
originated with the colonial practices the newly formed republic inher-
ited at its independence. It had a number of contemporary parallels around
the world, ranging from the settlement colonies of the British Empire, such
as Canada and Australia, to the practices of the Argentine republic on the
Pampas.60
The English, and subsequently British, practice employed in its Amer-
ican possessions was to transact with indigenous p eoples on a treaty basis,
ostensibly sovereign to sovereign. The meaning of Indian sovereignty was
never clearly defined, a fact that, intentional or not, enabled later genera-
tions of imperial and republican administrators alike to fudge its signifi-
cance.61 The United States codified its imperial inheritance of Indian rela-
tions in its Constitution.62 The special sovereign status of Indian tribes
was acknowledged in the so-called Indian commerce clause: “The Con-
gress s hall have the power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations,
and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”63 Juxtaposing
Indian tribes with two other sovereign bodies implicitly acknowledged In-
dian sovereignty, something the imperial practice of treaties had long
accepted. The newly independent republic continued to regulate its rela-
tions with Indian tribes through treaties, ratifying 371 of them between
1778 and 1871. It additionally controlled commerce with six separate acts
to regulate trade and intercourse with Indian tribes.64
Yet the implicit acknowledgment of Indian sovereignty was not the
same thing as its explicit definition. Indeed, while the inclusion of In-
dian tribes in the commerce clause with “foreign nations” and “several
states” admitted the tribes’ sovereignty, it did so in a manner revealing
the pluralistic nature of sovereignty deeply embedded in the American
130
constitutional architecture. Foreign nations, the states of the union, and

Indian tribes may all be sovereign bodies, but the nature of their sover-
eignty fundamentally differs. While relations with foreign nations are
governed by treaties—essentially contracts between two ostensibly equal
governmental parties—American states enjoy a sovereignty subsumed by
the supremacy of the Constitution and the plenary powers of federal gov-
ernment. They are governed by statutes passed by Congress, given force
by the Constitution’s supremacy clause and the judiciary’s hierarchical
view of federalism. At the time of the Constitution’s creation, Indian
tribes, with their history of treaty-based relations, more resembled for-
eign nations than the states of the newly formed u nion. But the fact that
Indian tribes were specifically enumerated, rather than simply included as
“foreign nations,” indicated their sovereignty somehow differed. The
placement of Indian tribes in the commerce clause a fter foreign nations
and states arguably construed their sovereignty as inferior to that of the
bodies preceding them. Just as the tribes socially inhabited a less ad-
vanced place in the hierarchy of civilization, politically they occupied a
lower rung in the hierarchy of power.
Where exactly Indian tribes sat in that hierarchy of power and what
that meant for tribal sovereignty was given definite form by the Supreme
Court in the 1820s and 1830s through a series of cases known as the Mar-
shall trilogy. In the second of the trilogy, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
(1831), Chief Justice John Marshall famously found the Cherokee to be
a “domestic dependent nation.”65 In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the
third installment, the Court recognized that “Indian nations have always
been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining
their natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil.”66 Yet such
recognition contradicted the trilogy’s first case, Johnson v. McIntosh
(1823), where Marshall denied Indians possessory rights over land, but
rather limited them to usufruct rights. In that case, the Court held “that
the Indian inhabitants are to be considered merely as occupants to be
protected, indeed, while in peace, in the possessions of their lands, but to
be deemed incapable of transferring the absolute title to others.”67 The
legal confusion spawned by the contradictions of the court’s logic here
shaped federal-Indian relations for the remainder of the century. The
trilogy failed to put relations with the tribes on a clear legal footing.
Nonetheless, it effectively subjugated Indian tribes as collective judicial
beings to the federal government, laying the foundations for the Con-
gress’s plenary power, which the court later expounded and expanded.
131
Taken together the opinions present less a unified statement of the place
of the American Indian in the republic’s constitutional and legal order
than a tortured attempt to judicially encapsulate contemporary political
belief and exigency.
That political belief and exigency determined the character of relations
between tribes and the federal government in the aftermath of the Mar-
shall trilogy. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the federal gov-
ernment vacillated between policies of assimilation and removal, at times
supported by and at other times at odds with the states. Regardless of
policy preference, the formal means of mediating relations remained the
treaty. The legal force of such treaties was something less than that of
treaties with foreign states, but something more than statutes, which ap-
plied to the states of the u nion. Indians w
ere at one and the same time
both within and without the United States. Their lands lay within the ex-
terior limits of the union, a claim recognized by foreign states though not
by the Indians themselves. Yet they were not citizens of the republic. There
was disagreement if they w ere even subject to its laws within their own
territories, which w ere themselves claimed by federal authorities to be en-
compassed within the United States. Indians inhabited a liminal and ill-
defined space, a “third space of sovereignty,” the contours of which w ere
decided through force and subsequently given legal sanction.68 As the
nineteenth century moved forward, the substantive terms of relations be-
tween the tribes and the federal government swung decidedly in f avor of
the latter, regardless of their formal instrument. Treaties less resembled
the negotiated outcome of the political meeting of two sovereigns, do-
mestic or foreign, than the dictates of settler colonial policy.
Congress banned f uture treaties with Indian tribes through a rider to
the annual Indian Appropriations Act in 1871.69 Substantively, agreements
with tribes resembled those found in earlier treaties, but these statutes
were now subject to the approval of both the House and the Senate. The
altered footing of relations buttressed Congress’s plenary powers at the
expense of Indian sovereignty.70 While the latter may have been previously
curtailed, if not totally inoperative, it was at the very least a legal fiction
with which the government had to contend before 1871. Following the
end of treaty relations, the federal government was f ree to deal with tribes
through normal statutory channels, which did not require their consent,
or, even more perniciously, through executive order. And this was precisely
the legal foundation upon which the San Carlos reservation rested when
it was established in 1872. Not only was Indian consent not required for
132
its creation, alteration, or destruction, but neither was Congressional sanc-

tion.71 Adjustments to its status, and thus the lives of its inhabitants, lay
wholly within the power of the President.
nNnNnN
The contested sovereignty of American Indian tribes closely resembled the
“independence” of tribes inhabiting the North-West Frontier of British
India. It was not only American jurists who employed the language of sov-
ereignty and independence, even if through their use of such vocabulary
these words were vacated of meaning. The “independence” of the peoples
inhabiting the frontiers of British India, like the sovereignty of American
Indians, was largely a function of linguistic gymnastics, and thus practi-
cally meaningless. The dissonance between law and reality was genuine,
and deadly for those on the wrong side of it. Nonetheless, both t hese co-
lonial powers felt it incumbent to continue the use of the language of in
dependence and sovereignty when referring to the tribes, even if they did
not believe in its meaningful existence.
Paired with the a ctual, if not legal negation of Indian sovereignty
through the course of the nineteenth c entury was the development of the
ward relationship between the tribes and the federal government. Mar-
shall laid the legal foundations for this relationship in Cherokee Nation,
writing, “They [the Indians] occupy a territory to which we assert a title
independent of their will, which must take effect in point of possession
when their right of possession ceases. Meanwhile they are in a state of
pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to
his guardian.”72 The pupilage to which Marshall referred was that of civi-
lization. Until such time as Indians graduated from their wardship, the
contours of their relationship with the government remained at best im-
precise. In the words of one author, “wardship [was] an ambiguous legal
status deemed curable by citizenship,” a position the Society of American
Indians would pursue at the turn of the twentieth century.73 But there ap-
peared little appetite to extend that cure to the Indian patients. Indeed,
despite the extension of citizenship following the Civil War and the pas-
sage of the Fourteenth Amendment to freed blacks, Indians remained
firmly outside this expansion.74
If Indians w ere not citizens of the republic, then what was the nature
and object of their allegiance? The Court definitively answered this ques-
tion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884). The reasoning was that, as members of “an
alien, though dependent power,” Indians owed their “direct and immediate
133
allegiance to the tribe” and thus were not US citizens. Despite being born
on land the Court previously constructed as “subject to the jurisdiction”
of the United States, Indians w ere subjects of their tribes, an exclusive
allegiance that remained paramount until the dissolution of tribal
bonds. Only once such bonds were dissolved would an individual Indian
be freed for assimilation as an American citizen. The exclusivity of tribal
allegiance is paradoxical when juxtaposed with the idea of state citizen-
ship. Both states and tribes were constitutionally sovereign bodies, but
while the court found the claims of allegiance on its members absolute in
the case of the latter, in the case of the former there was no bar to people
enjoying both state and federal citizenship simultaneously.
The currency of citizenship in the contemporary legal and political
mind was civilization, itself composed of two inextricably linked, though
by no means equally impor tant elements— Chris
tian
ity and private
property.75 The Supreme Court focused on the latter with repeated em-
phasis on the phrase “Indians not taxed,” which first appeared in the
Constitution and was repeated in the F ourteenth Amendment.76 Indians
could not become citizens until they were in the full possession of both
these elements, a process the ward relationship with the federal govern-
ment was meant to inculcate. The former was to be delivered by the
Grant administration’s peace policy. The latter was the aim of the Dawes
Act. Modeled on the Homestead Act of 1862, the Act broke up the
collective ownership of reservation lands in favor of individual owner
ship.77 Recognizing that most Indians were ill-prepared to take imme-
diate possession of the lands and make them productive, it held the land
in trust for the Indians, selling off excess land to white settlers. Once
Indians demonstrated themselves to be productive property owners,
they could become citizens, but only through a special act of Congress.78
It was not u ntil the Indian C itizenship Act of 1924 that the status of
“citizen” was extended to all Indians en masse, regardless of their
attainment of “civilization.”
Just as citizenship was subject to the mastery of private property for
the American Indians, so too was Afghan subjecthood along the British
Indian frontier conditioned on the maintenance of private property. The
indecipherability of local property arrangements among the Pashtun and
Baluch at least partly accounts for the emergence of the FCR in 1872,
based as it was on the Hazara Settlement Rules of 1870. The tribesmen
were “savages” b ecause they did not understand the value of individually
held property, which meant they did not utilize their lands with sufficient
134
industry or efficiency. This justified the taking of the most productive

lands by government authorities so they could be allocated to someone
else who would properly exploit it, be they white settlers or Hindu bania
merchants. As impor tant to the state, productive lands were taxable
lands. The remainder, lands not worth the taking, could be left to the
tribesmen. In the case of the Pashtuns, such lands would be subject to
their own systems of tenure in the tribal areas. In the case of the Amer-
ican Indians, it would be held in trust by the federal government u ntil
such time as the Indians demonstrated their competence to claim it back,
thereby ending their ward relationship and ideally becoming citizens of
the republic. Dressed as it may have been in the normative language of
civilization, denuded of rhetoric this was clearly about economic pre-
rogatives that ultimately underlay the legal structure of both the British
Empire and the American republic. Respect for and efficient use of prop-
erty was paramount.
In the late nineteenth c entury, the status of Indians within the Amer-
ican legal and political structure was confused at best and contradictory
at worst. They w ere sovereign, though domestic dependent nations. But
they w ere also wards of the federal government, who had sole responsi-
bility for relations with the Indian tribes. The one logically and necessarily
negated the other. Indians were neither truly independent like foreign
states nor citizens of the young republic. Rather they w ere subjects of their
tribe until such time as tribal bonds w ere irrevocably broken. This un-
holy trinity of sovereignty, wardship, and subjecthood failed to answer
whether or not individual Indians were subjects of American law.79
While Congress had explicit constitutional powers to regulate com-
merce and trade with Indians, and thus criminalize transgressions by
whites relating to that commerce, their power to promulgate laws for In-
dians themselves was less clear. Even Marshall’s declaration of the ward
relationship between Indians and the federal government did little to
clarify this issue. Indians not in “Indian country” or on reservations, but
within states of the u nion, were subject to the laws of that state, civil and
criminal, because of territorial jurisdiction. However, relatively few In-
dians lived in such areas. Indians on reservations and in “Indian country”
inhabited a jurisdictional morass created by the l egal and linguistic ambi-
guities of the Constitution and the Court. If the tribes were sovereign, then
at the very least that meant some amount of internal autonomy, best ex-
pressed through legal regulation. But to white understandings, much in-
digenous legal practice was morally repugnant and prevented Indians from
135
civilizational advancement. Practices of restorative justice (such as the pay-

ment of a victim or his or her family by the offender), communal owner
ship of real property, and polygamy w ere viewed as “barbarous” impedi-
ments by white authorities. White legal theories and practices, developed
80
for an advanced civilization, clearly could not be applied equitably to

“savage” ones.
Instead a system of tiered legal application developed wherein crim-
inal law was primarily the purview of Congress and secondarily the states,
“otherwise the reservation might become a sink of iniquity whence all the
surrounding territory be polluted.” White property law, “devised to govern
civilized society, not a primitive one, and which are not adapted to the
requirements of the latter, do not extend to the property of the Indians.”
As for personal law, “the domestic relations of the Indians” presented legal
“lacunae . . . filled by tribal custom, usage and law.”81 What those tribal
customs, usages, and laws w ere, however, remained both undefined and
at the same time subject to the approval of the individual reservation
agent, the “man on the spot.”82
On the San Carlos reservation, that man was John Clum. He faced a
legal landscape where individual Indians had no standing in the eyes of
the law and thus were nonjusticiable, a situation that did not change until
Standing Bear v. Crook in 1879.83 The courts lacked a clear or consistent
legal doctrine for dealing with individual Indians.84 However, such absence
did not prevent them from discounting Indian testimony or punishing In-
dians convicted for crimes against white settlers or the government. The
courts did not allow the fact that Indians were in a strict sense legally
illegible to prevent them from passing judgment and sentence. Yet when
the perpetrator and victim w ere both Indians, or the crime occurred on
an Indian reservation, the Supreme Court found that neither the federal
nor territorial courts had jurisdiction as Indian tribes were themselves sov-
ereign entities.85 In response, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act in
1885, which gave the federal government jurisdiction over seven major
crimes, including murder, rape, and assault, in Indian country regardless
of the identity of the perpetrators or victims.86 The Act, affirmed the fol-
lowing year in United States v. Kagama, ended Indians’ autonomy to
deal with crimes on their lands involving their p eople. Affirming what
Marshall had written a half century earlier, the Supreme Court stated,
“These Indian tribes are the wards of the nation. They are communities
dependent on the United States, dependent largely for their daily food; de-
pendent for their political rights. They owe no allegiance to the states, and
136
receive from them no protection.”87 What the Court left unsaid, though
clearly implied, was that not only did Indians “owe no allegiance to the
states,” but more importantly they had no choice in directing their alle-
giance. It was a debt they owed, to be collected by the federal government,
not a credit that the Indians could dispense at will.
Clum’s actions at San Carlos, however, resided in an e arlier moment of
transition in American Indian policy—a hiatus between the policies of re-
moval and assimilation. Grant’s peace policy favored the latter, seeking to
assimilate Indians to white settler society. But it did not fully provide the
means to accomplish this. Under the policy, churches were given authority
over the recruitment of Indian agents with an eye toward proselytization
of the Indians. The missionary efficacy of such arrangements was mixed at
best. Clum himself was not the most energetic steward of the Gospel to his
reservation flock. Conspicuously absent from his own writings is any men-
tion of efforts at conversion, or even acknowledgment of his Christian
charge. If Christianization was one pillar of civilization, then another pillar,
property ownership, awaited the General Allotment Act in 1887. The final
element, education, was likewise missing at the time of Clum’s tenure on
San Carlos. The Carlisle School, most famous of the Indian boarding
schools, was not founded until 1879, two years after he had left the reser-
vation. Clum occupied temporally liminal space in American Indian policy
just as the Chiricahua occupied a geographically peripheral one.
nNnNnN
While federal Indian policy seemed to tentatively and haphazardly em-
bark on a course of acculturation and Christianization at this time, Clum
was intent on pursuing a different course. Into legally murky waters he
plunged with his San Carlos police experiment. While the police provided
order, the question remained as to what forum provided the law. In a
number of cases, generally the more severe ones including depredations
against whites, Clum turned Indian suspects over to white authorities to
be dealt with. For instance, during the removal of the Chiricahua to San
Carlos, the tribal police apprehended a renegade leader, Pionsenay, accused
of murdering two whites. It was in fact this incident that prompted the
removal of the tribe and closure of the Chiricahua reservation. Clum trans-
ferred Pionsenay to the Tucson sheriff for trial in federal court.88 But the
issue of jurisdiction and justiciability was a complicated one, which nei-
ther Clum, nor his superiors in Washington, nor indeed the courts had a
clear answer to at the time.
137
Clum’s real innovation was not the San Carlos police, but rather the
“supreme court” he set up at the same time. Clum’s annual reports w ere
completely silent regarding this body. He briefly outlined the court’s
composition, in an article written for the Arizona Historical Review
more than fifty years a fter the fact, as including three or four prominent
chiefs (at least some of whom were themselves policemen), with himself
as the chief justice.89 In the one case he discussed, Clum served not only
as a police auxiliary in the apprehension of the suspect (a twispsit or
moonshiner), but also as chief prosecutor and chief judge. In the latter
role, Clum reserved to himself the authority to confirm the findings and
sentences of the court, much like the Deputy Commissioners (DC) in
British India’s tribal agencies. Despite the pretense at judicial institution
building then, justice remained in the hands of the agent, with no recourse
for those who fell afoul of it or, rather, of him. This court seemingly oper-
ated based on a combination of “tribal custom” and Anglo legal prece
dents. But what, exactly, those were is unclear. Further, the character of
the punishments imposed by the court can be discerned only in their
most basic outlines. Clum referred to the agency guardhouse, where sus-
pects and convicts w ere confined.90 He also made passing reference to
work orders and fines.
Clum’s court and the punitive measures it employed stood in marked
contrast with indigenous judicial practices. Just at the Apache lacked
formal political institutions structuring their communal life, justice was
maintained through social norms rather than institutional forms. For
transgressions affecting individuals, the operative norm was restorative
justice, with the animating aim to make the injured party w hole. It fell on
that party to pursue and enforce such restorative justice, though this did
not preclude them enlisting other members of the tribe to do so. In con-
trast, transgressions of communal norms affecting the group at large w ere
largely dealt with by public shaming or exclusion. Justice was neither in-
stitutionalized nor punitive as it would become u nder Clum’s supreme
court, or the subsequent Court of Indian Offenses.
The punitive innovations introduced by Clum’s court w ere important
in two ways. First, the move toward incarceration as punishment, as op-
posed to communal shaming or individual restorative justice, represented
the move by the state, personified by the agent (in this case Clum), to disci-
pline not only the individual offender but also the tribe at large. It emas-
culated the tribe’s power by abrogating its capacity for social censure and
138
thus communal policing. What once had been an individual or com-

munal responsibility was transformed into a state one. As such, the insti-
tutions required to execute this responsibility—namely a court, police
force, and jail—had to be created and maintained. Second, the use of
fines as a means of punishment further monetized governance, and in so
doing subjugated the Indians to the economic order of the settler society.
The fine required money, and money required wage work. Even in in-
stances where the fine was assessed in terms of coerced labor—an echo of
the carceral state formed in the ex-Confederacy of the American South—the
key effect was the disciplining of Indian labor into the white economy.
Through such actions, Indians were rendered dependent on the sur-
rounding white economy, transformed into a productive labor pool that
served the needs of local miners, ranchers and farmers. This was a cen-
trally important element in the transformation of Indians from a state of
“savagery” to civilization. Before they could enjoy the rights of citizen-
ship, Indians had to be turned into property owners—not only of land,
but of their own labor as well.
Just as the San Carlos police founded by Clum provided an institu-
tional doppelganger to Sandeman’s tribal militias, so too did the reserva-
tion’s “supreme court” stand as the American equivalent to the tribal
jirgahs or Council of Elders, which served as a central plank of the FCR.
Both relied on the participation of native men of authority and stature to
lend these judicial bodies legitimacy among the people they sat in judg-
ment of. Both invested the reservation agent or political officer with the
ultimate authority over the validation or otherwise of the bodies’ find-
ings. Both were limited in punitive sanction, with fines being their main-
stay.91 And despite the fact that the jirgahs of the Afghan frontier w ere a
legally codified body as opposed to an ad hoc practice, the legal content
of their proceedings remains as cryptic as that of Clum’s court. Yet these
adjudicative venues differed in significant ways. The jirgahs w ere legally
codified bodies existing anywhere the FCR was in force. Clum’s court,
however, was his own innovation and at the time only had a documented
existence on the San Carlos reservation. More importantly, the British
frontier and judicial administrators justified the jirgahs as a preexistent
indigenous practice that they were simply giving legal sanction to, rather
than their own innovation. Though a suspect claim at best, it is one colo-
nial administrators consistently advanced. In contrast, Clum acknowl-
edged and indeed celebrated the innovative character of his court.
139
Clum argued the court was a vehicle for the introduction of white legal
culture, and thus civilization, among the Apache.92 This idea clearly struck
a chord with his superiors who, as with his police experiment, used his
judicial one as a model for reservations across the country. In 1883, u nder
guidelines issued by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Courts of Indian
Offenses were created to deal with petty offenses and misdemeanors on
reservations.93 The courts lacked civil jurisdiction and, given the Major
Crimes Act, held a limited purview over criminal m atters in the Indian
domain. Composed of prominent Indian chiefs and holders of authority,
the courts w ere designed to introduce white law to the reservations, and
in so doing advance the acculturation and civilization of the Indians. As
with Clum’s court, the procedures of these courts in the early days were
both unclear and informal. Likewise, the concepts of criminal law and
punishment introduced by them onto the reservations were opaque, but
nonetheless disruptive. They marked an important interruption in Indian
life by replacing the norm-centered mechanisms of community justice in
Indian society with institutionally bounded ones enforcing radically dif
ferent ideas of crime and punishment.
By the time Clum’s supreme court was scaled up as the Court of In-
dian Offenses, he had left the San Carlos reservation in frustration and
disgust. Following the successful capture of Geronimo and removal of the
Ojo Caliente Apache to the reservation in April and May 1877, Clum
acted on his previously submitted resignation.94 Although he had won the
initial fight with the military over the control of San Carlos, he believed
that victory to be eroding and with it his power and independence. Clum
had persistently lobbied his superiors in Washington for increased re-
sources, and been persistently denied them. After nearly three years, he
finally had enough. He sent a final proposal to the Commissioner of In-
dian Affairs stating he would stay on at San Carlos if his salary were
substantially increased and he was allowed to enlarge his police force to
three companies, which could then be charged with maintaining control
over the Indians throughout Arizona. In the summer of 1877, not waiting
for the inevitable rejection, he left the Bureau of Indian Affairs and moved
to Tombstone, where he became mayor as well as owner and editor of
the Arizona Citizen.95
Assessing his tenure as agent, Clum wrote to his superiors,
Since taking charge of the San Carlos Agency in 1874 it has been
my lot to consolidate five agencies into one, and to superintend the
140
movement of about four thousand wild Indians to the San Carlos

reservation; thus bringing together Indians, who, by their former
locations, were separated by a distance of 600 miles; and also
opening to ranchmen and miners three Indian reservations, in-
cluding important tracts of agricultural and mineral lands. These
movements have all been effected without the loss of a single life,
and without destroying the property of citizens.96
Clum’s exit from the reservation created a vacuum once occupied by the
force of his personality. Subsequent agents proved incapable of filling it.
As a consequence, the policies and practices he authored began to atrophy
almost immediately. Unlike his contemporary Sandeman, Clum failed to
construct an institutional superstructure to ensure the survival of his in-
novations beyond his tenure. It was left to Congress to do so after he left
the scene.
The ultimate demise of Clum’s administrative innovations was has-
tened by a number of tribal breakouts following on the heels of his resig-
nation. In the autumn of 1877, Geronimo led a band of Chiricahua out
of San Carlos toward Sonora and the Sierra Madre Occidental. This band
remained a near constant threat to both the American and Mexican gov-
ernments, as well as a source of fear and angst to Arizona settlers u ntil
their negotiated return to the reservation in 1883. While Clum proudly
trumpeted in the pages of his Arizona Citizen the fact that no breakouts
occurred during his tenure as the San Carlos agent, the truth in his per-
fect record was more likely an accident of his well-timed exit rather than
his ability to contain the pressures created by a five-fold increase in the
reservation’s population during his three years as agent. The concentra-
tion policy was a recipe for violence that needed only time to ferment.
With its explosion in 1877, the military renewed pressure not only on the
Indians, but also on the Indian agents who it believed should be subsumed
under its own authority. The agents proved impotent in resisting this pres-
sure, largely due to their perceived ineptitude, and the army resumed
control in 1883.97
Despite his claims to the contrary, there was significant overlap be-
tween Clum’s administration and military control. Clum made much of
his use of Indian police, yet General Crook had long employed and pre-
ferred Apache scouts. The latter became a mainstay of his military methods
in tracking down Victorio and Geronimo.98 For the Apache, the opportu-
nity to scout for the army off the reservation or to police on it provided
141
one of the few opportunities, apart from resistance, for them to maintain
martial practices. As importantly, t hese provided one of the few opportu-
nities for paid work, something that was becoming a mainstay of life and
necessity on the reservation. Both the reservation police and the army
scouts, like the tribal militias along the Afghan frontier, funneled the most
able-bodied men into a military labor market where the terms of service
were monopolized by the colonial power.
The day-to-day operations of t hese bodies w
ere virtually indistinguish-
able, but the ends for which they were deployed—civilian governance
versus military campaigning—differed significantly. And those ends re-
flected the different ethos of civilian as opposed to military administration
of the Indians. Whereas Clum pursued an alien, but individuated justice
against the Indians, Crook and his military successors treated the Indians
collectively. Tribal breakouts w ere dealt with more often than not with
collective punishment, with those who stayed on the reservation subject
to the same harsh sanctions as those who fled. The bitterest example of
this was the treatment of the Chiricahua after Geronimo’s final sur-
render in 1886. Though his band of renegades included only a small
number of his fellow tribesmen, most of whom remained quiescent on the
reservation, the entire Chiricahua tribe was banished to Florida as pris-
oners of war. Under Crook’s leadership, however, the military opted more
often than not for the velvet glove rather than the iron fist. Many times he
negotiated the return of renegades to the reservation, promising few if any
consequences for those who had fled. It was only a fter the arrival of his
replacement, General Nelson Miles, that the fist decisively struck in 1886.
More than anything, the methods of governance of the Chiricahua and
the San Carlos reservation were marked by instability and confusion. The
back and forth between Clum and Crook, personifying the tensions be-
tween civilian and military control of the Indian question, exposed the
whiplash of bureaucratic politics. Both sides complained that the continual
public tension over who held ultimate responsibility for Indian governance
degraded white authority over the Indians. Prestige, that incalculable asset
of authority, was undermined by tawdry turf fights. The worst of all pos
sible worlds in the eyes of all concerned was the system of dual manage-
ment, where civilian agents and military officers shared responsibilities.
Such an arrangement only led to further confusion and inefficiencies, for
both the Indians and white authorities. Neither the system of dual man-
agement nor the bureaucratic infighting it gave rise to were unique to the
Arizona territory or the American West more generally. Rather, they mir-
142
rored arguments taking place along the Afghan borderlands, as well as

along other similarly situated frontiers of the British Empire. Just as the
innovations Clum instituted were later replicated on other reservations,
so too was Sandeman’s system reproduced along the limits of other Eu
ropean empires as well. Both w ere progenitors of the global construction
of frontier governmentality as European empires expanded and attempted
to tame the “savage” periphery.
It is more than coincidence that men of comparable dispositions came
upon virtually identical ideas of border management simultaneously. San-
deman and Clum w ere both products of similarly permissive environ-
ments that encouraged the development of their systems of frontier gov-
ernmentality, and then largely a dopted them once developed. Central to
these environments was the ability of the “man on the spot” to shape a
reality on the ground, which central authorities would subsequently find
hard to overturn. As Indian agent, Clum had little oversight and great au-
tonomy and power over those he was charged with. The same was true
of Sandeman, himself responsible for an area even larger than Clum’s
Connecticut-sized reservation. The physical removal of Baluchistan and
San Carlos from their respective centers of authority gave these agents
freedom to enact the policies they saw fit and present them as a fait ac
compli to superiors. In effect, the “man on the spot” was the man in charge.
Administrative wrangling created opportunities for enterprising agents
like Clum and Sandeman to score their own personal victories.
Yet one need balance the autonomy of the “man on the spot” against
the fact that t hese men were bureaucrats of late nineteenth-century states
that w ere in the midst of professionalizing their servants and asserting ever
more control over them. The space of autonomy, which both Clum and
Sandeman exploited, was at least in part a consequence of design. The
American republic and the British Raj both abjured the assertion of their
exclusive authority along these frontiers because they would be hard-
pressed to convincingly do so at a cost both sustainable and palatable.
But most importantly, this decision reflected not simply a cost-benefit
analysis, but rather a fundamental norm of governance and aspect of these
states’ characters—namely that both were creatures of sovereign pluralism
rather than sovereign absolutism.
It was not only the states that were similar, but also the “savages” they
ruled in these spaces. Structural factors predisposed these “men on the spot”
to a relatively narrow band of options. Though Clum and Sandeman w ere
a world away from one another, in the eyes of the societies and powers they
143
represented, the p eoples they interacted with were not. Sandeman’s Baluch
and Afghans lacked civilization just like Clum’s Chiricahua Apache. The
resistance of these peoples and the relative poverty of the land they inhab-
ited made conquest and subjugation prohibitively expensive. Their location
at the extremities of state power meant the ability to compel them was
fundamentally compromised. They needed to be corralled into physically
limited spaces where they could be policed, not through the intrusion of
“civilized” forms and norms of governance beyond their understanding and
cultural dispositions but by their own customs and traditions as sanctioned
by state authorities. These frontier administrators confronted substantively
the same circumstances and reacted by d oing in effect the same thing.
There is a direct parallel of the American Indians and the Chiricahua
in particul ar with the Pashtuns along the British Indian frontier. The legal
regimes they faced transcended the personalized administrations of San-
deman and Clum. For the Afghans, the practices of frontier governmen-
tality w ere codified in the FCR in 1872. The Regulation encapsulated the
Afghans on territorially restricted reservations, known as “tribal areas,”
where the natives were expected to police themselves through locally
raised militia and / or paramilitary police forces that fell u nder the con-
trol of the government DC. They w ere subject to local judicial bodies over-
seen by the DC, which employed colonially sanctioned native customs,
traditions, and practices. Though t here was no single equivalent of the
FCR in the United States, the triumvirate of the tribal police, the Courts
of Indian Offenses, and the Major Crimes Act substantively accomplished
the same t hing. Whereas the FCR essentially denied jurisdiction to the co-
lonial courts over nearly all crimes save adultery, the Major Crimes Act
did virtually the opposite, giving federal (in this case, colonial) courts ex-
clusive jurisdiction over serious crimes. Yet both the FCR and Major
Crimes Act structured the judicial universes the frontier dwellers inhab-
ited, creating the opportunities they could take advantage of as well as
the limits they were bound by. In effect, they cut both the Indians and Af-
ghans off from normal judicial venues, rendering them imperial objects
in the eyes of the law.
While the ultimate aim of encapsulation on reservations may have
differed—the British Raj never sought to acculturate and assimilate as did
the American government—such lofty goals w ere far removed in time and
space. With the exception of South Africa, and to a lesser extent K enya,
the British colonies examined here were distinguished by the fact that they
were not colonies of settlement. Imperial administration necessarily took
144
a different hue when not under pressure from settlers. Yet in its practical
effects, the difference was rather less than one might imagine. The p eople
subject to frontier regimens of rule in the British Empire were never con-
sidered citizens or subjects, even if imperial ones at that. Rather, like the
American Indians, they w ere objects of imperial action. With no mean-
ingful legal recourse, ruled indirectly by state sanctioned “customs and
traditions,” considered “sovereign” and “independent” by imperial author-
ities, yet rendered dependent on the neighboring colonial economy
through linkages to the local and global military labor market, these
peoples of the periphery suffered under a globalized system of frontier
governmentality constructed near simultaneously in the late nineteenth
century.
The divergent aims of governance, themselves a consequence of the dis-
tinct characters of colonial societies, led to the differential application of
these forms of frontier governmentality. The Raj, having consciously un-
burdened itself of Kipling’s call to the “white man’s burden” along the
frontier, embedded its system of frontier governmentality there with surety.
The personalized system of administration championed by Sandeman be-
came institutionalized. In contrast, the American commitment to civilizing
the Indians complicated its actions among them. There was a lack of a
clear, consistent, and coherent method of administration on the San Carlos
reservation through this period, reflecting many of the problems of Indian
governance specifically and governance more generally. This meant that
reservation administration necessarily rested upon shaky foundations that
could quickly dissolve with the departure of an individual agent. Clum’s
system of frontier governmentality, though extended to other reserva-
tions, collapsed at San Carlos a fter he exited. The real contrast with the
frontier governmentality of the Raj was the decided ambivalence of the
American government born of the inherent contradictions of its own
policies. The Indians, unlike the Afghans, w ere to be civilized and assimi-
lated. But they first needed to be pacified. This was best accomplished by
utilizing local customs familiar and legitimate to them, exercised by rec-
ognized holders of authority who had been co-opted and subsequently
overseen by a government agent. Yet relying on the “customs and tradi-
tions” of “savages” did nothing to advance their civilization. This con-
tradiction bred indecision among American policymakers, making their
commitment to particular policy prescriptions tepid at best.
American ambivalence was not simply a product of the contradictory
impulses of its Indian policies, but also of its democratic politics, something
145
the colonial authorities of the British Empire did not have to deal with
until well into the twentieth c entury, and even then not in regard to its
frontier spaces. The proximity of the American frontier, physically as
well as emotionally, gave it a different weight in the popular conscious-
ness than Britain’s far-removed imperial frontiers. White settlers in the ter-
ritories proved an important and vocal interest group influencing policy.
At times they often affected their own, forcing the government to e ither
denounce them or ratify their actions. White settler society was far from
homogenous and instead was riven by factions who, often through their
support behind the various bureaucratic blocs, vied for control of Indian
policy. Money was as stake—not only in land, but also in resources, as
well as trade. Clum was accused of being beholden to the so-called Tucson
ring of merchants who had profitable contracts with the Bureau of In-
dian Affairs to supply San Carlos. In contrast, General Crook was sup-
ported by the Prescott ring, itself composed of merchants with lucrative
supply contracts for the military. Ranching, mining, and timber interests
vied with one another for Indian land on San Carlos and elsewhere. More
often than not, they got what they wanted. But in the process, they cre-
ated pressures that led to an unseemly back and forth in policy prefer-
ence and approach, in particular between the army and the agent.
But while the methods of governance may have varied between civil
and military authorities, the ultimate aims differed little. The Indians were
meant to disappear, at least culturally, but also physically if necessary. Civil
control proposed d oing this through a process of assimilation while mili-
tary control offered, in its most excessive form, eradication. In truth, neither
side hewed to these extreme positions, but instead navigated a contingent
combination of acculturation and force. Both approaches w ere forms of
violence—one epistemic and the other actual—resting on a continuum of
force that served as the bedrock of Indian governance. Assimilation, after
all, meant the destruction of Indian culture and its replacement with white
culture, namely capitalism and Christianity. This was to be accomplished
through education, proselytization, and property ownership. The Dawes
Act, ending communal ownership of tribal lands by granting title to indi-
viduals, was meant to force the last of t hese elements onto the Indians.
In this aim of eradication, American efforts more closely resembled
those of the Argentine republic than the British Empire. In Argentina’s
“conquest of the desert,” a campaign against the indios of Patagonia con
temporary with that of the American fight against the Apache, the ex-
panding republic sought to erase the indios with the conquest of their
146
lands. This was partly a physical eradication through violence. But the
Argentine state was too weak to accomplish such a feat, as well as nor-
matively prevented from d oing so by the objections of at least some of its
influential citizens and elites. More interesting, in the case of both the
United States and Argentina, Indian eradication was fundamentally pre-
mised on the liberal idea of citizenship, an inclusive identity at the core of
the respective republics’ self-understandings. Following their conquest, the
indigenous inhabitants of t hese countries were no longer to be Indians or
indios, but rather citizens and ciududanos. A republican form of govern-
ment, postulated on the uniform and universal application of the law,
should not recognize difference within the bounds of its political commu-
nity. One was either in or out, and, if in, was an American or Argentine.
The assumption of citizenship erased one’s past in order to glue together
the present political body.
While this may have been true in theory, it proved true in practice in
neither the United States nor Argentina. The primary reason for this is
that while political ideas and norms may have been conceived as universal
abstracts, their daily enactment had to navigate the contours of political
and social topographies marked by prejudice and power. The republican
ideal was subject to the constraints of the civilizational—and racial—
reality. “Savages” could not be citizens, at least not until they w ere civi-
lized. This meant the abandonment of their “barbarous” indigenous prac-
tices and assumption of the markers of civilization, namely Christianity,
property, and the rule of law. Indians required tutoring in these ways and
their pupilage, however long or short it may be, was ultimately the re-
sponsibility of the state and the settler society it represented. Only once
Indians had abandoned their own “primitive” ways and perfectly a dopted
the civilized ones of white society could they become full participants in
the political community—citizens. This classic view of civilization and
“savagery,” expressed by Sarmiento and Turner, had its roots in older ideas
about the hierarchy of civilizations and whites’ and Indians’ respective
places in that hierarchy. As condescending as this view of human civiliza-
tion was, it nonetheless allowed for the advancement and progress of those
lower in the hierarchy to a higher level of civilization and being, eventu-
ally on par with white society. But the racial thinking that dominated by
the end of the nineteenth century permitted no such possibility of equality,
theoretical or otherwise.
While Indians could overcome their “savagery,” they could not escape
their race. The ideas of scientific racism predominant in the latter part of
147
the nineteenth c entury turned their perceived barbarism into a conse-

quence of their inferior biology, rather than simply an effect of their
backward culture. As with blacks, there were natural and thus insurmount-
able limits to the potential advancement of Indians. While they could
adopt the outward modes of white society, such adoptions would be
simply emulative rather than truly transformative. Given this, even if In-
dians could be politically enfranchised through the extension of citizen-
ship, they could not be expected to be equal to whites. Though the law of
the republic may be theoretically blind, society was most definitely not.
In truth, neither was the law. The idea of Indian sovereignty, as articu-
lated by the Constitution and American jurisprudence, carved out an ex-
ceptional space for the Indians to inhabit. Indian legal separateness sur-
vived the g reat upheaval of the American Civil War and its aftermath. That
exceptionality meant in practice they remained excluded. This is where
the American and Argentine experiences most fundamentally differed. For
while both shared a history of relations with the Indians based on trea-
ties, and both expanded and conquered Indian lands at approximately
the same time in the wake of the respective republics’ federative crises,
and both employed citizenship as the vernacular of political identity and
belonging, they ultimately took different paths in the moment a fter con-
quest.99 The main reason for this was the greater abilities of the Amer-
ican as opposed to the Argentine state. Equally though, the actions of the
American state belied a confusion absent in the Argentine case. The Amer-
ican government, buffeted about by the competing interests of various
bureaucratic bodies (i.e., the war and interior departments), the entrenched
interests of settlers, the sometimes complementary interests of capitalists,
and demands of reformers, not to mention the unyielding need for
economy, alternated rather wildly from one policy to another. The Argen-
tine government, though facing many of the same pressures, lacked the
established reservations that could have potentially complicated their
treatment of the indios. This sped their integration, or rather eradication,
of the native populace, who became citizens with conquest. American In-
dians had to await the Indian Citizenship Act.
nNnNnN
If citizenship is the defining individual characteristic of political identity
in the modern age, then sovereignty is its corporate counterpart. Perhaps
the most interesting issue in the case of the Apache, and the American In-
dians more generally, is that while the US government in the main denied
148
the Indians the former in the late nineteenth c entury, it ascribed to them
the latter. But that ascription, though meaningful de jure, was meaning-
less de facto. Just as the Afghans w ere not truly independent, the Indians
were not truly sovereign. Or more precisely, their sovereignty was nested
within that of the United States. The Apache experience shows that sov-
ereignty is not an absolute condition, but rather a graduated state. As a
nation-state, the United States is historically conceived as a sovereign state,
where this aspect of its character is defined as indivisible. In contrast, the
British Empire is better considered a space of layered sovereignty, or sov-
ereign pluralism. Here, sovereignty is a negotiated relationship rather than
an absolute characteristic of the state. But on the margins of both, such
theoretical archetypes succumb to the lived reality of political authority.
While some might like to differentiate the motivating political logic of
the white republics of Argentina and the United States from that of Euro
pean colonial empires, and in particular the British Empire, t hese were all
imperial projects.100 Differently shaded and shaped no doubt, the differ-
ences were of degree rather than kind. Nowhere is this more clearly dem-
onstrated than along the edges of these projects. It was on these periph-
eries at roughly the same time—the 1870s to the mid-1880s—that these
political corporations constructed a regime of rule to deal with the prob-
lematic p eoples living there. This system of frontier governmentality, far
from being in some manner exceptional, was quite quotidian.101 It was not
at odds or a departure from the essential nature of the modern state being
constructed at this time around the world, but rather was central to it.
Consequently, a consideration of such frontier governmentality reveals
much about not only the forgotten frontiers of the colonial and postcolo-
nial world, but also more importantly about the fundamental structure of
that world itself. The frontier lay at the heart of the modern global order.
Yet one may wonder the applicability of frontier governmentality to
the experiences of the American Indians who were enveloped within the
territories claimed by the United States and recognized as such by other
European and neo-European powers. Some of those Indians inhabited res-
ervations physically located on the bounds of the expanding American
state. The Chiricahua reservation, for example, ran along the border be-
tween the Arizona territory and Mexico. However, the majority of Indians
lived on reservations—in “Indian country”—far removed from the limits
of an alien power.102 Did this interiority of the American Indian experi-
ence make it fundamentally different than that of the frontier dwellers of
the British Empire? Emphatically not. Because the “frontier” is not a place,
149
but rather a practice manifest through claims and administrative routines

expressed in particular territorial spaces.
The spaces inhabited by American Indians w ere themselves frontiers,
regardless of their physical location abutting a foreign potentate or not.
They w ere made and maintained as such through the practices of frontier
governmentality employed and policed by the settler colonial government
of the United States. All the constituent elements of frontier governmen-
tality are readily apparent in the experiences of the American Indians. They
were subject to a form of “indirect rule” overseen by a combination of
civilian agents and military officers who relied on indigenous holders of
authority—“chiefs”—to implement their w ill. Such “indirect rule” was en-
capsulated by them in their own customs and traditions in physically
limited spaces from which they w ere not allowed free egress and entry. The
Indians w ere sovereign, though not completely so. Rather, they possessed a
lesser sovereignty within the American political universe where sovereignty
was itself plural and overlapping, though at the same time decidedly hier-
archical. Individually, Indians were neither citizens of the republic nor even
visibly subjects of its laws u ntil the late nineteenth century. Rather, they
were objects of the imperial state—for their denial of admission into the
national body politic made the US government anything but a national
state to them—who were acted upon with little regard for any obligation
toward them by the state, treaty stipulations notwithstanding. They w ere
rendered dependent on the globalizing American economy through treaty
rations, and they w ere transformed into wage laborers through recruit-
ment into military and paramilitary policing activities. Regardless of place,
the space American Indians inhabited was that of the frontier.
It was along that frontier the American state built and defined itself, a
fact attested to by the lasting power of Turner’s frontier thesis. The simulta-
neous construction of identical regimes of rule along the Afghan and Ari-
zona frontiers in the mid-1870s, independent and ignorant of one another,
reveals that frontier governmentality served as the natural template of con-
trol for modernizing imperial projects where faced with a specific set of
political, cultural, and ecological challenges. This template was built on
established antecedents. But its particular structure—political, legal, as well
as economic—made frontier governmentality a specifically modern advent.
The parallels between the British Indian frontier and that of the American
West, while arresting, are not surprising. Or rather they should not be, for
here are two states with similar imperial projects expanding their rule
among poor nomadic p eoples inhabiting agriculturally unproductive and
150
rugged lands. The surprise is spurred not by the comparison between the
Afghans and the Apache, but rather between the British Indian Empire
and the American republic.103 In the minds of many, these are distinctive,
if not antipodean political projects manifesting radically different institu-
tional structures and norms of governance. The former was a self-proclaimed
empire, a political form dating back to the advent of recorded history;
the latter, a nation-state, a new kind of political community born of
the revolutionary violence of the late eighteenth century. Yet along their
frontiers such distinctions collapse. Frontier governmentality proves a
great flattener of imagined state differences.
In 1886, following the surrender of Geronimo and his final band of
“renegades” to General Nelson Miles, all the remaining Chiricahua—even
those who had scouted for Miles and helped capture Geronimo—were
deported as prisoners of war to Florida. By this time, their numbers had
nearly halved from 1,200 to just u nder 600. The years in Florida, then
Alabama, and finally Oklahoma would likewise negatively affect the Chir-
icahua’s population. By the time they w ere offered the opportunity to
return to the Southwest and live on the Mescalero reservation in southern
New Mexico, barely one hundred took up the offer. Ultimately, though
they had suffered greatly, the Chiricahua had been neither fully eradicated
nor assimilated. Their survival signaled the failure of American Indian
policy, their tragedy a stain on its national conscience. Unless that policy
was less about eradication or assimilation, and more about encapsulation—
precisely the aim of frontier governmentality—then it was an outstanding
success from the perspective of the state.
The Apache were hardly the only peripheral peoples subject to such a
regime of rule in the late nineteenth-century world of expanding frontiers.
Rather, they expose the common forms of frontier governmentality de-
veloping simultaneously along far-removed, though similarly situated ex-
panses of the globally ubiquitous imperial frontier. The Apache, like the
Afghans, found themselves bounded within reservations, ruled by their
own customs and traditions, and subjugated to the requirements of the
white, colonial economy. Such frontier governmentality transformed t hese
people not into citizens or subjects, but into objects to be acted on. As
such, they remained at one and the same time both insiders and outsiders,
inhabitants of a “third space of sovereignty.” They remain trapped in that
state today.
nNnNnN
151
At the beginning of the twentieth century, after the Apache terror had been
tamed in the white imagination, the nation transferred its gaze from one
of feared “barbarism” to celebrated spectacle. Teddy Roosevelt included
Geronimo in his inauguration parade, dressed in his Indian regalia, not
only to show off the inheritance of America, but also to clearly display
the subjugation of its “savagery.” John Clum was taken aback at the
thought that his old nemesis was to be celebrated in a parade down Con-
stitution Avenue.104 Yet Clum’s denunciation of the public pageant was
hypocritical. He had brought a troupe of Chiricahua with him to Wash-
ington, DC, in 1876 while agent at San Carlos with the intention of capi-
talizing on their exoticism like so many other contemporary “wild west
shows.”105 Clum’s objections were couched in the language of righteous
indignation that a murderer and rebel would be honored by the republic
on the day of the passage of power of America’s most exalted office. Like
his contemporaries, he problematized neither the voyeurism inherent in
such a spectacle, nor more pointedly the brutal legacy of federal-Indian
relations that Geronimo’s presence personified. Despite Clum’s protests,
Geronimo, along with five other Indian chiefs, marched and was feted in
the parade.
A century later, Geronimo again gained prominence in the nation’s cul-
tural imagination, if only in passing. While his image has been commer-
cialized on t-shirts wryly noting the origins of “homeland security” in
1492, more disturbingly his name has been used as the pseudonym for
the country’s most wanted enemy, a position Geronimo once claimed as
his own. By invoking his name in the current global War on Terror, the
United States elides, intentionally or not, the War on Terror with the war
of terror it once waged against the Apache and Indians more generally.
As importantly, the invocation reminds us of the origins of that previous
terror in the form of frontier governmentality, the aftereffects of which
continue to shape our world today. The violence of the global War on
Terror, which was momentarily transposed from Arizona to the Afghan
borderlands with the code-naming of bin Laden as “Geronimo,” has a
deeper, shared history in both locales. The forgotten peripheries of the Fed-
erally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan and San Carlos, among
some 300-odd US reservations, remain pregnant with the possibilities and
scars of violence enacted on them through the course of the construction
of the modern state system.
152
N6n
Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert
and the Limits of Frontier
Governmentality
T he desert was empty. That emptiness made it dangerous. It incubated

“savagery” among those who ventured into it, especially the gauchos.
The wild lands turned them wild and barbarous. Their barbarism, most
famously denounced by Domingo Sarmiento, threatened civilization and
the newly united republic that nurtured it.1 If the republic was to survive,
if civilization was to thrive, the desert had to be subjugated. But barba-
rism was not the only danger birthed by the desert. Its emptiness presented
a less active, but no less pressing danger. The desert was nothing but waste-
land. As such, it was an affront to the modernizing impulse of the Argen-
tine state, which stood in the way of national wealth, of modern capi-
talism. The wasteland was dangerous as it displayed the weakness of
man—the sovereignty of nature over humanity. To tame such dangers, the
desert needed to be conquered.
As with American westward expansion, the Argentine conquista del
desierto (conquest of the desert) was a seminal event in the making of
modern Argentina.2 Roughly spanning the decade from 1875 to 1885, it
was part of the process known as el processo de organización nacional
(the process of national organization), which saw the emergence of the
modern Argentine state nearly three quarters of a century after it declared
independence from its Iberian overlord.3 Beyond constituting the exten-
sion of the Argentine republic into its modern borders, the conquest was
centrally important in shaping its state form—both formally and substan-
tively. It thus presents a story where the periphery defined the center
through its subjugation.
153
Rio
Sala
Santiago URUGUAY
do
Buenos Aires R io
de L
a Plata
1870
SAL IN A S
GRAND E S
CHILE 1879 Bahia Blanca
PAIS DE LAS
Rio Negro
MANZANAS
1883
ay
Valdivia
im
Carmen de Patagones
oL
Ri
PATAGONIA
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
1879
1879 1870
0 100 miles 1879/1882
0 500 km
1883
Map 6. Argentina, c. 1885.
154
The central question raised, and answered by the Argentine conquest

of the desert, was how the republic was to relate to indigenous p eoples
inhabiting the ill-defined extremities of the state. What effect would both
the method and substance of that answer have on the emerging Argen-
tine state? The delimitation of the state’s territories marked by the con-
quest was a state-shaping enterprise through the integration of territory.4
The subjugation of the indios (Indians) was just as important. The rela-
tionship between the state and the indios was framed as a dichotomous
relationship between “civilization” on the one hand and “barbarism” on
the other.5 As the rhetoric of Sarmiento attests, there was the important
task of constructing the other against whom the state would define itself.
The state had to make its enemies legible in order to render itself so. In
this sense, the Argentine state and the various bands of indios it subju-
gated through the conquest were mutually constitutive.6
The conquest of the desert provides yet another chapter in the story
of the emergence and entrenchment of frontier governmentality along the
perimeter of expanding state system of the late nineteenth century. While
this story shares much in common with those episodes already discussed,
it also differs in significant respects. In many ways, the conquest fails to
fit the paradigm of frontier governmentality, and thus demonstrates the
model’s explanatory limits. The Argentine state ultimately opted for the
direct rule of subject peoples rather than ruling them indirectly through
traditional holders of authority. It did not recognize the sovereignty of na-
tive peoples, but rather treated them as subjects of the republic’s univer-
sally applicable legal regime. The indios, rather than being excluded from
the state’s judicial sphere as imperial objects, were instead made citizens
of the republic. They were, however, made economically dependent on the
white settler economic order as wage laborers. Part of that wage labor
sphere included their participation in a nascent military labor market—
indirectly as indios amigos (friendly Indians) and more directly as mem-
bers of the Argentine military, often in the role of scouts like the Apache
of Arizona.7 On three out of four counts then, the Argentine expansion
into the Pampas and Patagonia fails the tests of frontier governmentality.
Yet this is not the w hole, nor indeed most revealing, part of the story
of the conquest. The interesting question about the Argentine experience
is why the young republic decided not to follow the burgeoning template
of administration at the moment of its spread and reproduction around
the world. This question is doubly confounding as Argentina looked to
the United States as a model for its own expansion, putting in place much
155
of the legal framework found in its northern neighbor, including the idea
of reservations.8 Ultimately though, the southern republic opted not to
mimic its northern neighbor, nor more broadly construct the emergent
system of frontier governmentality entrenching itself along similarly situ-
ated spaces around the globe. This was not due to a lack of exposure to
the ideas of frontier governmentality, nor indeed to some of the personnel
enforcing it. Why, then, did Argentina not construct this regime of rule
along its periphery? And what does Argentina’s failure to do so reveal
about the limits of frontier governmentality?
nNnNnN
here are multiple explanations that may account for Argentina’s failure
T
to construct frontier governmentality along its limits. Argentina was pre-
viously a Spanish colony, and imperial Spain in general and the lands that
made up Argentina in particular had their own history and tradition of
frontier rule and relations with indigenous peoples.9 Further, Argentina
in the late nineteenth c entury was a colony of settlement, unlike many of
the lands within the British Empire examined in the preceding pages.
Either, or possibly both, of these facts represented a different paradigm
of power into which Argentina fit. Yet such differences, while true, are
not germane. With regard to the former, the Spanish tradition of frontier
rule in general and in the Argentine lands in particular differed qualita-
tively little from that examined elsewhere.10 Further, the fathers of the re-
public, in this instance at least, showed themselves more than willing to
abandon what historical hold the Spanish traditions may have had over
them when they put in place a legal regime of frontier rule consciously
based on the American system. With regard to the latter, the idea that Ar-
gentina’s character as a society of white settlement accounts for the dif-
ference is not convincing. After all, Chapter 5 examined how another
white settler society, the United States, constructed a system of frontier
governmentality along its limits. The same was seen in South Africa, as
well as arguably Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.11 Further, the mas-
sive influx of white European immigrants followed rather than preceded
Argentina’s conquest of the desert. What then accounts for Argentina’s
different trajectory?
Argentina clearly intended to put in place the system of frontier gov-
ernmentality along its limits, much like its contemporary colonial counter
parts. As in other areas, republican authorities viewed the experiences of
the United States as both a model and bellwether of its own frontier
156
e xpansion, including for strategies of management for native p eoples in the

newly conquered realms of the republic.12 At the same time Julio A. Roca,
commander of the Argentine expedition, conquered the desert, William T.
Sherman, chief of the US army, oversaw a number of campaigns to subdue
the indigenous inhabitants of the American West, including the subjugation
of the Chiricahua Apache. And the Argentine ambassador to the United
States dispatched the translation of a lengthy memo from the American
Secretary of the Interior outlining the most important Native American
peoples and the government’s policies t oward them.13
In certain instances, there was a demonstrable political will to insti-
tute the forms of frontier governmentality over the newly conquered
peoples of the periphery. Yet what was clearly lacking in the Argentine
case was the state’s institutional ability to affect the system on the ground.
The Argentine state was simply too weak to put in place, maintain, and
enforce frontier governmentality along its limits.14 While the military arm
of the state had honed its competencies of violence—capabilities it would
subsequently bring to bear on the indios of the Pampas and Patagonia—its
administrative musculature remained comparatively facile and underde-
veloped. Moreover, what administrative force it could deploy was neither
evenly nor equitably spread. This was especially true on the “frontier”—
along the limits of state power. The density of the state’s administrative
and bureaucratic presence h ere could not, and indeed did not, approach
that of centers of state power, beginning with Buenos Aires and weakening
outwards from there. Thus, despite the military’s success subduing the in
dios, the Argentine state’s relatively limited bureaucratic abilities and re-
sources ultimately shaped its conquest of the desert more than its force of
arms. The state was highly reliant on foreign investment and markets.
And its newfound political stability at the time was far from assured.15
Frontier governmentality was predicated on the maintenance of “tra-
ditional society” along the bounds of state authority. But for “traditional
society” to be maintained, it first had to be constructed. And the construc-
tive capabilities of the Argentine state w ere far outweighed by its destruc-
tive ones. The new republic could tear down, but building up was quite
another matter. This may seem paradoxical, if not contradictory as on its
face frontier governmentality appears a system of administrative weak-
ness. States applied it because they felt they could not expand and enforce
“regular administration” to the areas subject to it at reasonable cost. Thus
the states contracted out rule to local holders of authority, reifying and
codifying difference and ruling through that. While true, maintaining that
157
difference once established, in pretense and practice, was a politically, ad-

ministratively, and financially expensive enterprise. Only states with suf-
ficient institutional heft could enforce frontier governmentality along their
limits. Argentina lacked that heft at the time. This despite the fact that
Argentina undertook the conquest of the desert on the heels of its victory
in the War of the Triple Alliance, one of the deadliest and costliest wars
in Latin America’s nineteenth-century history.16
Surely the republic had the ability to deal with the indios of the inte-
rior as it saw fit. Indeed, its military operations against them w ere an un-
mitigated success in the eyes of the state, the outcome of which was never
seriously challenged or in doubt. Yet while true, the military prowess of
the Argentine state vis-à-vis its indigenous opponents obscured the fun-
damental frailty, especially in the areas where the conquest took place.
These w ere geographically far removed from the centers of state power
and republican population. The architect of the conquest of the desert,
and chief wielder of state power on the Pampas and Patagonia, Julio A.
Roca, was acutely aware of this weakness, warning against the expansion
of American-like reservations over the indios as they could become a bas-
tion of resistance to the state. Such a system, in his view, carried great
costs and grave danger for the government.17 While the state could affect
its will episodically through moments of concentrated force, in the form
of military campaigns, that did not necessarily mean it could sustain that
power on a permanent footing, at least not at the time. State power was
thus fantastic in its manifestation, but ultimately fleeting. The fragility of
state power explains its violence. The state’s economy of violence was that
of a bully, harshly treating t hose it could easily suppress in order to am-
plify its status and prestige.18 The ephemeral nature of state authority and
its heightened sensitivity of that fact foreclosed the possibility of frontier
governmentality along Argentina’s limits.
For while frontier governmentality relied upon a structured indirect
rule of indigenous society, the polities enforcing it had to be able to suc-
cessfully and convincingly police that structure. They had to ensure that
the customs and traditions that encapsulated frontier dwellers w ere colo-
nially sanctioned, if not fully colonially authored. And they had to ensure
the authenticity of traditional society as the state understood it through
both an intellectual and administrative structure in the form of the eth-
nographic state.19 Argentina could not credibly construct or maintain
these markers of authority, though it made the initial façade of attempting
to do so. Just as the Argentine state made the pretense of ruling the p
eoples
158
of the periphery under the order of frontier governmentality by importing

the legal structure of frontier rule almost wholesale from the United
States—but not instituting it—so too did the Argentine state mimic the
ethnographic state constructed by colonial powers elsewhere.20 However,
its realization of that state form was at best limited, and at worst com-
pletely lacking.
And this is precisely what Argentina’s failure to construct, enforce, and
maintain frontier governmentality along its periphery reveals about the
regime of rule—it was not for the administratively feeble. While its use
may be indicative of states’ positional weakness, such weakness was rela-
tive. It was not a default system for states with no other choice who seem-
ingly fell into it because they lacked v iable alternatives. Rather it was a
system that incurred significant expense—administrative, political, and fi-
nancial. And it was available only to states that could enforce a rule of
difference. Not all states could convincingly do so in the late nineteenth
century. Frontier governmentality thus relied on a surprising resilience if
not underlying power of the states that constructed and enforced it along
their limits.
In place of enforcing frontier governmentality, Argentina instead inte-
grated the lands and p eoples of the periphery into the republican body
politic and its normal channels of administration. This would, prima facie,
seem to be the harder and more costly option than enforcing frontier gov-
ernmentality. And yet in the case of the young republic, Argentina had no
other option. Unable to plausibly enforce the rule of difference over the
newly conquered peoples, or even its own w ill over the personnel perse-
cuting state-sponsored violence against them—the “men on the spot”—the
Argentine state ultimately had to accept the “assimilation” of the indios
as a fait accompli. Anything less would expose its rule for the skeletal shell
it actually was, fundamentally endangering, if not fatally condemning it.21
Yet that assimilation was not an active one and thus remained essentially
incomplete.
Argentina’s experience of the frontier was both conditioned by and is
revealing of the liminal, or rather mediatory, position it occupied in the
global political and economic order of the late nineteenth century. The
new republic uncomfortably straddled the divide between the national
and imperial worlds. Like its American counterpart to the north, the
Argentine republic understood itself not within the contemporary impe-
rial framework dominated by European powers, but rather within the
national framework that emerged from the revolutionary moment of
159
the late eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century. Yet that self-
understanding was in many ways self-delusional. For the Argentine republic,
like its North American cousin, was fundamentally a colonial enterprise.22
Further, Argentina was an outpost of the expanding global cap ital
ist
economy of the time. The logic of capitalism conditioned the circumstances
and forms of its manifestation. This was as true in Argentina as along the
Afghan frontier.
nNnNnN
The conquest of the desert provides an important case study where one
may draw together the seemingly unentangled strains of liberalism and
empire with those of global capitalism and the nation. For the Argentine
republic of the late nineteenth century was both an outpost of empire,
though admittedly “informal,” and an emergent nation-state. It was this
dual characteristic of the Argentine state—a liberal nation-state in the tra-
ditions of the French Enlightenment and concurrently an informal out-
post of the British Empire of capital, which made it an interesting bridge
between two strongly interconnected, though rhetorically distinct worlds,
worlds that nonetheless w ere firmly bound together by the logic of capi-
talism and its expansion.
To fully understand the importance of the conquest of the desert, one
must place it within the trajectory of the development of the Argentine
state in the late nineteenth c entury. After a tumultuous and violent epoch
following independence from the Spanish Empire in 1816, Argentina
began to coalesce into its modern political and institutional form from
the 1860s onward.23 During the period of internecine fighting and com-
petition, the penetration of the multiple and competing federal and re-
gional governments into the Argentine interior was limited. There were
exceptions to this, such as Juan Manuel de Rosas’s initial conquista del
desierto in the 1830s.24 However, even Rosas’s largely successful expedi-
tion was less about conquering the tierra adentro (interior lands) than
about securing the strongman’s flank in order to concentrate on his
criollo (Argentines of European descent) competitors. This was all to
change in the final years of the century.
By the mid-1870s, the country was ready to embark upon the state-and
nation-building process first envisioned by the “generation of ’37,” and
now taken up by the “generation of ’80.”25 Internally, the long-running
and often violent struggle between the federales (federalists) and the uni
tarios (unitarians)—a struggle that had largely defined Argentina’s inde
160
pendent existence since its break from Spain at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century—was definitively concluded in favor of the latter, whose
main center of power was the city of Buenos Aires. Externally, by 1873
Argentina emerged victorious from the horrific War of the Triple Alliance,
often referred to as the Paraguayan War, where along with its allies Brazil
and Uruguay it vivisected the prostrate body of Paraguay. In the eyes of
those elite, this state-building project was founded upon two related ele
ments, the sequencing of which was important. First, it required the inte-
gration of the vast interior hinterlands—the country’s yet-to-be-claimed
patrimony promising its f uture wealth and security. The Pampas and Pa-
tagonia, enormous and agriculturally rich lands, beckoned for the taking.
Second, bodies were needed to farm those lands and make the desert
bloom. And they had to be the right kind of bodies—namely white Euro
peans. This was the immigration project envisaged by the likes of Roca,
who saw the nation’s destiny tied to the conquest and colonization of its
emptied interior.
The ordering of these elements hints at the causal relationship between
them. As opposed to other white settler societies where population pres-
sure drove expansion and the subjugation, or eradication, of indigenous
peoples, this was not the case in Argentina. Rather, the conquest resulted
from the expansionary vision of the Argentine elites. The lack of popula-
tion pressures meant the related land speculation accompanying so many
other white settler expansions was muted at best. The land of the Pampas,
once conquered, would be virtually worthless without a land-hungry im-
migrant horde keen to make their fortunes on the Argentine steppe. This
reality was evident at the time as the country found it difficult to attract
foreign capital u ntil the last decade of the nineteenth century. Such a pop-
ulation and speculative reality conditioned the way the Argentine state
went about the conquest.
One of the central problems the Argentine government faced in ef-
fecting the conquest was the fact that, by the mid-1870s, the state’s cof-
fers were barren. To finance the conquest of the interior, the government
sold stocks for the expedition on the Argentine bolsa (stock exchange).
Law 947, of October 1878, authorized the sale of 4,000 shares worth 400
pesos each, totaling $1.6 million pesos. The shares paid their o wners
6 percent interest until the successful completion of the expedition where-
upon the shareholders would receive the lands of the conquest for having
fronted cash to complete it.26 In addition to the Argentine elite who pur-
chased shares, the majority were bought by British investors and land
161
speculators.27 The Argentine state competed in a global market for scarce

international capital, which saw safer and surer returns in places like
British India, where the railway bonds were backed by the Government
of India’s revenue receipts.
Britain played a centrally important role in the development of the
Argentine state, so much so that many scholars have long considered Ar-
gentina as the preeminent example of Britain’s informal empire.28 Britain
was, after all, the global hegemon of the nineteenth century. Though her
formal remit encompassed territories spanning the globe, her informal
reach extended even farther. Nowhere was this more palpable than on the
Pampas in the latter half of the nineteenth century. British capital was pre-
ponderant in Argentina, to such an extent that when Barings Bank col-
lapsed in London in 1890 it nearly took Argentina with it.29 British banks
and financiers owned the railroads, the slaughterhouses, even much the
municipal infrastructure of Buenos Aires itself. Nearly anything connecting
the Argentine republic to the global economy, dominated by Britain, had
the imprimatur of British ownership.
The conquest of the desert was both driven by and propelled the de-
mands of British capital looking for a lucrative investment outlet as much
as by the political needs of the Argentine elite. Their disparate interests
converged on Argentina’s expansive interior grasslands—the Pampas—
which promised both profit and political power. The Argentine frontier,
long a lucrative venue for cattle raising, underwent an agricultural revo-
lution in the 1860s where cattle ranching gave way to more profitable
sheep farming. This was aided by an influx of knowledgeable workhands
from the United Kingdoms of Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland.30 The
advent of sheep farming tied the Pampas into global circuits of labor and
capital in the burgeoning world economy created and dominated by the
British imperial complex. It also created pressure for state expansion into
“unoccupied,” “virgin” lands that could be exploited for economic gain.
That expansion was predicated on the taming of the desert through its
violent subjugation.
The conquest of the desert began in earnest in 1875 under the direc-
tion of the Minister of War Adolfo Alsina. The frontier line was firmed
up and forays were made beyond it. But it was not until 1878, under the
direction of General Julio Roca, that the campaign assumed the form that
would shortly lead to its kinetic crescendo. Between 1878 and 1882, under
Roca’s leadership first as field commander, subsequently as Minister of
War, and finally as President, the armies of the republic surged across the
162
Pampas and penetrated deep into Patagonia. By 1885, during Roca’s first
presidential term, the conquest came to an end with the final surrender of
the last resisting caciques (chiefs). Only the remote lands of the Chaco at
the republic’s northern extremities remained beyond the state’s formal
reach. But the days of independence of the indios of the Chaco were
numbered.
The conquest, though centrally important to the construction of the
Argentine state in the late nineteenth century, was a relatively small affair
in keeping with the comparative size of the polity itself. In terms of the
native population subdued, contemporary state officials estimated around
20,000 indios inhabited the conquered lands. This was a far cry from the
more than 250,000 Indians the American government claimed to govern.31
Further, the resources of the state were similarly small in absolute terms,
though they represented the upper limits of what the Argentine state could
deploy and were themselves dependent in significant part on foreign cap-
ital. While the Argentine Congress appropriated $1.6 million pesos in
1878 for the conquest campaign, in 1877 the US government spent over
$4.7 million on Indian governance.32 In his report to Congress as Min-
ister of War in 1879, Roca compared the Argentine outlay to that of
England in its recent war in Abyssinia where it spent £50 million.33 Roca
also noted that his ministry had been budgeted roughly $5 million pesos
fuertes in 1879, a drop of over $2 million pesos from both 1876 and
1877.34 Additionally, he noted the manpower problem faced by the Ar-
gentine military. The army, which was authorized to a strength of 8,000
men, had lost 1,940 men in 1878 to demobilization and a refusal to reen-
list.35 There w
ere thus limited resources—in terms of men and money—
which the republic could dedicate to its conquest of the desert.
Such limitations notwithstanding, that conquest evinced three key, in-
terlinked elements making it central to the state-building project of the
late nineteenth century. The first was the assertion of the republic’s sover-
eignty over land—man’s dominion over nature.36 The success of that as-
sertion would enable land to be made productive. Such a transformation
would tame the natural world to the world of capital, the second element
of the conquest. The third element was the triumph of civilization over
barbarism and savagery, one accomplished through the eradication of the
indios. Collectively, these elements provided the rationale for the nomen-
clature of this violent affair.
The conquest of the desert was a framing device employed by Argen-
tine elites to denote that the lands conquered w ere barren—of plants,
163
productivity, and p eople. The insertion of Argentine state power would

change all that, making the desert flower, and in so doing transform a
newly coalesced republic into the powerhouse of the southern cone. The
peoples of the Pampas were rhetorically erased; the land was rendered
empty. And that empty land was depicted as barren, infertile, and unpro-
ductive—a desert. After the success of Argentine arms, the government and
society would affect in reality what it already imagined. The desert thus
became a tabula rasa where the Argentine nation could be created de novo.
It was a repository of both hopes as well as frustrations of the national
dream.37 Its conquest and integration became a foundational myth for the
newly united republic. That myth could include not only man’s victory
over nature, but also civilization’s triumph over barbarism.
None of that image was true. Indeed, the interest of both the state and
capital in the lands of the Pampas and Patagonia belie the fact they were
not bleak as depicted. Instead they w ere a potentially productive para-
dise needing to be subdued by the state, which in this case was in many
ways simply the administrative extension of speculative capital. And it was
not the land that had to be conquered—though it would be manipulated,
to varying degrees of success by the modernizing Argentine state. Rather,
it was the indigenous inhabitants of this space who had to be subjugated.
But their conquest would be insufficient. Instead, they needed to be erased
completely.
The conquest of the desert necessarily displaced the inhabitants already
there, the indios. It was not, however, in the eyes of the criollo politicians,
intended to do so. In 1875 when the Senate debated the conquest, it was
asserted that, “in a word, the plan of the Executive Authority is against
the desert to populate it and not against the indios to destroy them.”38
Republican authorities believed that to populate the desert was to govern
this rhetorically empty waste. While President Nicolas Avellaneda may
have conceived the campaign to be against the desert and not the indios,
it was ultimately against both. And it did not so much displace the indios
as expunge them. This was not simply a case of killing off the indigenous
population who inhabited the Pampas and Patagonia prior to the con-
quest, but rather obliterating the memory of their existence.39
nNnNnN
Though the conquest undertaken between 1875 and 1885 was bloody,
in truth the Argentine interior remained full of indios. The fate of t hese
peoples varied. General Julio A. Roca reported to Congress that his
164
e xpedition of 1879 resulted in the death of 1,313 armed indios, as well

as 10,539 women and children and a further 2,330 warriors taken as
prisoner, totaling “14172 Indians conquered on the Pampas.”40 Roca’s
numbers may have been on the low side, with other reports putting the
number of indios south of Mendoza between the Rio Grande and the
Limay River at 19,250, with 2,075 warriors.41 As opposed to Avellaneda,
who saw the conquest as a struggle against the desert rather than the in
dios, Roca was rather more sanguine.42 Something had to be done with
these people. Many were forcibly removed to other parts of the country,
where they w ere transformed into wage laborers. Some w ere recognized
as “tribes” with chiefs, who w ere then integrated into policing the newly
expanded Argentine frontier as indios amigos, though with the conquest
the need for such indigenous allies was becoming redundant.43 Others
found themselves interned in concentration camps around the country
where they were erased from the national consciousness.44
The state-sponsored erasure of the indigenous inhabitants of the
Pampas and Patagonia was driven by multiple, sometimes conflicting im-
pulses. The state wanted the land and, therefore, had to dispossess t hose
already on it.45 However, modern capitalism relied not simply on posses-
sion of a good, but also on, and in many ways more importantly, surety
of such possession. This was ensconced through law; law recognized title
and thus ownership.46 Western ideas of property functioned not solely or
even necessarily on ideas of actual possession, but more importantly on
ideas of claim, which w ere grounded in use and productivity.47 If one could
prove their use of the land, mainly through improvement of it, barring
other superior claimants (most importantly written claims) they could gain
title.48 Being on the land without improving it however, would be not only
insufficient, but also morally repugnant to contemporary sensibilities. Oc-
cupying land without using it or improving it bordered on criminal neg-
ligence. It was through their failure to improve the land that indios, in
Argentina and elsewhere, forfeited their normative claims to title. Without
that, they w
ere not simply unprotected by the law, but subject to its stric-
tures. They w ere rendered trespassers on land now claimed by the state,
and subsequently turned over to private citizens, of European stock, for
productive use and development. Dispossessed, the indios were trans-
formed into “an incarnation of the threat to private property.”49
The indios’ erasure from the desert and from the political imagination
of the pubescent nation had a confusing pathology as well as corollary. It
was predicated on their rendering as citizens—ciudadanos. Citizenship
165
provided a language and logic of belonging to the national body politic

difficult to escape even today. From Argentina’s independence, “citizens
were putatively equal—the rule of law applied to everyone, ruled and
rulers alike. This was the meaning of republicanism, and it offered a vo-
cabulary for legitimating claims to power and denouncing power
holders.”50 The conquest was about transforming “ ‘sovereign Indios’ to
‘Argentine citizens.’ ”51 They had to be brought, forcibly if necessary,
into the sphere of the Argentine polity, and absorbed and raised as equal
citizens of the Argentine state. Rather than being treated as in some way
exceptional by the state, the indios were to be treated the same as other
citizens through the universal language of the law. But such leveling came
at the price of loss—loss of the particularistic identities before the law
subjects enjoyed. Indios thus had no more claim to special treatment by
the republic than did criollos, mestizos, or any other such group.
The leveling logic of citizenship was best expressed by the former Pres-
ident of the Argentine Academy of History and the Chair of the Museum
of National History, who wrote:
Speaking of Indios nowadays is an insult. Why Indian? He is simply
one more Argentine among the thirty-seven million inhabitants of
the country, with the same rights and obligations as all the rest. He
does not merit any special treatment or more rights than others,
but neither should he have any of his invalidated, infringed upon
or impaired, as he has the same constitutional protections as all.
He is our citizen, and more importantly, our b rother. He deserves
and has all of our fraternal affection. No more, no less. To be other
wise would be indignant and discriminatory.52
But these words ignore the fact the indios were forcibly made part of the
body politic of the republic. Further, though subsumed within it, they had
no meaningful participation in it. Despite the promises of citizenship and
political liberalism, the indios enjoyed neither. Instead, they found them-
selves erased—no longer “indios,” but rather rhetorically rendered “Ar-
gentines.” In reality, they had been forcibly expelled from one shore with
no hope of reaching the other. They therefore floated listlessly on a wide
sea of liminality until they were effectively forgotten, drowned in the
depths of memory. The conquest of their land entered the national dis-
course as the occupation of empty land by a benevolent state.
What rendered the indios’ citizenship hollow? Citizenship was a cen-
tral element of the national liberal political project of the nineteenth
166
century.53 But citizenship and equality before the law were not the only
products of that project. So too was European imperialism. And unlike
citizenship, predicated on the universal rule of law and equality before it,
imperialism was founded on the rule of difference. While the indios were
politically rendered citizens, they remained civilizationally apart. As a con-
sequence they were sociologically different and had to be categorized
and documented as such. Thus, at the same moment the political settle-
ment of the latter nineteenth century was institutionalizing the identity
of the Argentine republic, the republic was in the midst of anthropolo-
gizing its indios.54
The process of ethnicizing indigenous identity created a double bind
for the indios. On the one hand, as citizens, they w ere supposedly political
participants of the republican body. On the other hand, as anthropolog-
ical others, they substantively lay outside that body despite their formal
inclusion in it. Politics was a consequence of civilization. For the indios
to participate in the former, they first had to be elevated in the latter. Such
elevation, however, would erase their identity as indios. The making of
ciudadanos necessarily meant the unmaking of indios.55 Yet at the same
time the Argentine state extended citizenship to the indios through con-
quest, it also ethnographically constructed and categorized them. This pro
cess was undertaken by various state officials, who categorized the indig-
enous people as Araucanians, Tehuelche, Mapuche, Pehuelche, and so
forth, domesticating them within the information order of the state and
white settler society at large.56 Like their British counterparts in South Asia
and Africa, and their American counterparts on the Great Plains, the Ar-
gentines w ere in the midst of constructing an ethnographic state in order
to assert control over the indigenous population, as well as more clearly
define themselves against such subjugated, and subsequently forgotten,
peoples.57
Closely associated with this effort was the cataloguing of the natural
world the indios inhabited. The scientific expeditions that both preceded
and accompanied the conquest of the desert, most famously t hose of Fran-
cisco P. Moreno and Estanisloa Zeballos, led, respectively, to the creation
of Argentina’s national parks and the classification of its indigenous
peoples.58 For both, the production and deployment of knowledge had a
sterilizing effect.59 The land was turned virginal—untouched and in need
of preservation.60 The people, no longer a threat—their “barbarism” de-
feated by the state’s civilization—were made part of the natural world.
This had multiple ramifications. First, it set them outside of history, which
167
was a human, as opposed to natural, phenomenon. Second, it made them

amenable to the same type of objective classification, manipulation, and
display as the natural world. It is for this reason that objects of the natural
world and indigenous p eoples were so often displayed together, such as
the ethnographic museum in La Plata or the museum of Carmen de
Patagones.61 Third, it created the need for their preservation, or rather
the preservation of the image of them the state and society could best use
to its purpose.
The political imaginary of the expanding republic was not the only one
at play on the Pampas. The indios subjugated through the conquest had
their own visions of political order in this contested space, and the place
of both criollos and indios in that order. The caciques of the Pampas and
Patagonia with whom the Argentine state interacted had sophisticated and
complex relations with that state, as well as with one another. Much of
this was a product of a long history of interaction between state authori-
ties and indios that stretched back to the earliest days of the Iberian pen-
etration into the Rio de la Plata. The postindependence period was marked
by both continuities and discontinuities with the imperial past. As impor-
tantly, it was conditioned by the relative strengths and weaknesses the
various actors enjoyed vis-à-vis one another. Further, rather than a space
of divide and distinction, the frontier was historically a space of connec-
tion, where the porous social, political, and economic bounds ensured that
the indios and Argentines were closely entwined. Indeed, there was a
strong undercurrent of interaction and intermingling—a mestizo political
society—upon which indios at least partly constructed their visions of po
litical order. To assert the primacy and exclusivity of its political order,
the Argentine state would have to unravel the lived reality of the frontier.
For much of the postindependence period, political infighting among
the criollos ensured that indios enjoyed the upper hand.62 Instability
plagued the Argentine state, with the federalists and unitarians continu-
ally and violently at odds with one another. Due to the fractured nature
of the Argentine political authority, the indios often found themselves
treating with more than one party to power. As a consequence, they were
as liable to successfully pursue strategies of divide and rule as they w ere
to be subject to them. The negotiated relationship the indios enjoyed with
Argentine state authorities is best evidenced by the series of tratados (trea-
ties) executed with various caciques.63
The proclivity of Argentine authorities to mediate relations with the
indios through their tratados resembled the practice of their contempo-
168
raries, such as the United States and Canada.64 Over time, the language,
and thus claims, of criollo authorities changed, reflecting the power dy-
namics between the Argentine state and the indios of the interior. Whereas
earlier tratados largely framed the indios as equals, later ones framed them
within the political universe delimited by the republic. The indios were
no longer equals external to the Argentine political sphere, but rather sub-
jects within it.65 Of course, for much of the time, such claims by repub-
lican authorities were aspirational rather than actual. And the ambig-
uous language of many of the treaties allowed for multiple, in some cases
mutually exclusive, interpretations of t hese documents, sometimes inten-
tionally. But as the process of the organización nacional took root, re-
publican forces strengthened, and the language, intent, and meaning of
these tratados changed. It ultimately required the violence of Roca’s con-
quest to fully fulfill the aspirations of the newly empowered, stable, and
belligerent republic.
That conquest marked the effective death of the tratados as meaningful
legal documents. As with the indios themselves, the conquest served to
eradicate any memory or tradition of compromise the tratados repre-
sented. Unlike its North American contemporaries, or its colonial ante-
cedent, the Argentine republic had no appetite for legal pluralism. Instead,
it opted for a l egal monism that recognized only the national l egal system
and the rights it enshrined.66 The process of national organization es-
tablished the singular and universal rule of law throughout the republic.
Consequently, indigenous rights, hitherto recognized in the tratados, dis
appeared along with the understanding of these accords being between
sovereign authorities. Instead, they w ere remade and remembered as agree-
ments between sovereign and subject. Just as politically the indios were
erased from the desert, juridically their previously recognized sovereign
character was also expunged from memory.
The timing and substance of this move mirrored that of Argentina’s
northern neighbor, the United States, which in 1871 ended the practice of
Congressionally sanctioned sovereign treaties with American Indian
tribes.67 Any made thereafter, such as that with the Chiricahua Apache,
were merely an executive act, and as such not a legal agreement between
sovereigns but rather a policy statement between sovereign and subject,
which could be altered at will by the former. It is striking that Argentina
and the United States both mediated their relations with indigenous
peoples through the medium of treaties, and, at roughly the same time in
the 1870s, fundamentally reassessed and devalued the meaning of those
169
treaties. As with frontier governmentality, it speaks to the emergence at

the moment of globally ubiquitous governmental practices that states de-
veloped along their limits. These changing practices—delineating formerly
sovereign-to-sovereign relations as sovereign-to-subject relations—were
definitional of the states themselves. They marked the end of a tolerance
for, or indeed embrace of, a layered and highly variegated world of sov-
ereign pluralism. In its place, a flattened world marked by single unitary
sovereigns emerged in the republican imaginations.
nNnNnN
The abandonment of the practice of tratados with the conquest marked
a new epoch in relations with the indios. Moving forward, Argentina’s
treatment of the indios followed one of three trajectories.68 The first was
the settlement of conquered indios onto agricultural colonias (colonies),
best understood as collective farms.69 These were not reservations in the
North American sense. The colonias w ere not sovereign but rather w ere
governed by the laws of the republic.70 The inhabitants of t hese colonias
were Argentine citizens. They were no longer indios in the eyes of the
state. The government was uninterested in conserving tribes, which w ere
anachronistic to civilization and thus only prevented indios from ad-
vancing themselves.71 Rather, the state privileged the protection of fami-
lies, meaning nuclear families. Roca denounced the reservation system of
the United States as dangerous as it allowed “the Indian the ability to con-
serve and transmit his language, customs and spirit of the tribe.”72 In-
stead, to facilitate the civilizing of the “savage” indios, the Argentine state
would “distribute those Indian prisoners, respecting the integrity of their
families, among the rural population where u nder work that rejuvenates
and the life and spirit of different customs, that influence . . . the native
language as a useless instrument, they obtain a rapid transformation into
a civilized element and productive force.”73
The colonias were viewed by the state as a place where the “regenera-
tive regimen of work and civilization” could be instilled in the conquered
indios.74 The original proposal for colonias put forth by President Roca
in 1885 assigned thirty hectares per family of five, along with one league
square of common pasturage.75 While this scheme provided a general out-
line, during the succeeding years Congress tended to enact individual
programs of settlement of various caciques and tribes. In 1887, Congress
enacted a grant of 20,000 hectares to the conquered tribes south of the
Limay River.76 Manuel Namuncurá and his followers were granted eight
170
leagues in Neuquén in 1894, while Valentin Saygüeque and his followers

were granted twelve leagues of land in Chubut, four of which were re-
served for him.77 There was considerable debate whether these colonias
should be isolated from the surrounding criollo populations, or integrated
with it. By placing indios in agricultural colonias, at most as part of a
family unit, the hope was that they could be mixed with, and thus civilized
by exposure to, the criollo population.78 The indios would be civilized by
being turned into property owners and family members.
The colonias were to be governed by an Indian commissioner, aided
by five members elected from the community.79 While Roca’s proposal
sparked a lively debate in Congress, it ultimately passed. The state under-
took to provide title and support for the indios settled on these colonias,
including animals, for between one to five years, after which they were
on their own. In lieu of the state support, various bodies of the Church
stepped in, akin to Grant’s peace policy in the United States.80 These set-
tlements w ere not set up immediately following the conquest, but rather
came into being toward the close of the nineteenth century. Most of these
settlements broke down soon a fter the turn of the century through lack
of funds, or the diversion of indios’ labor elsewhere.81
The colonias in a way resembled the American Indian reservations after
the Dawes Act.82 Both the Argentine and American schemes sought to turn
the indios into individual property owners, and through that into political
personages as citizens of the republic. The American scheme differed in
two important respects. First, citizenship was not automatically bestowed
on Indians en masse until the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. And second,
while the Dawes Act did produce the Indians as property o wners formally,
it did not trust them to be such substantively. Instead it inserted a media-
tory stage where the newly invented Indian property owner, ignorant of
what to do with his possession, would have his interests overseen by the
authorities of the republic.83 This wardship relationship was completely
lacking in Argentina.
The creation of the colonias and decision to view the newly conquered
and settled indios as citizens, though not fully civilized ones, happened at
an important moment in the process of the organizaciòn nacional. With
the settlement of the Indian question and conquest of the interior lands
secured by the mid-1880s, the republic could now look to the massive in-
flux of European immigrants. In comparison to the 200,000 immigrants
arriving per year, the indios encapsulated by the colonia scheme numbered
roughly four thousand.84 Yet debate about what to do with these indios
171
far outweighed their numerical importance. How the republic treated

these conquered indios provided a definitional statement about itself. The
conquest of the lands occupied by the indios and their forcible integra-
tion into the republican order as native-born citizens indicated the uni-
tary order of the national project, which left l ittle room either for legal or
cultural pluralism. And it provided a template for the integration and as-
similation of the waves of European immigrants soon to crash onto the
country’s shores.
The second trajectory, suffered by many for at least some time, was
exile to penal colonies best described as concentration camps, the most
famous being the island of Martin Garcia in the middle of the Rio de la
Plata. In 1885, the facilit y held 181 “indios” and 106 “familias.”85 Clearly
visible from Buenos Aires, at its height the facility housed upward of three
thousand.86 These not only w ere prison facilities, but also served as labor
reservoirs.87 Many of the indios interned in them were forcibly recruited
as laborers throughout the country.88 Internment in t hese facilities appears
to have been transitory, with the indios later resettled elsewhere, often on
colonias. Unlike the colonias, which were run by the Ministry of the In-
terior, these prison camps fell under the auspices of the Ministry of the
Army and Navy. These concentration camps had contemporary counter
parts elsewhere in the world, such as in the United States, Australia, and
British India.89 And they would later be replicated in other colonial arenas
such as South Africa.
The third and final trajectory sent indios directly into the Argentine
labor pool, particularly as domestic labor. Many of the men interned in
places like Martin Garcia w ere forced to leave their families behind. These
families had no means to economically support themselves save entry into
the labor market. Many of the w omen became domestic servants. Many
of the children were taken from them and adopted, legally or otherwise,
by white settler families. An outcome of enforced economic need, this also
quickened the transformation of Indian youths into citizens, denuding
them of their cultural and ethnic heritage. Those absorbed as domestic
labor were relocated, often with little choice, to other parts of the country
as agricultural laborers. They w ere integrated into the economic order as
objects, in the hope this would transform them into citizens.
The Argentine state raced headlong into the transformation of the
newly conquered indios into citizens and capitalists (or rather capital in
the form of subjugated wage laborers). In many ways, this assimilationist
blueprint was the ultimate aim of American Indian policy, and yet it was
172
realized more readily and more quickly by the republic of the southern
cone.90 Why? What does Argentina’s w holesale commitment to the logic
of liberalism—liberty, equality, and fraternity (or rather citizenship and
market participation)—say about the Argentine state, its aims, and abili-
ties? If anything, it points to the Argentine republic’s relative weakness. It
did not establish a ward relationship with the indios because it could not
maintain and enforce such a relationship. Further, its assimilationist
agenda was less than it appears at first blush. The Argentine state did not
commit to the education of the indios, as the US government did with Car-
lisle School and its progeny. While it encouraged, like Grant’s peace policy,
the Catholic Church to assume a role in Indian welfare, it provided little
if any support—material or otherwise—for that role.91 Consequently, Ar-
gentina’s policy was less one of assimilation than it was of eradication—the
eradication of difference by the presumption of equality before the law,
citizenship, and capitalism. Such assumptions, however, did not render
realities. Rather, they elided and occluded them.
nNnNnN
But what of the attitudes of the indios themselves? What were the visions,
strategies, and tactics the caciques employed in dealing with the various
criollo governments? What was their political lexicon as well as their po
litical vision of the possible regarding their expansionary neighbor? Three
chiefs of particular importance give insight into these questions.92 The
first, Manuel Namuncurá, was the son of one of the most famous caci
ques of the nineteenth c entury, Juan Calfacurá, and was an important
leader in his own right. The second, Valentin Saygüeque, was the most
important cacique in Patagonia. His defeat in 1879 opened the way for
colonization of Argentina’s southern reaches. The final chief, Casimiro
Bigua, sometimes referred to by criollo authorities as Patagón Casimiro,
presents a stunning visual language of political being and belonging.
Manuel Namuncurá succeeded his f ather, Juan Calfacurá, as the leader
of the indios inhabiting the Salinas Grandes. Calfacurá, who had been
both ally and enemy of Rosas in his day, assembled the largest confedera-
tion of indios on the Pampas.93 At its height, Calfacurá’s confederation
could gather upward of five thousand mounted warriors. This has led to
what are now rather dated claims about an “inland empire” of indios.94
By the time of his death in 1873, Calfacurá’s lands and p eople w
ere
under pressure from an Argentine state now unified and at peace. His
son, Namuncurá unsuccessfully faced off against that state, succumbing
173
Figure 6.1. Cacique Manuel Namuncurá. No. 303589. Archivo General de la

Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
to its power in 1878, though only surrendering in 1884.95 Nonetheless,

Namuncurá was viewed by the Argentine state as “the most powerful
and influential of the caciques of the Pampa,” a power derived from his
ability to call upon 1,500 mounted warriors.96
Namuncurá and his father constructed and maintained a sophisticated
indigenous polity in the Salinas Grandes. While the confederation built
174
by the latter was in many ways necessarily fleeting, the underlying political
structures upon which it was erected proved themselves surprisingly re-
silient. The most intriguing, and arguably important, of these structures
is what subsequently became known as the archive of the chieftancy of
the Salinas Grandes.97 Discovered in 1879 during expeditions against the
remnants of Namuncurá’s crumbling confederacy, the archive consisted
of at least three boxes of materials, which included correspondence with
various agents of the national government, peace treaties, and even photo
graphs. The discovered material constituted
an archive, the archive of the government or chieftancy of the Sa-
linas Grandes. . . . There were (and it was completed after the find
by a donation of documents which Coronel Levalle had e arlier
taken from the Indios), the communications changed from power
to power between the Argentine government and the Araucanian
chiefs, the papers of the commanders of the frontier, the bills of
traders who had served the vandals, the list of indigenous tribes and
their chiefs, dependents of the chieftancy of the Salinas, the seals of
governors recorded in metal, the proofs of complicity of the sav-
ages in the civil wars of the Republic alternately in favor and against
the parties; and in the midst of these curious materials which did
not lack a dictionary of the Spanish language, which had served the
Indios to interpret the communications of the Argentine govern-
ment, of the military commanders, of their spies (this archive
proved that they were numerous) and of the merchants, with whom
they maintained current accounts religiously paid (due to this awe),
as can be seen between the markets of Paris and Buenos Aires.98
The papers included documents signed by “presidents, ministers and other
dignitaries,” a fact that for some observers lowered the state’s prestige.99
It may be for this very reason that though the existence of Namuncurá’s
and other caciques’ archives has long been known, they have equally long
been ignored. The forces of the Argentine republic had stumbled onto a
visage of a state form much like their own, but one authored and main-
tained by the “barbarians” of the desert whom the republic had conquered
to civilize.
The indios not only maintained an archive of correspondence, but also
used it to their advantage in their relations with Argentine authorities.
They archived records, and thus an institutional memory to be referenced.
Clearly, these caciques understood the importance of writing, memory, and
175
the archive in the exercise of state power. And they proved themselves
adept in utilizing the written word in ways that flustered and unnerved
criollo state authorities. Lucio Mansilla, one of the great chroniclers of the
indios midcentury, related his experience with the cacique Mariano Rosas:
Look, brother [said Mariano], why d on’t you tell me the truth?—I
have told you the truth I answered.—Now we will see, brother. And
having said that, he got up, entered the awning and returned
carrying a box of pine, with a corresponding lid. He opened it and
took out some cloth sacks. This was his archive. Each sack con-
tained official notes, letters, drafts, papers. He knew e very paper
perfectly. He could point with his finger to the paragraph he wanted
to reference. Sifting through his archive, he took a small bag, opened
the string which had been very wrinkled, revealing it had been han-
dled many times. It was La Tribuna of Buenos Aires. In it, he had
marked an article about the g reat oceanic railroad. He passed it to
me, saying “Read, brother.”100
The contents of the archive of Manuel Namuncurá, Mariano Rosas, and
Valentin Saygüeque—amongst others—were in Spanish. Though many of
the caciques were neither literate nor conversant in Spanish, there were
important exceptions to this, such as Bernardo Namunará, Manuel’s
cousin and brother-in-law.101 Indeed, there was a long tradition during
the colonial period where the Crown encouraged indios to learn Spanish.
Religious missions were established promising not only conversion, but
education as well. After the collapse of imperial authority and its replace-
ment by its republican progeny, the newly empowered criollo elite took a
dim view of educating unconquered indios.102 Thus, although the liberal
national project of the nineteenth century sought to turn the indios into
citizens, state authorities viewed their civilizational transformation with
decided ambivalence. A previous imperial pattern of cultural exchange
was thus supplanted by a national one of cultural eradication based in
liberal republican chauvinism.
The use of Spanish arguably put the caciques at a marked disadvan-
tage, reflecting the power inequality of their relations with the criollo au-
thorities.103 Though the Argentine state was not in a position to enforce
its will over the indios until the last quarter of the nineteenth c entury, it
was powerful enough to effectively entice the caciques to engage in a po
litical arena, the limits of which were defined by the Argentines. After all,
it was the indios who mimicked European state form in the construction
176
and maintenance of an archive, and in the use of Spanish. This is not to

say t here were not indigenous traditions of memory and recording. Rather,
it is to say that the caciques of the Salinas Grandes made a tactical deci-
sion that t hose traditions were illegible to Argentines, and thus of limited
value in mediating relations with them. So the caciques accommodated
themselves to the forms of political intercourse familiar to the criollos,
seeking and often gaining advantage within a system authored by Argen-
tine state authorities to replicate and maintain their own authority.
The existence of these archives, stunning as they were to Zeballos and
others, is no less stunning a statement of political imagination t oday. Not
only did the caciques maintain a continuing correspondence with Argen-
tine authorities in Spanish—a necessity as the indigenous languages were
not written—more importantly they recorded and ordered that corre-
spondence into an archive. This is a state-constructing activity, and one
borrowing the forms of state from the literate society t hese caciques faced.
They nonetheless adapted this state practice to their own circumstances.
While most states’ archives required a central repository in the form of a
physical building, the nomadic lifeways of the indios did not. Instead, the
physical repository of the documents needed to be something mobile, like
the indios themselves. Thus the wooden boxes found by Lavalle and later
Zeballos.104
Archives are knowledge-generating spaces.105 From them emerge in-
formation orders that both frame and maintain political worldviews, in
this case that of the caciques.106 The archive offered them a fixed past that
could be referenced to the indios’ advantage, allowing them to construct
their own narratives vis-à-vis the Argentine state. The written archive,
though in a foreign language and mimicking the forms of knowledge
power of those threatening them, meant the caciques were not disadvan-
taged relative to this state. Rather, it enabled the indios to meet the Ar-
gentines on a relatively equal footing, at least epistemically. Such an ability
caught the Argentines off guard and could only be profoundly disquieting
as it challenged the fundamental belief of literate Argentine civilization
facing illiterate Indian “barbarism” on the Pampas and in Patagonia. For
the indios and their caciques, the archive served as a weapon of asym-
metrical resistance to the expanding republic. Yet for Namuncurá and his
followers, that resistance ultimately proved futile. By 1884, the Secretary
of War, Benjamin Victoria, confidently wrote to Congress that “the old
king of the Pampa, the formerly feared and powerful Namuncurá, is now
a farmer on an Indian agricultural colony.”107
177
nNnNnN
The caciques of the Salinas Grandes were not alone in the construction
and maintenance of an archive, though the uses to which they put that
archive differed from their contemporaries. Calfacurá and his heir, Na-
muncurá, used the form of Argentine politics to construct a rival political
order. In contrast, the Patagonian cacique Valentin Saygüeque sought to
mold a place for himself and his people within those politics.108 Saygüeque
maintained one of the longest-running, uninterrupted correspondences
with the Argentine state of any nineteenth-century cacique.109 He first ap-
peared in an 1857 treaty between his predecessor and the government of
Buenos Aires.110 U ntil his subjugation in 1879, he regularly corresponded
with a variety of Argentine officials.111 In much of that correspondence,
Saygüeque evinced a political vision of himself and his people within the
Argentine state project as equals with other citizens of the republic.112
Saygüeque clearly articulated his idea of political participation within
the Argentine project in his voluminous correspondence with Coronel
Barros, the commander at Carmen de Patagones, one of the southern out-
posts of the republic on the Atlantic coast at the outlet of the Río Negro.
Following the river upstream to its source, one arrived in the Pais de las
Manzanas (country of the apples), Saygüeque’s domain.113 Interestingly,
he did not claim to be sovereign of these lands, at least not in his corre-
spondence. Rather he claimed in effect to be their governor. He signed all
his correspondence “Valentin Sayhueque, Gobernación del Pais de Las
Manzanas.”114 Here, in a form familiar to and resonant with his Argen-
tine correspondents, this cacique clearly asserted his claim to a place in
their political universe. As “governor,” he was a ruler whose authority had
been delegated by a national sovereign, one constituted by its people and
founded on nineteenth-century values of political liberalism and republi-
canism. As interestingly, that claim was acknowledged and accepted by
his Argentine correspondents who addressed him by that title. In his letter
of August 19, 1879, Conrado Villegas, then a commander of the military
frontier of Río Negro and Neuquén, Carmen de Patagones, addressed Say-
güeque as “al Gobernador del Pais de las Manzanas Cacique Don Val-
entin Saygüeque [to the Governor of the Country of the Apples Chief
Valentin Saygüeque].”115
Saygüeque’s correspondence reflected his understanding of a relation-
ship first formed by treaty in 1857 between his predecessor Llanquitruz
and Buenos Aires. Among the articles of that tratado, the cacique was
178
Figure 6.2. Cacique Saygüeque. No. 289894. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc.

Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
ppointed a lieutenant coronel with a monthly salary of 1,200 pesos and

a
charged with defending the interests of the government of Buenos Aires
in the lands he controlled.116 Saygüeque reaffirmed this relationship in a
treaty in 1863.117 Based on t hese treaties, Saygüeque asserted his authority
as the designated governor of the Pais de las Manzanas. Thus his signa-
ture “Gobernador / Gobernación del Pais de las Manzanas.”118 Initially,
179
Saygüeque’s claims to political participation were respected by both the

architect and executors of the conquest of the desert. Zeballos charac-
terized Saygüeque as “a very important ally that cooperates with the
consolidation of Argentine interests in Río Negro.”119 He argued for an
arrangement with Saygüeque that essentially recognized his status and
lands under the ultimate sovereignty of the Argentine state.120 Roca was
inclined to follow this blueprint, based on the cacique’s constant fealty
and his studied observance of the rules of good conduct. He ordered
Napoleon Uriburu, the officer commanding the fourth division charged
with entering the lands abutting Saygüeque’s, to take no offensive action
and prepare a negotiation to establish a new peace treaty. Uriburu ig-
nored his o rders, instead attacking Saygüeque and ending any chance for
a negotiated settlement. Though unimpressed with his officer’s insubordi-
nation, Roca condoned it, closing the potential for Saygüeque’s participa-
tion in the political space of the republic.121
The interaction of these Argentine officials affirms the relative weak-
ness of the state. While the chief ideologue and commander (and soon to
be President of the republic) of the conquest envisaged a treaty-based re-
lationship with Saygüeque, which would substantively mirror the Amer-
ican model, the military “man on the spot” ignored their wishes and orders.
And though the Argentine state was strong enough to subdue Saygüeque,
it was not resilient enough to subjugate Uriburu, its own officer, to the
political will of his superiors. Faced with such insubordination, and
knowing there was nothing to be done about it, Roca accepted Uriburu’s
actions as a fait accompli, and rewarded him with commendations for
valor. While there were certainly other, comparable contemporary exam-
ples of the power of the “man on the spot” in stronger imperial forma-
tions, including the United States and British India, Uriburu’s actions are
striking. For they definitively foreclosed alternative political futures and
possibilities for the young republic with this treatment of its most poten-
tially willing indigenous ally of the time. And they put on clear display
that the destructive capabilities of the Argentine state far outpaced its con-
structive ones.
It is not surprising, as the cacique’s claim ran contrary to Argentine
ideas of the place of indios within their emergent political order. While the
logic of Saygüeque’s assertion of belonging and participation proceeded
from the claims of equality at the heart of nineteenth-century political lib-
eralism, and indeed from the language of the treaties he had concluded and
reaffirmed with government agents, it ran contrary to equally powerful
180
currents of racism, likewise the product of the time’s intellectual tumult.122

Indios did have a place within the Argentine political imaginary—as sub-
servient allies, indios amigos. But even the space for that role was quickly
receding by the time the inhabitants of the Pais de las Manzanas w ere
forcibly integrated into the republic. Thus, the only option for the po
litical identity of indigenous peoples was ciudadanos—citizens of the
republic. The promise of equality this status held, but adamantly refused
to realize, was predicated on the erasure of difference—on the conquest
of the desert and the eradication of its inhabitants.
Saygüeque’s bold claim to power within the Argentine republic, though
humored while he lay outside of it, was repudiated once he was forced
into it. With the conquest of the Pais de las Manzanas, its p eoples were
spread throughout Argentina. Some w ere sent as laborers to other parts
of the country; some were resettled in agricultural colonias where they
would be made model agrarian citizens. Others, including Saygüeque him-
self, w ere sent to concentration camps, such as the island of Martin
Garcia.123 Clearly, his imagined role within the national body politic,
though using the language and imagery of the Argentine political project,
did not fit with the interests of the republican elites, with the rhetoric of
their civilization versus barbarism motif, or with the expediencies of an
expanding capit alist realm. Like so many subalterns who sought a place
within the nineteenth-century European liberal order by explicitly claiming
its promises, Saygüeque was rebuffed by its racism, something inherent
in that order.
While Namuncurá experienced the defeat of his challenge to the Ar-
gentine political order on the one hand and Saygüeque the rejection of
his claim to a place within it on the other, Casimiro Bigua died before he
could suffer either.124 His death in 1873, two years prior to the beginning
of the conquest of the desert, spared him the humiliation and repudiation
borne by these other caciques. A Tehuelche chief of Patagonia, he had long
been an indio amigo of the various Argentine governments. He was con-
versant in Spanish and “knew how to be civilized amongst the whites.”125
Casimiro clearly imagined and successfully asserted a place for himself
within the Argentine political project. In 1866, President Bartolomé Mitre
granted him the honorary rank of lieutenant coronel in the Argentine
army, deputizing him to establish an Argentine colony along the Strait of
Magellan in order to contest Chile’s claims to the area.126 Yet the most
arresting assertion Casimiro made on the Argentine political imaginary
was not a written one, but rather a visual one.
181
Many caciques were photographed over the course of their lives.127 As

was the norm with contemporary photography, all such photographs w ere
staged, mostly for ethnographic effect.128 But the most striking one of Casi-
miro is the one staged with clear republican significance. It is the headshot
of the cacique wearing a dark wool tunic and liberty cap. The tunic, made
of lambswool, reflects the new global capitalist circuits the Pampeano and
Patagonian countryside had been integrated into by the latter half of the
nineteenth c entury. By this time sheep farming had eclipsed cattle raising in
importance and was one of the driving factors b ehind the conquest of the
desert. More interesting, however, was Casimiro’s choice of headwear.129
No clearer visual statement of republican values was possible than the lib-
erty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap. Since the days of the French
Revolution, the progenitor of the Argentine republic, this piece of civic
fashion had served as a powerful political statement.130 And it was one that,
in the wrong hands or on the wrong heads, proved gravely concerning.131
The Phrygian cap, being such a clearly recognizable and evocative
symbol of liberty and republicanism, was adopted as the central image
on the republic’s coat of arms. In donning the cap and staring unflinch-
ingly into the camera’s lens, Casimiro was making a clear, legible, and,
though he might not have realized it, arguably permanent political state-
ment. He was staking his claim visually as a citizen of the republic, a
brother of liberty. He was assuming the visual language of the foreign po
litical order he interacted with, and in so d oing indicated his place within
that order. In this, he was largely successful. But that success rested pre-
cariously on his physical remove from the republican political order. While
recognizing him from afar, as President Mitre did in the treaty of 1866,
the political willingness of the criollo elite would have ebbed as the dis-
tance separating Casimiro and his lands from the realizable claims of the
authorities in Buenos Aires receded. His claim was recognized de jure
because it cost little to do so. In fact, it bolstered the republican political
order against its Chilean adversaries in a realm of mutual contention, and
thus advantaged the Argentine elites to extend it to this Tehuelche cacique.
However, when the space intervening between the de jure claims and their
de facto recognition disappeared, as they did l ater with Saygüeque, so too
did the criollo willingness to extend either.
Casimiro Bigua’s evocation of a larger political imaginary points to the
global linkages both coloring and animating the conquest of the desert.
Beyond political ideas of liberty, the conquest was driven by foreign con-
cerns, such as British capital. As important were emergent international,
182
Figure 6.3. Cacique Patagón Casimiro, c. 1866. No. 289897. Archivo General de la

Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
interstate norms that the adolescent republic was keen to enforce, in large
part due to its own insecurity regarding its place within the normative
framework of the burgeoning international order. The actions of the Ar-
gentine government w ere predicated on a comparative understanding of
the political and strategic need to expand its borders and secure its fron-
tiers. Doing so was central to the forms and processes of state construc-
tion globally ubiquitous in the late nineteenth c entury. For the frontier is
where the state defined not only its limits, but also itself.
nNnNnN
Argentina’s conquest of the desert between 1875 and 1885 was only partly
about the subjugation of the indios. As importantly, it was also about the
creation of the state through the process of bordering.132 In the indios,
183
the state could not “read” a cognizable political authority, though it felt
threatened by their continued presence. The indios and their political con-
stellations w ere illegible in the world of sovereign states coming to domi-
nate the late nineteenth century. They were an anachronism of the past
with no place in the political present. What were legible were other sov-
ereign states that resembled Argentina—Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and
most importantly Chile. Any space intervening between these states was
“desert”—a void that needed to be filled by state power. In this reckoning,
the indios were not political actors themselves, but rather were mere place-
holders for other, legible polities. Thus the contemporary argument of
“araucanization”—namely, that the indios of the Pampas were not in-
digenous, but rather were natives of Chile and thus Chileans who in-
truded and conquered t hese lands during the mid-eighteenth c entury.133
The real danger, however, was the intrusion of other state authorities
into this wasteland. This, as much as anything, is what drew the forces
of the republic into the tierra adentro. Argentine politicians were keen
on preempting Chilean power on the Pampas and in Patagonia. By con-
quering and integrating this space, the republic brought its own limits
up to that of another legible power, and thus secured the regional po
litical order.134
Argentina was thus usurping the “middle ground” intervening between
itself and Chile.135 The indios of the Pampas and Patagonia, like those of
the Great Lakes region, were no longer able to leverage their position in
order to keep Chile and Argentina at bay. For a long time, they had suc-
cessfully done so. Indeed, much of Saygüeque’s power lay in his control
of the passes through the cordillera and the virtual chokehold this granted
him over regional economies.136 However, the changes wrought by the na-
tionalization and internationalization of regional economies paradoxi-
cally meant his power over regional trade both weakened and became an
increasingly acute threat to state authority. The emergence of the political
economy as a space of governmentality inserted state authority in spaces
previously occupied by alternative sources of power.
This is a process seen not only along the cordillera between Argentina
and Chile, but also along the frontier between British India and an emer-
gent Afghan state in the nineteenth century.137 H ere too one finds local
holders of authority—“tribal” khans and maliks—whose power largely
derived from their ability to control the movement of commerce between
Central and South Asia. As the region integrated into the burgeoning
global patterns of trade growing through the course of the nineteenth
184
c entury, the economic exchange that had previously been the backbone
of a local economy of plunder collapsed. Paired with a characterization
of these people as wild tribesmen and the “fear” of imperial Russia’s in-
fluence creeping south of the Hindu Kush, many of the same calculations
driving Argentine actions into the Pampas and Patagonia in 1879 like-
wise drove the Raj into Afghanistan a year previously. The conquest of
the desert was contemporaneous with the Second Anglo-Afghan War, a
fact not lost on Julio Roca.138
The Second Anglo-Afghan War was not the only frontier war against
indigenous peoples that the conquest was contemporaneous with. In ad-
dition to the war in Afghanistan, the Argentine expansion into the Pampas
and Patagonia took place at the same time as Geronimo’s Apache War in
the American Southwest and the Anglo-Zulu War at the limits of Natal
province. All t hese conflicts occurred on imperial peripheries, where mod-
ernizing state forms—be they national or colonial in character, but de-
finitively imperial in design regardless—faced off against “uncivilized” or
“barbarous,” and invariably “tribal,” p eoples. Further, t hese conflicts took
place in spaces intervening between state powers, in realms that were
conceived of as “buffers” between “real” political actors.
Part of the threat that drove Argentina to action was the same as that
which forced the Raj’s hand—the ambitions of a territorially covetous and
untrustworthy neighbor. For the Raj, that neighbor was, of course, Tsarist
Russia, with whom it was engaged in the “Great Game” for influence and
control in the heart of Eurasia. Argentina was itself playing a great game
with its rival Chile for the vast interior spaces of Latin America’s southern
cone.139 The constant characterization of the indios of the Pampas as
nothing more than Chilean interlopers belied the belief that, in the state’s
eyes, the stateless p eoples of the periphery could have not independent
will.140 They w
ere simply placeholders for another state—and thus legible
power. Whereas Lord Lytton wanted to create a “buffer state” in Afghani
stan that would serve as a breakwater between British India and Russian
Central Asia, Roca wanted Argentina to directly abut Chile so t here would
be no room for expansion as each had reached their “natural limits.” The
interconnectedness between these two “great games” was evidenced by the
presence of the same personnel. T. H. Holdich, who was instrumental in
demarcating the Afghan frontier with British India, later served as His Maj-
esty’s Government’s arbitrator of the border dispute between Argentina and
Chile.141 But more interesting and revealing of Argentina’s contemporary
global interconnections was the person of Ignacio Fotheringham.
185
nNnNnN
Ignacio Hamilton Fotheringham was a central figure in Argentine po
litical and military life at the end of the nineteenth century.142 He ended
his days of public service to the republic as governor of the Chaco prov-
ince and a lieutenant general in the army.143 Fotheringham, however, is a
rather surprising figure in the pantheon of the Argentine republic. A
relatively late arrival, emigrating from the United Kingdom in 1862 at
the age of twenty-one, he nonetheless played a central role in the violent
expansion of the Argentine state into the vastness of the Pampas and
Patagonia. But Fotheringham did not get his first taste of violence and
military life in Argentina. Rather, his exploits in the southern cone w ere
his military reincarnation. His first martial life was in the services of Her
Majesty Queen Victoria in British India.
Born outside Southampton, England, in 1842, he was the son of a re-
tired army colonel who had served Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wel-
lington, from India to Waterloo. As with many in his position, the
younger Fotheringham was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Ignacio’s fortunes, however, w ere not to be made in the Queen’s army, but
in her navy, or rather that of her Honorable East India Company.144 In
1857, he joined the Company’s navy at the age of fifteen in what proved
to be the waning days of the Company Raj.145 Fotheringham’s autobiog-
raphy makes clear these were not his happiest days. He detested life in
the Company’s service and had little good to say of its commanders, his
fellow officers, or its seamen. Fortunately for him, he was drubbed out in
1860 and shipped back to E ngland at the very moment the Company’s
navy was being absorbed into the Royal Navy.146 On his return, and much
to his relief, he found the merger left him no place in the Queen’s service.
At eighteen, having brought disgrace to his family by his dismissal, he
found himself unsure of what to do.
His next move only became clear in 1862, when he came of age and
inherited £1,100 from his father’s estate. Though he initially considered
going to Australia, Fotheringham was dissuaded from this course by family
friends who instead encouraged him to consider Argentina. Despite his
decidedly English roots, Fotheringham decided to seek fortunes outside
the confines of Britain’s global empire and embarked on the RMS Oneida
for Rio de Janeiro, and thence onward to Buenos Aires. While Fother-
ingham was exceptional in pursuing his f uture outside the British Empire
at the very moment its white colonies of settlement w ere opening to mass
186
migration, he was by no means uniquely so. Indeed, he was at the leading

edge of a wave of British immigration to Argentina, which substantially
increased from the mid-1860s onward. Welsh sheep farmers famously
established a colony on the Patagonian coast in 1865.147 And Fotheringham
himself was far from the only British subject to seek service in the Argen-
tine army.
But what makes Fotheringham particularly interesting and noteworthy
is his role in the conquest of the Argentine frontier, one informed by his
service under arms with the East India Company. Fotheringham eradicates
the difference and thus distance between the “savage” inhabitants of the
Pampas and Patagonia and those of British India’s North-West Frontier.
Araucans were, like the Afghans, “savages” in his eyes, and deserved to
be treated likewise. Fotheringham provides a personnel, and personal, link
in the chain of transmission with practices of frontier governmentality be-
tween geographic ally far-removed though similarly situated spaces. The
fact those practices were not ultimately affected is another issue. But the
link was t here, informing the actions, if not actualizations, of the Argen-
tine state.
Fotheringham was no mere soldier for hire populating the lower ranks
in the Argentine army. Rather, he was an aide to Roca, and consequently
had the ear of the commander of the conquest. Fotheringham’s position,
both with regard to the conquest and Roca, is evidenced in Juan Manuel
Blanes painting La ocupación militar de Río Negro (The military occu-
pation of Río Negro).148 The painting, a g rand historical and ideologically
laden rendering of a foundational moment of el proceso de organización
nacional, depicts a group of approximately twenty horsemen gathered
on the newly conquered Pampas. At the center of the group is Julio A.
Roca, commander of the conquest and through its success the hero of the
republic. Surrounding him are the undertaking’s key protagonists. Foth-
eringham sits as the second h orseman behind Roca’s right shoulder, a
placement that was by no means accidental.
Blanes’s painting is particularly important on a number of counts, be-
yond its inclusion of Fotheringham and his physical proximity to Roca.
The painting offers a visible rendering of the myth of the conquest.149 La
ocupación militar de Río Negro has had a lasting impact on the national
memory, through its former inclusion on the one-hundred-peso bill, the
most widely circulated (and counterfeited) in Argentina. Excised from the
monetary reproduction of Blanes’s work are any indios.150 Their absence
is no accident.
187
Figure 6.4. La ocupación militar de Rio Negro, by Juan Manuel Blanes (1896).

Museo Histórico Nacional, Argentina. From the author’s collection.
The use of Blanes’s image on this piece of sovereign currency is telling.

While the military government that placed it on the bill did so to cele-
brate Argentina’s martial heritage, they were in fact documenting how
that past was fundamentally entwined with the late nineteenth-century
expansion of global capitalism.151 Through the conquest, the newly uni-
fied Argentine republic was firmly embedded into a global system of
capital, one dominated by the City of London. The newly gained lands
promised the expansion, with animal husbandry feeding international cir
cuits of exchange. That expansion required the building of an infrastruc-
ture of export and exploitation. But just as the young republic lacked the
money to conquer the lands, so too did it lack the money to exploit them.
The railroads built to export sheep’s wool and c attle skins were financed
and owned by the British. The mills where the wool was turned into cloth
were likewise owned by the British and, more often than not, located in
Britain. The territorial consolidation of the Argentine nation thus marked
its subjugation to the global economic order, a fact recognized on its legal
tender.
The bill also offers an answer to the question of why Argentina did not
adopt the forms of frontier governmentality seen along other similarly
situated global peripheries, including ones it looked to as a model for ad-
ministration. The logic of global capitalism created specific opportunities
and forms for its expression. Along other frontiers examined, which
were themselves part of larger imperial constituent parts, that logic drove
the development of frontier governmentality. The relatively poor lands
occupied by the Pashtuns, Bedouins, Somalis, and Apaches, combined
188
Figure 6.5. A 100-peso bill, Argentina. Series S / T. From the author’s collection.
with their continued recalcitrance, militated against direct capitalist ex-

ploitation. The Pampas and Patagonia were different, for two reasons.
First, the land had considerably more productive value. The Pampas grass-
lands occupied by the likes of Namuncurá in Salinas Grandes had the
potential to be transformed in lucrative grazing ranges for a globally in-
terwoven animal husbandry industry. And the Pais de las Manzanas in
Patagonia was an established zone of agricultural productivity, a fact at-
tested to by its name. This relative wealth combined with the weakness
of the Argentine state. The land was too valuable and the state too weak
to encapsulate the indigenous inhabitants on unproductive lands. Second,
whereas the Afghan, Iraqi, K enyan, and American frontiers were all on
the limits of larger imperial constellations— peripheries of the global
imperial order—Argentina itself was a periphery of that order. This posi-
tion necessarily affected the ways it envisaged and governed its own limits.
Not only were the arms of the Argentine state weak, but the state itself
189
was uncertain of its position within the international order. To secure that
position, Argentina needed to demonstrate to its peers (not to mention to
itself) its full, uniform control of its territories.
nNnNnN
Argentina’s apparent failure to follow frontier governmentality along its
limits is nonetheless illustrative of its continuing legacies, and the chal-
lenge of meaningfully dealing with them. For while frontier governmen-
tality was predicated on a rule of difference, the Argentine treatment of
the indios was essentially about the rule of sameness. Juxtaposing these
two seemingly dichotomous experiences displays the range of possibili-
ties and outcomes for states dealing with the p eoples of the periphery.
And the lesson is a troubling one. Frontier governmentality’s practice
and legacy is the encapsulation of frontier p eoples in their own customs
and traditions. It set them apart and maintained that distance through the
rule of difference. In nearly all of the cases examined in the preceding
pages, p eoples subject to this regime of rule were rendered imperial objects
by it. And while in the postcolonial present they may have been formally
integrated into the body politic as citizens, the substance of that integra-
tion remains for the most part substantively unrealized, or in some cases
outright denied.
At first blush, Argentina’s imposition of a single, universal order—one
of citizenship—would seem the answer to the debilitating legacy of fron-
tier governmentality. The p eoples subject to it are largely excluded from
the political order. To right this wrong, make their status as equal mem-
bers of the polity a reality. Yet the experience of the indios under Argen-
tina’s rule raises flags of caution. On the one hand, while the indios were
legally enfranchised, they were socially ostracized and consciously erased.
Their formal elevation as ciudadanos in the late nineteenth c entury was
as hollow as that of other peoples of the periphery in the postcolonial,
late twentieth c entury. On the other hand, their production as citizens was
both a destructive and constructive act. In the former instance, it destroyed
their identity as indios by simply negating it. In the latter, it subsumed
them in the body politic of the republic as citizens, rendering them anew.
Given this Janus-faced character of citizenship, does its extension bode
well as a solution for the legacies of frontier governmentality and the
peoples of the periphery? After all, although citizens, the indios of Argen-
tina have had a rough time of t hings. Argentina’s experience should give
pause to anyone, including the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, who thinks
190
the solution is simply making the peoples of the periphery fully and mean-
ingfully citizens. This is at one and the same time sobering and bitterly
disappointing. It is sobering as it points to the fact that there are no easy
fixes to the legacies of frontier governmentality; it is bitterly disappointing
as it questions whether there are any fixes at all.
Argentina’s experience of expansion—its conquest of the desert—is
both a frustrating and illuminating chapter in the story of frontier gov-
ernmentality. Happening at the same moment as many of the other epi-
sodes documented in this book, and sharing many of the same adminis-
trative ideas, as well as, in the person of Fotheringham, at least some of
the same administrative personnel, Argentina’s story should be of the erec-
tion of frontier governmentality along its limits. The fact that it is not can
only be understood at one level as a disappointment. Yet Argentina’s con-
quest cannot be left t here, for its story is not illustrative of the conceptual
failings of frontier governmentality. Rather it is illustrative of the limits
of the model’s applicability. And by demonstrating t hose limits, the story
in turn reveals something interesting about Argentina, and other similarly
situated states in the contemporary international system. Argentina should
have constructed a regime of rule along its limits in the form of frontier
governmentality. All the ingredients were in place, save one—the resil-
ience of the state institutionally. Argentina was simply too weak to con-
struct, maintain, and enforce frontier governmentality along its limits.
Such a recognition has significant implications, for it suggests that though
frontier governmentality may have been a regime of state absence, it could
only convincingly be done by states that could opt for that absence. Fron-
tier governmentality then was a consciously chosen and consciously con-
structed system of administration available only to the states with the
wherewithal to maintain it. Argentina, with its empty desert vastness,
which was nonetheless full of people, was not one of those states. In its
stead then, the southern republic opted for the assimilative option of weak-
ness. And in so d oing it erased, rather than encapsulated, the “savage”
indios of the interior from the national consciousness without affecting
the same from the national territory.
191
Conclusion
A Long History of Violence
T his book tells the tale of the construction, maintenance, and policing
of a form of state order in the nineteenth-century world that has lasting
consequences today. Frontier governmentality emerged from the 1870s
onward as a near-universal strategy for the management of recalcitrant
peoples inhabiting marginal lands on the edges of authority. Though dis-
persed to the far corners of the globe, peoples of the periphery with seem-
ingly similar irreconcilable cultural dispositions— “savagery,” “barba-
rism,” and a pronounced lack of “civilization”—were subjected to the
same regime of rule along the frontier. That regime had multiple sites of
inception, and from them quickly grew into imperial adolescence as it
spread around the world through the careers of colonial officials. While
the story told h ere is largely one of sameness—parallel patterns and prac-
tices of frontier governmentality in geographically and, in some cases, tem-
porally far-removed spaces—it does not seek to elide the disjunctures,
discontinuities, and differences between these diverse instances. While
acknowledging t hose, striking continuities as well as a discernable coher-
ence of design and purpose nevertheless render this a unified if not uni-
tary tale.
That tale is most convincingly told through a series of arresting paral-
lels structuring the history of frontier governmentality. One of the most
salient of these is the timing of the violence so central to it. In the frontier
spaces examined here, four were at war at the same moment and, impor-
tantly, at the moment preceding or immediately succeeding the establish-
ment of their respective regimes of frontier governmentality. The Second
192
Conclusion
Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), the Ar-

gentine conquest of the desert (1875–1885) and the American Apache
campaigns—specifically Victorio’s War (1879–1881) and Geronimo’s War
(1886)—occurred simultaneously. Though each of t hese conflicts were
necessarily conditioned by their own individual circumstances, they none-
theless have more in common than a date on the calendar of imperial
conquest.
All were frontier wars involving imperial powers in acts of organized
violence against indigenous frontier dwellers who occupied the intervening
space between recognizable state forms. The tribesmen of the North-West
Frontier, and Afghanistan more generally, sat astride the passes separating
British India and Tsarist Russia. The Zulus stood between the British Cape
and Natal colonies and the Boer republics seen as increasingly menacing.
The indios of the Pampas and Patagonia occupied the no-man’s-land be-
tween an expansionary Argentine republic and Chile on the far side of
the cordillera, the passes through which they controlled. And the Apache
navigated a nebulous netherworld between the United States and Mexico,
for a time successfully using the ill-defined border between the two against
the state order that sought to confine them. Yet the kinetic intensity of
these wars was framed by a deeper structural violence at the heart of fron-
tier governmentality.
Frontier governmentality presents a subversive and radically different
way of understanding the modern world. These pages argue that frontiers
are not places, but rather practices manifest in particular spaces. The sig-
nificance of this claim goes well beyond simply a clever conceptual trick.
The constituent praxis of frontier governmentality continues to have
important implications t oday. Sovereign pluralism challenges the accepted
orthodoxy of a world in which sovereignty is unqualified and indivisible,
instead pointing toward one where gradations of authority mark its ex-
ercise. In an age of sovereign absolutism, where states either have it or
they do not, suggesting the lack of absolute sovereignty as not a sign of
“state failure” but rather design legacy contests our understanding of the
modern state system.1 Frontier as practice also challenges the binary spa-
tial categories of “center” and “periphery,” instead replacing such markers
of place with sinews of relationships. Further, this work provocatively con-
siders the relationship between the past and the present, more specifically
the colonial past and the postcolonial present. To what extent the latter
is not simply beholden to, but actually a continuing manifestation of the
former, seems a question rarely seriously considered.
193
It has been nearly 150 years since the Frontier Crimes Regulation
(FCR) was first promulgated to govern the wild tribesmen of British In-
dia’s North-West Frontier. Despite the passage of time, the fall of the co-
lonial order, and the assumption of authority along the Afghan border-
land by an independent state of Pakistan, it was not u ntil May 2018 that
the law was finally put into abeyance with the passage of the twenty-fifth
amendment to the constitution of Pakistan.2 Only now, seventy years a fter
the British frontier administration that conceived, authored, and enforced
the law withdrew from the subcontinent is the Pakistani state ready to
remove its strictures on the lives of the frontier’s inhabitants. It has yet to
be seen whether Pakistan w ill carry through with its announced intention
of repealing the FCR and fully integrating the tribal agencies and their
populations into the state’s body politic.3 But the resistance, which has
met the demands of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, bodes ill for such
an outcome.4
Regardless, one remains skeptical that the abrogation of the form of
frontier governmentality will cripple the ongoing legacies of its substance.
Nearly all of the other spaces this book has examined abandoned formal
constraints before the end of the twentieth century. In Iraq, following the
Baathist coup in 1958, the Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation
(TCCDR) was removed from the books. The partition of Palestine in 1948
ended the Collective Responsibility Ordinance as the Israeli military placed
the Negev u nder its legal jurisdiction.5 The K
enyan Parliament rescinded
the Special Districts Administration Ordinance in 1997, while the Indian
Citizenship Act of 1924 aimed to regularize Native Americans’ status
within the US republic. In all of t hese spaces, the postcolonial order sought
to undo the forms of rule rendered by the colonial one. And in all of t hese
spaces they largely failed.
Despite the formal renunciation of the colonial order, the postcolonial
one remains in its grip, at least along the peripheries. The lasting legacies
of frontier governmentality have proven more pernicious and durable than
the formal state structures enforcing it. Those legacies include poverty, po
litical disenfranchisement, marginalization, and, above all, violence. The
grandchildren of t hose once subjected to the l egal regimes of rule, such as
the FCR, the TCCDR, and the Collective Punishments Ordinance, entailed
by frontier governmentality continue to suffer the fate of their forefathers.
To speak of frontier governmentality in the modern world, then, is to
speak of a long history of violence.
194
Conclusion
That history is not simply composed of incidents of a ctual violence,

which abound in the construction, defense, and operation of frontier gov-
ernmentality both past and present. Rather, the p eoples of the periphery
have been victims of more varied forms of violence than just the occa-
sional, spectacular exercise of state force. They have been targeted by
ceaseless episodes of epistemic violence—violence exercised not through
acts of doing, but rather through acts of definition. Frontier governmen-
tality was predicated on indirect rule through the use of indigenous “cus-
toms and traditions.” The state reserved for itself the right to say what
those legible customs and traditions w ere. This act of definition was itself
an act of violence. The state silenced the voices of the subjugated, filling
that silence with the dictates of a state-sanctioned social reality that had
varying degrees of resonance with the a ctual lived daily experiences
of those subject to it. The power to construct, define, and adjudicate
“authenticity” was, and remains, one of the most intimate though often
unrecognized legacies of violence along the frontier.
But the epistemic violence of frontier governmentality was exerted
through more than the seemingly innocuous power of definition. It was
more maliciously manifest in the “othering” and dehumanizing of its ob-
jects. One of the most insidious and lasting exercises was the rhetorical
debasement of the people of the periphery as “savage,” “barbaric,” and
“uncivilized.” The use of such language by politicians and publics alike
to describe the frontier and its inhabitants, even today, goes largely un-
contested. And its meaning is both clear and intended: that those subject
to frontier governmentality—in the past and its continuing legacies in the
present—deserve their fate b ecause of their unwillingness, if not inability,
to join the modern, civilized world. The harm of the epistemic violence
exercised on such peoples long outlasts the scars of actual violence disfig-
uring previous generations. So to speak of a long history of violence is to
reference not only the continued occasional bloodletting that the peoples
of the periphery suffer, but also, and as importantly, the incessant daily
diminution of their h uman dignity exercised through a bureaucratic, le-
galistic, and political vocabulary that intentionally constructs them as
something “less than” and thus disposable.
That long history of violence has a palpable present around the world.
The Afghan / Pakistan borderlands remain gripped in a seemingly never-
ending cycle of conflict from which there appears no escape. Within the
jurisdictional realm of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),
195
the Pakistani army has mounted no fewer than ten offensives against mil-
itants associated with the so-called War on Terror since 2001.6 The vio
lence has increasingly spilled over into areas of regular administration.
The short-lived occupation of the Swat Valley by the Tehriki-Talibani-
Pakistan in 2009 led to a destructive military response, which heightened
the damage considerably.7 That conflict is no longer confined to the rural
outlands of Pakistan’s frontier. Rather, it has invaded its major cities as
well. The 2014 Army School attack in Peshawar, which left nearly 130
dead, most of them children, provided yet another data point for the met-
rics of brutality, which is frontier governmentality’s most pronounced
legacy.8
As with the administrative structures of frontier rule, the fighting in
Pakistan sadly finds its replicants along the periphery of the postcolonial
global order. The kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok in northern Ni-
geria in 2014 at the hands of Boko Haram is an outgrowth of an ongoing
insurgency that in many ways resembles that of Pakistan’s Taliban. On
the other side of the African continent, al-Shabab remains a spoiler on
the Somali political scene, reaching into neighboring Kenya with horri-
fying effect. The attack on Garissa University in 2015 that killed 147 stu-
dents provides a disturbing reminder. It is noteworthy that, in all three of
these cases, the targets of attack were educational institutions and their
students. And all three occurred on frontiers of the former imperial order
and the edges of today’s state-based authority.
But physical violence is only one type shaping the legacy of frontier
governmentality. For other peoples of the periphery, epistemic rather than
physical violence has been the main bludgeon, with equally devastating
effects on their lives. The Bedouin of the Negev in Israel remain second-
class, if not third-class, citizens at best. Their settlements go unrecognized
by the state and lack the provision of basic infrastructure, such as roads,
water access, or schools.9 They remain without political clout. The Israeli
Defense Force’s continued presence and role in governance over what the
state defines as a strategically important area hampers, if not outright
denies them, meaningful
legal recourse. They, like the inhabitants of
Pakistan’s FATA, remain objects of state action rather than fully integrated
citizens of the republic.
And for the San Carlos Apache, their postcolonial fate has been no less
dire or any less colonial. Despite the extension of US citizenship in 1924
and the promise of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the so-called
Indian New Deal meant to reverse the damage of the assimilation policy,
196
Conclusion
the Apache and other American Indians remain both subject to the vio
lence of the past and present as well as objects of state action. With an
unemployment rate of 53.6 percent and median household income of
$26,875, San Carlos is one of the poorest reservations in the United
States, placing it near the bottom of nearly all socioeconomic indices.10
Drugs, addiction, and poverty remain definitional features of reserva-
tion life. These are part of the inheritances of frontier governmentality,
themselves best epitomized by the current controversy surrounding Oak
Flat.11
In the Tonto National Forest, Oak Flat is considered sacred tribal ter-
ritory, a fact the US government recognized when it placed the land under
the tribe’s protection in 1955. However, the recent discovery of the largest
unexploited copper deposit in the Western Hemisphere by Resolution
Copper, an international mining conglomerate led by Rio Tinto, has en-
dangered this sacred space. When the tribe rejected Resolution Copper’s
offered land swap because of the land’s religious significance, Congress
used its plenary powers to force it through over the tribe’s objections. Ari-
zona’s then senior senator, John McCain, inserted the swap as a rider to
the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama
signed.12 Once again the Apache have found themselves the objects of
state-sponsored violence—the violence of taking.
Yet violence is only one destructive legacy of frontier governmentality
shaping the modern-day lives of peoples of the periphery. The legally lim-
inal spaces t hese people inhabit—the tribesmen of the FATA, though Paki-
stani citizens, have up to now been excluded from constitutional legal
protections—have handicapped their meaningful access to normal avenues
of judicial recourse.13 And when they do succeed in getting their day in
court, a myriad of legal impediments unique to them invariably stand in
their way. Terrorism laws or the jurisprudence of tribal sovereignty deflect
the claims of tribesmen and women into legal eddies that prove difficult if
not impossible to escape. In t hese situations, the l egal continuities between
the colonial and postcolonial orders justified by claims of stability, surety,
and order serve to perpetuate the peripheral status—indeed, the effective
legal objecthood of those formerly subjected to the systems of frontier
governmentality. The liberal promise of the law continues to be denied
them while its punitive sanction remains in force.
The spaces of the periphery subjected to frontier governmentality re-
main incredibly impoverished. The peoples inhabiting them are among
the poorest in what are in most cases already poor states. The violence
197
Figure C.1. Morenci Copper Mine, Morenci, Arizona. Photograph by author.
of these spaces—actual and epistemic, state and social—compounds this

impoverishment. Just as colonial states refused to extend normal admin-
istrative order to these spaces, postcolonial states have in the main also
refused to extend the physical infrastructure of development and mo-
dernity here, save in instances where it served to facilitate the state’s pur-
poses. The subjects of frontier governmentality, even if legally integrated
on paper, remain physically cut off from the rest of the body politic. But
while states have refused to invest in these spaces, they have facilitated
the extraction of resources—natural as well as human—out of them.
The fate of San Carlos exemplifies this. If Resolution Copper is ultimately
allowed to exploit Oak Flat, with a 7,000-foot-deep open-pit mine, it w ill
simply be the latest installment in a long history of resource extraction and
environmental destruction. On the other side of the reservation, Phelps
Dodge did in Morenci during the twentieth century what Resolution
Copper hopes to do in Oak Flat during the twenty-first.14 The wealth gen-
erated by such extractive industries inevitably leaves, while the destruction
remains.
198
Conclusion
The extractive exploitation of the frontier is not limited to its natural

resources, but includes its h uman ones as well. Since the advent of Sande-
man’s tribal militias, Glubb’s Desert Patrol, and Clum’s tribal police, the
inhabitants of these spaces have been iniquitously integrated into global
circuits of labor. Initially at least, the men w
ere recruited into local mili-
tary labor markets, which had the dual effects of both monitoring the
tribesmen and monetizing them. Yet such military labor markets w ere ul-
timately and intimately connected with larger colonial and global ones.
Apache Scouts jumped the border to Mexico with General Miles in the
1880s; their Navajo neighbors became the “code talkers” of the Second
World War.15 Baluch and Pashtuns of the frontier joined outfits such as
the Khyber Rifles, and many eventually helped the empire conquer Iraq
as part of the Indian Expeditionary Force D in 1914.16 The wages these
men sent home monetized the frontier spaces, but insufficiently so. Their
cash-poor, yet now cash-dependent kin were thus forced into circuits of
migratory l abor.
Military labor was only one of a number of labor markets that fron-
tier inhabitants w ere integrated into. With their movements limited by the
bounds of tribal agencies and reservations, the indigenous inhabitants of
these spaces found their mobile lives squeezed by the state-sponsored im-
perative of sedentarization. Alongside such pressures w ere the demands
of an expanding colonial cash economy, which was, at its foundation,
driven by the tax demands of the state, but which readily infected most
avenues of economic exchange. P eople now had to buy what they could
not produce, harvest, or steal. To do so, they needed cash. This was an
intentional effect of the policy of encapsulation embedded in frontier gov-
ernmentality. The opportunities in, as well as wages of, the military labor
market proved insufficient to support the populations of t hese spaces. And
their inhabitants w ere forced into other labor networks, ranging from re-
source extraction, such as mining and timber harvesting, to industrial
labor in railway construction. The Apache of San Carlos became a readily
exploitable labor pool for surrounding white settlers when their govern-
ment rations proved insufficient, which was at the point of delivery.17 The
inhabitants of the Afghan frontier similarly provided much of the labor
that constructed the roads and railways, such as the Pishin railway, which
the Raj built to facilitate military access and thus punitive governance of
this region.18
Such labor movements eventually fed into labor migrations as the
limited wage labor opportunities on the margins of encapsulated spaces
199
proved insufficient. Pashtuns moved through Britain’s South Asian as well

as global empire. In the postcolonial period, they became a centrally
important body in building the economic miracle of the Gulf from the
1970s onward.19 They remain a pillar of the wage economy there to this
day. In Argentina, the subjugation of Indian l abor facilitated their erasure
from the national consciousness. Conquered indios w ere put to work first
on colonias and then subsequently on the farms and in the domestic spaces
of white settlers throughout the country.20 Some, like Saygüeque, w ere im-
prisoned on the island of Martin Garcia, in the middle of the Rio de la
Plata. Authorities sold their services as prison labor in Buenos Aires, ad-
vertising them in local newspapers.21 This was Argentina’s version of the
carceral state. For others, like the Apache, such labor mobility—enforced
or otherwise—was circumscribed by racism, hindering their integration
into wider circuits of labor. They thus remain locked in their proverbial
and physical lot, consequently doomed to an ever-downward spiral of
poverty.
There was one alternative economic strategy frontier dwellers could
avail themselves of in their encapsulated peripheries. They could turn t hese
spaces into centers of “illicit” economies—of goods, bodies, and finance.
Historically, the tribal agencies of the British Indian frontier housed a bur-
geoning arms trade as well as served as a conduit for bodies into Central
Asian circuits of slavery.22 Today, they are hubs in the international drug
trade, a designation shared by many of the other frontiers examined h ere.23
Such a move toward the “illicit” economy not only has placed these spaces
outside of acceptable economic intercourse, but also rendered them cen-
ters of danger in the eyes of state authorities. The unregulated trades in
weapons, drugs, and bodies have been captured by organized crime as well
as terrorist organizations who profit off them. Consequently, the periph-
eral and menacing character of these spaces has been reinforced by eco-
nomic exclusion.
While the formal systems encapsulating the people of the periphery
have, in the main, been deconstructed and done away with—even in Pak-
istan it now appears that the FCR may have seen its last light of day—
their legacies and consequences remain. It is difficult to see those victim-
ized by these legacies escaping them. This is because the aftereffects of
frontier governmentality, like the practice itself, are not design flaws of
the system, but rather intended outcomes. Frontier governmentality in-
tentionally peripheralized, encapsulated, and marginalized those subject
to it. By so d
oing, it ensured such positions of liminality would be both
200
Conclusion
enforced and maintained through violence and through time. And that is
precisely what the historical record reflects.
While the lasting legacies of frontier governmentality continue to ad-
versely impact the lives of t hose who w ere the object of it, as well as their
descendants, its implications through both time and space have been no
less important or disruptive for o thers. And while the consequences in the
main have a human face, and thus a personal victim, the continuing ef-
fects of frontier governmentality resonate on an altogether different reg-
ister on the state. For it is the state, and the state system its individual
members collectively construct, that most conspicuously bear the marks
of frontier governmentality. The adverse effects and legacies of frontier
governmentality on peoples and states are the intentional outcomes of a
purposefully planned system of exploitation and regime of rule.
The emergence of frontier governmentality and its widespread prac-
tice and replication at the moment of the construction of the modern state
system tells us something profoundly revealing about that system. The
claims of sovereignty, or rather sovereign exclusivity, at the heart of the
modern global order are false. For too long, sovereignty has been thought
of by politicians, political scientists, practitioners, and even some histo-
rians in absolute terms.24 The Leviathan’s authority either is complete and
unqualified, or the Leviathan is not, ultimately, the Leviathan. But such
ideal types poorly fit the exigencies of the political moment, or the reality
of the historical record. Few if any states resemble the ideal archetype of
a sovereign Westphalian state. Sovereignty is a language of state, one that
is historically conditioned if not contested. It is important to take the lan-
guages states used to describe and justify their rule seriously, if not liter-
ally. The divorce of rhetoric from reality can reveal as much about states,
their ambitions, and their self-understandings as can the marriage of these
elements. The fact that states clothed their assertions of power, as well as
the status of the peripheral p eoples with whom they dealt through the
practice of frontier governmentality, in the dually reinforcing language of
sovereignty and independence was neither inadvertent nor inconsequen-
tial. For it reveals a world in which those making such sovereign claims
both implicitly and explicitly recognized their gradation, rather than
uniformity.
Sovereignty was plural, as opposed to singular, for the British Raj as it
was for the American and Argentine republics. And it remains so today.
While the former clearly acknowledged this fact through the doctrine of
paramountcy, the latter attempted to obfuscate it with the language of
201
federalism and categories such as “domestic dependent nations.” As the

international system morphed with the retreat of the imperial frame
through the course of the twentieth c entury, and the nation-state became
the exclusive participant in that system, both the recognition and re-
membrance of sovereignty’s gradation have disappeared. Yet the reality
of that gradation remains palpable along the periphery. H ere the de jure
categories of political power—Indian tribal sovereignty, Pashtun tribal
independence—run up against the de facto manifestations of state power.
Juxtaposing these elements as the frontier does shows that sovereignty is
not simply divisible, but also unevenly textured.
The contoured character of sovereignty t oday, as in the past, is neither
incidental nor accidental. States made conscious choices of categorization
for the peoples of the periphery. Many if not most continue to adhere to
those choices. And though more often than not there was a marked dis-
sonance between what states—imperial and national, but both ultimately
colonial—said and did, they nonetheless purposefully said it. Nowhere is
this clearer than in the contemporary United States where an activist ap-
proach toward tribal sovereignty by Native Americans has laid bare the
contradictions of the American language of sovereignty. Tribal assertions
of sovereignty are repeatedly ignored by the federal executive as well as
the judiciary.25 While the former simply dismiss such claims as fictional
pretense, the latter have over the years become enmeshed in a circular and
contradictory l egal logic that effectively denudes “sovereignty”—tribal or
otherwise—of any legal or political meaning. American jurisprudence has
produced a legal fiction that the US government now finds itself trapped
in and ruled by. But it takes that fiction seriously because it represents the
“rule of law.” And the “rule of law” is the mark of civilization, and thus
a justification for the American republic like the British Empire before it.
It has long been used as a normative foundation of its colonial project.
The court, as well as many other parts of government and society work
assiduously to contain such contradictions within the rubric of “Indian
law,” or more broadly federal-Indian relations, b ecause of the latent dis-
ruptive potential. If its legal logic is taken to the obvious conclusion, it
would collapse the state system as we know it.
The frontier defined the state, its claims and understandings of such
central aspects of its power as sovereignty, and the legal as well as ad-
ministrative regimes and practices that both encapsulated and actualized
those claims. Though states may have thought of the frontiers as pe-
ripheral backwaters, the practice constituting such spaces— frontier
202
Conclusion
governmentality—was central to the modern state and remains an inte-

gral part of the interstate system today. Frontiers and the outlands they
entailed often proved centers of state power.26 As such, they were pregnant
with centrifugal forces that could, and in many cases did, rip a number of
polities—empires as well as states—asunder. At the same time, those
forces were often generative of new polities. From Roman to the Mughal
empires, and innumerable ones between, the forces on the frontier often
played critical roles not simply in the succession of power, but also in the
genesis of new entities and state forms. While this phenomenon seems to
have lessened in the modern age, especially from the nineteenth c entury
onward, nonetheless the frontier has remained a center of state power,
and thus a definitional element of the evolution and character of the state
itself.27 This complicates the traditional dichotomous picture of the pol-
itics of “center / periphery,” where decisions and actions taken at the
political center reverberate outward to the edges. Clearly, reverberations
are not unidirectional—they travel inward as well, meaning the periphery
influences the center.
But what and where were these centers? While certainly there existed
within the polities discussed here spaces where the webs of politics, eco-
nomics, and society w ere undoubtedly thicker than o thers, that does not
necessarily mean the sinews connecting them with other spaces of empire
were anything but tenuous. Indeed, if centers w ere historically the actual,
and not simply the titular, basis of power, then the disruptive potential of
the “man on the spot” would be an element of fiction. The language of
center and periphery, implicit or explicit, tends to obscure more than it
reveals. Within each of the realms discussed here, though there may have
been a formal loci of political authority, the centers of political power were
necessarily multiple, dynamic, and interactive. While Calcutta was the cap-
ital of the British Raj, frontier officers w
ere as likely to look to Lahore as
they w ere to the plains of Bengal. At times they even played the long game
of appealing directly to London. To capture that dynamic interaction, one
need recognize the relationships between centers themselves were condi-
tioned by inequalities of power. It is more fruitful to conceptualize dy-
namic relationships of space and authority between different locales rather
than fixed categories of center and periphery.
Just as frontier governmentality collapses the dyadic spatial categories
of center and periphery, it also collapses the temporal categories of colo-
nial and postcolonial. The colonial world was the clearly demarcated
formal colonial spaces of nineteenth-and twentieth-century European
203
empires—British India, Kenya, Nigeria, and the like. But it was also con-
stituted by the spaces historians have termed areas of informal empire.28
They could be merely informal in a legal sense, such as mandatory Pales-
tine and Iraq. Or the subjugation to European rule could rest upon more
veiled, but no less penetrating, subservience to imperial authority. Argen-
tina was an integral if informal part of the British Empire in the late nine-
teenth century, one whose colonial status was authored, maintained, and
ratified by the centrality of British capital coursing through the veins for
the republic’s economy.29 All of this is fairly uncontroversial. But another
order of the colonial world entailed the nation-states of the nineteenth-
century world, most notably the republics of the Americas, which rhetori-
cally authored a new course shorn of the imperial baggage of their former
European masters. In this category rests both Argentina and the United
States. Though these republics conceived of and represented themselves
as anticolonial, they were in fact the colonial enterprises of white settle-
ment. What separated their self-understandings and representations of en-
nobling republicanism from corrupting imperialism was the global color
line of the nineteenth century. Colonialism against other whites was clearly
wrong (the Irish did not count in this calculus). But the subjugation of
the darker, brutish world was neither objectionable nor, when carried out
by republicans, colonial.
Yet the settlement of their republican interiors w ere projects of internal
colonialism, which bore many of the hallmarks of their explicitly colo-
nial contemporaries such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, Tsarist
Russia, and even Japan. This means that frontier governmentality was a
colonial practice. As such, it is likely to be found along the periphery of
colonial empires throughout the nineteenth-century world. And though
not explored h ere, there are hints of frontier governmentality’s global rep-
lication elsewhere along the edges of authority. Practices of governance
along the frontiers of German South-West Africa bore an uncanny resem-
blance to those documented here.30 French rule guided by the hand of
Hubert Lyautey along the rimlands of North Africa—in Morocco and
Algeria—as well as in Indochina, self-consciously emulated Sandeman in
particular, and the larger system he personified more generally.31 Japanese
colonialism southward in Taiwan and northward among the Ainu bears
a striking resemblance to the forms of power and authority deployed in
the American Southwest and along the Afghan frontier.32 Likewise, Rus
sian governance of the peoples of the Central Asian steppe, the Caucasus,
and Siberia closely paralleled British Indian governance of the Pashtun
204
Conclusion
tribesmen, as well as American governance of its native American “do-

mestic dependent nations.”33
The United States had an oceanic as well as continental empire. And
parts of that oceanic empire undoubtedly suffered the same forms of fron-
tier governmentality as that inflicted internally. John Clum, reflecting on
his days at San Carlos, consciously compared his struggles and actions
with those of former President Taft when he headed McKinley’s efforts at
governing the Philippines.34 The American influence in the spread of fron-
tier governmentality extended beyond its own imperial domain. And it
was largely brought about not through the official chain of transmission
seen in the imperial careering of the British Empire, but rather through
the global spread of American missionaries. The YMCA, later charged
with the US Southwest reservations, provided an important administra-
tive link between the US reservation system and how the Chinese repub-
licans ruled their Yunnan borderlands.35 And Argentina was far from the
only state in Latin America facing the question of how to deal with the
recalcitrant indios.36 These examples hint at the fact that frontier govern-
mentality was not simply a globally ubiquitous phenomenon because of
the spread of British imperial power in the nineteenth-century world, but
rather because of the spread of imperial presence.
The collapse of “colonial” versus “national” categories in the nineteenth-
century world forces consideration of how colonial sovereignty not only
informs sovereignty in the postcolonial world but is indeed definitional of
it—especially when that sovereignty is less absolute and exclusive in reality
than it is in rhetoric, or assumed to be in the system’s design. The colonial
world’s acknowledgment of the gradation of sovereignty created space for
what would today be termed nonstate actors: independent tribes, princely
states, and the like. They populated a richly prismatic system whose order
was once maintained by imperial paramountcy. Today, we have a system in
which such actors continue to exist and exercise authority, but where they
have no recognized position because of their lack of formal sovereignty in
its strictly constructed and wholly unrealistic sense. The state system has
no meaningful way to deal with, much less integrate, t hese nonstate actors,
save as threats to the system that must be subjugated by the state actors
who are the only legitimate participants in it.
The consequence of this failure to recognize the colonial in the post-
colonial is a continuing history of violence. The colonial order was founded
on violence. The postcolonial order is maintained by it. The lack of space
in the international order for nonstate actors means that more often than
205
not they are judged as threats to that order and are dealt with harshly.
Such an outcome reflects not simply a willful historical ignorance on the
part of policymakers and practitioners alike, but also a profound lack of
political imagination. The inability to conceive of a political order with
multiple currencies of power, not simply the gold standard of sovereignty,
marks a historical aberration, and what surely must be a passing one at
that. Though we presently live in an era marred by the resurgence of ugly
and exclusivist nationalism, championed by claims of sovereignty, the age
of sovereignty rests on flimsy historical foundations.37 The postcolonial
world coexists alongside, and in many cases within, the national world
of states, though its presence is unacknowledged and purposely ignored.
As a consequence, the pervasive power of the colonial inheritance over
the postcolonial world goes unrecognized. The imperial order persists, and
the window onto its hollowness lays along the global periphery.
206
notes
archives consulted
acknowle dgments
index
Notes
introduction
1. These attacks were all widely covered by the domestic and international
press. See, for example, “Kenya Attack: 147 Dead in Garissa University Attack,”
BBC News Online, 3 April 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32169080,
accessed on 22 January 2018; “Taliban Massacre 131 Schoolchildren,” Dawn On-
line, 17 December 2014, https://www.dawn.com/news/1151361, accessed on 22
January 2018; “Nigerian Parents Say at Least 234 Schoolgirls Kidnapped by Ex-
tremists,” CBS News Online, 21 April 2014, https://www.cbsnews.com/news
/nigerian-parents-say-234-schoolgirls-kidnapped-by-extremists/, accessed on 22
January 2018.
2. For a contemporary example of the policy of enclosure, see Gary Fields, En
closure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2017).
3. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Germania, ed. Elisabetta Risari (Milan: Fabbri
Centauria, 2017).
4. John S. Galbraith, “The ‘Turbulent Frontier’ as a Factor in British Expansion,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 2, no. 2 (1960): 150–68.
5. As such, it partly answers Alexandre Kedar’s call for a critical comparative
history. Alexandre Kedar, “Expanding Legal Geographies: A Call for a Critical
Comparative Approach,” in The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2014), 95–119.
6. See the “Fragile States Index” from the Fund for Peace, at http://fundforpeace
.org/fsi/, accessed on 16 December 2019. See also Dag Tuastad, “Neo-Orientalism
and the New Barbarism Thesis: Aspects of Symbolic Violence in the Middle East
Conflict(s),” Third World Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2003): 591–99.
7. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005); James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History
209
NOTES TO PAGES 7–15
of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2009).
8. Thomas Simpson, “Modern Mountains from the Enlightenment to the An-
thropocene,” Historical Journal 62, no. 2 (2018): 553–81.
9. Cf. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in
Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
10. It is sometimes referred to as la campaña del desierto (the campaign of the
desert) to differentiate it from an e arlier period of conquest in the 1830s.
1. frontier governmentality
1. Jurgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of

the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
2. Kerry Goettlich, “The Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics,” European
Journal of International Relations 25, no. 1 (2019): 203–28.
3. Perhaps the best example of this is George Nathaniel Curzon, Frontiers: The
Romanes Lecture, 1907, Delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, November 2,
1907 (Oxford, 1907).
4. On the relationship between borders and frontiers, see Ladis K. D. Kristof,
“The Nature of Frontiers and Boundaries,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 43, no. 3 (1959): 269–82; John Idriss Lahai and Tanya Lyons, Af
rican Frontiers: Insurgency, Governance and Peacebuilding in Postcolonial States
(London: Routledge, 2016); Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders:
Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford: Berg, 1999).
5. Some of the classic works on frontiers and borders include Igor Kopytoff, The
African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1989); and Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of
France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California, 1991).
There is a rich and expanding literature on the idea of borderlands. See, for ex-
ample, Michiel Baud and Willem van Schendal, “Toward a Comparative History
of Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (1997): 211–42; Jeremy Adelman
and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States and the
Peoples in between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104,
no. 3 (1999): 814–41; and Pekka Hämäläinen and S. Truett, “On Borderlands,”
Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (2011): 338–61.
6. See Chapter 4.
7. This is evocatively demonstrated in the case of the US southern border by
Rachel St. John’s history of it. Rachel C. St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of
the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press,
2011).
8. See Mark Rifkin, “The Frontier as (Movable) Space of Exception,” Settler
Colonial Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 176–80. While I agree with his emphasis on mo-
bility, I disagree with his embrace of Agamben’s “state of exception.”
9. Korf and Raeymaekers refer to them as “spatially dynamic.” Benedikt Korf
and Timothy Raeymaekers, “Introduction: Border, Frontier and the Geography of
210
Rule at the Margins of the State,” in Violence on the Margins: States, Conflicts and
Borderlands, ed. Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013), 11.
10. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Nicole Jerr, eds., The Scaf
folding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Con
cept, Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2017). For an interesting and subversive take on such sovereign acts,
see Frances Negrón-Muntaner, ed., Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism across
Indigenous Nations and Latinx Americ a (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2017).
11. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault,
ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1991), 87–104; Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-
Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
12. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 101.
13. See, for example, Arjun Appadurai, “Number in the Colonial Imagina-
tion,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South
Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Van Der (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1993), 314–40.
14. Kenneth W. Harl, “Along the Hindu Kush: Warren Hastings, the Raj and
the Northwest Frontier,” Historically Speaking (September 2012): 19–23.
15. R. D. Choksey, Mountstuart Elphinstone: The Indian Years, 1795–1827
(Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1971), 101.
16. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and Its
Dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India: Comprising a View of the Afghaun Na
tion, and a History of the Dooraunee Monarchy (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees,
Orme, and Brown [u.a.], 1815); B. D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghani
stan, ed. Megan Vaughan and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Imperial and Post-
Colonial Studies Series (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
17. Roberto Stefan Foa and Anna Nemirovskaya, “How State Capacity Varies
within Frontier States: A Multicountry Subnational Analysis,” Governance 29,
no. 3 (2016): 411–32.
18. See generally Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical
Africa, 5th ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1965). On the intellectual genealogy of indi-
rect rule as imperial policy, see Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine
and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2010), 148–78. See also Chapter 3.
19. See Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, Tensions of Empire: Colonial
Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
I markedly disagree with Jurgen Osterhammel’s characterization that the
nineteenth-century world saw t hese older forms of political order swept away by a
unitary sovereign order. Rather, I argue t hese older forms w ere central to the con-
struction of that sovereign order and remain deeply embedded within it to this day.
Cf. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World.
20. See Lauren A. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in
European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);
211
A. L. Stoler, “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,” Public Culture 18, no. 1 (2006):
125–46.
21. See, for example, Alex Maroya, “Rethinking the Nation-State from the
Frontier,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 267–92;
Luke Glanville, “The Myth of ‘Traditional’ Sovereignty,” International Studies
Quarterly 57, no. 1 (22 March 2013): 79–90; Charles S. Maier, Once within Bor
ders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500 (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017).
22. See, for instance, Anne L. Clunan, “Ungoverned Spaces? The Need for
Reevaluation,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of
Softened Sovereignty, ed. Anne L. Clunan and Harold A. Trinkunas (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2010), 3–16; Glanville, “Myth of ‘Traditional’ Sover-
eignty”; Maier, Once within Borders.
23. Benton, Search for Sovereignty.
24. Eric Lewis Beverley, “Frontier as Resource: Law, Crime, and Sovereignty on
the Margins of Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 2 (3
April 2013): 241–72. On the idea of political subjecthood, see Benjamin de Carv-
alho, “The Making of the Political Subject: Subjects and Territory in the Formation
of the State,” Theory and Society 45, no. 1 (2016): 57–88. For the colonial con-
struction of such legal categories, see Samera Esmeir, Juridical Humanity: A Co
lonial History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014).
25. Standing Bear v. Crook, [5 Dill. 453.] I Circuit Court, D. Nebraska (1879).
See Chapter 5.
26. See, for example, Tracy Banivanua Mar, “Frontier Space and the Reification
of the Rule of Law: Colonial Negotiations in the Western Pacific,” Australian Fem
inist Law Journal 30, no. 1 (2009): 23–29.
27. Faisal Chaudhry, “Rethinking the Nineteenth-Century Domestication of the
Sharī’a: Marriage and F amily in the Imaginary of Classical Legal Thought and the
Genealogy of (Muslim) Personal Law in Late Colonial India,” Law and History Re
view 35, no. 4 (2017): 841–79; Eleanor Newbigin, The Hindu Family and the Emer
gence of Modern India: Law, Citizenship and Community, Cambridge Studies in
Indian History and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
28. On the realms “public” versus “private” law in colonial India, see David
Washbrook, “Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India,” Modern Asian
Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 649–721.
29. David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43 (October 1995):
191–220.
30. Lisa Ford notes that “in law, sovereignty is practiced through jurisdiction.”
Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and
Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 2.
31. On the multiple types of judicial subjecthood within the imperial realm, see
generally Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire
and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2018).
32. I thank Anil Seal for this turn of phrase.
212
33. Raiding played a central role for many of these frontier tribal economies.
C. A. Bayly refers to “tribal breakouts” financing the Durrani Empire in the eigh
teenth century. C. A. Bayly, “Beating the Boundaries: South Asian History, c. 1700–
1850,” in South Asia and World Capitalism, ed. Sugata Bose (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 35–37. On the Afghan political economy of plunder, see
Hopkins, Making of Modern Afghanistan, chap. 2; Jagjeet Lally, “Beyond ‘Tribal
Breakout’: Afghans in the History of Empire, ca. 1747–1818,” Journal of World His
tory 29, no. 3 (2019): 369–97. On the American Southwest, see Pekka Hämäläinen,
The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
34. Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006 (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2008); John P. Clum, “Apaches as Thespians in 1876,” New
Mexico Historical Review 4 (1931): 80–98; Abhilash Mehdi, “Infrastructural Con-
tingencies and Contingent Sovereignties in the Indo-Afghan Frontier,” Modern Asian
Studies (forthcoming); Radikha Singha, The Coolie’s Great War: Indian Labour in a
Global Conflict, 1914–1921 (London: C. Hurst and Co. Publishers Ltd, 2019).
35. Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a
Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
36. T. R. Moreman, “The Arms Trade and the North-West Frontier Pathan
Tribes, 1890–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, no. 2
(1994): 187–216; B. D. Hopkins, “Race, Sex and Slavery: ‘Forced L abour’ in Cen-
tral Asia and Af ghani
stan in the Early Nineteenth C entury,” Modern Asian
Studies 42, no. 2 (2007): 629–71.
37. Jonathan Goodhand, “Bandits, Borderlands and Opium Wars: Afghan
State-Building Viewed from the Margins” (Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish Insti-
tute for International Studies, 2009).
38. It was not just the inhabitants of frontier spaces that w
ere violent, but the
spaces themselves. Julie Evans, “Where Lawlessness Is Law: The Settler-Colonial
Frontier as a Legal Space of Violence,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 30, no. 3
(2009): 3–22.
39. David T. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas: A Conjectural History of Facundo
Scotland on the Pampas,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83, no. 6 (2006): 789–813.
40. See generally Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American
Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1999); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Barbarians, Savages
and Empires, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Terry Jay
Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001); Bruce Buchan, “The Empire of Political Thought: Civilization, Savagery
and Perceptions of Indigenous Government,” History of the Human Sciences 18,
no. 2 (2005): 1–22.
41. There were, however, some late nineteenth-century writers who insisted this
difference between savage and barbaric was an important one. Edward Burnett
Tylor, Primitive Culture Volume I (New York: Dover Publications, 2016), chap. 2.
42. On this point, see Beverley, “Frontier as Resource.”
43. Goettlich, “Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics.” For a consideration of
how that compares to the postcolonial world, see John Cash and Catarina Kinnvall,
213
“Postcolonial Bordering and Ontological Insecurities,” Postcolonial Studies 20,

no. 3 (2017): 267–74.
44. Thomas Simpson, “Bordering and Frontier-Making in Nineteenth-Century
British India,” Historical Journal 58, no. 2 (2015): 513–42.
45. On Afghanistan’s history as a “buffer state” in this manner, see Hopkins,
Making of Modern Afghanistan.
46. Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge,
International Relations, and the Anglo- Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
47. The classic exposition of a rolling frontier of European imperialism can be
found in Bengal in the eighteenth century. P. J. Marshall, “British Expansion in
India in the 18th Century: A Historical Revision,” History 60 (1975).
48. For the postcolonial manifestations and consequences of this argument in
South Asia, see Elisabeth Leake, “At the Nation-State’s Edge: Centre–Periphery
Relations in Post-1947 South Asia,” Historical Journal 59, no. 2 (2016): 509–39.
2. governing british india’s unruly frontier
Parts of this chapter have appeared previously as Benjamin D. Hopkins, “The Fron-
tier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” Journal of Asian Studies
74, no. 2 (2015): 369–89. I thank the editors of JAS for their willingness to have
the material reprinted.
1. Robert Nichols, “The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement,” presented at the Sigur
Center for Asian Studies, Washington, DC, 27 February 2019, https://sigur.elliott
.gwu.edu/2019/02/05/ethics-and-leadership-2-2/, accessed on 7 June 2019; Farooq
Yousaf, “Pakistan’s ‘Tribal’ Pashtuns, Their ‘Violent’ Repre sen
ta
tion, and the
Pashtun Tahafuz Movement,” SAGE Open 9, no. 1 (2019): 1–10.
2. Pathan is the colonial nomenclature for the Pashtun. The Pashtun are vari-
ously referred to as the “Pashtun” or “Pakhtun,” a difference that is largely based
on spoken dialect. The southern speakers of Pashtu speak the “softer” dialect and
are generally referred to as Pashtun, while the northern speakers of Pakhtu speak
the “harder” dialect and are generally referred to as Pakhtun. The term “Pashtun”
is sometimes intentionally elided with “Afghan,” a move with significant political
implications for Afghanistan. While recognizing the importance, complexity, and
stakes of terminology, it is not my central concern here.
3. Seven agencies constitute the FATA—Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai,
Kurram, and North and South Waziristan. They have legally merged with the sur-
rounding province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa following the passage of the twenty-
fifth amendment to the constitution in June 2018, though the realization of this
legal merger is ongoing. On the recent history of the FATA during the Global War
on Terror, and in particular their subjection to drone warfare, see Madiha Tahir,
“The Containment Zone,” in Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, ed. L. Parks and C.
Kaplan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 220–40; Syed Sami Raza,
“Legal Sovereignty on the Border: Aliens, Identity and Violence on the Northwestern
Frontier of Pakistan,” Geopolitics 24, no. 2 (2019): 344–65.
214
4. The FCR also applied to the Frontier’s Baluch inhabitants. Further, its reach
included the districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and
Dera Ghazi Khan. These six districts, along with Laboul and Spiti, were all subjects
of the 1874 Scheduled Districts Act, which basically said all listed districts would
not be subject to the normal acts and regulations of British India. This act simply
stated what did not apply to these spaces. Individual acts and regulations like the
FCR had to be applied through notification in the gazette. Failure to do so, as seen
below, had significant legal consequences.
5. Amir Wasim, “President Signs KP-FATA Merger Bill into Law,” Dawn, 31
May 2018, https://www.dawn.com/news/1411156, accessed on 7 June 2019.
6. See, for example, D. S. Richards, The Savage Frontier: A History of the Anglo-
Afghan Wars (London: Macmillan, 1990); Michael Callen et al., “Choosing Ungov-
erned Space: Pakistan’s Frontier Crimes Regulation,” Working Paper, 2018, avail-
able at https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/jns/files/cgrs_2018_choosing
_ungoverned_space.pdf, accessed on 15 March 2019; Michael Humphrey, “Hyper-
governance: Managing Disorder in the ‘Uncompleted’ Postcolonial State of Paki-
stan,” Arab Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2009): 144–57; Reza Ahmad Rumi, “Paki-
stan: Ungoverned Spaces,” in “Telling the Story”: Sources of Tension in Afghanis tan
& Pakistan: A Regional Perspective (2011–16), ed. Emma Hooper (Barcelona:
CIDOB Edicions, 2016), 179–200.
7. Comparison of the frontier to the Scottish Highlands has a long pedigree
dating back to Mountstuart Elphinstone’s An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul.
8. See, generally, Magnus Marsden and Benjamin D. Hopkins, Fragments of the
Afghan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). On the construc-
tion of British understandings of this space, see B. D. Hopkins, The Making of
Modern Afghanistan, ed. Megan Vaughan and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Im-
perial and Post-Colonial Studies Series (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008).
9. Paul Titus, “Honor the Baloch, Buy the Pushtun: Stereotypes, Social Organ
ization and History in Western Pakistan,” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 3 (1998):
657–87.
10. Baluchistan is the largest and poorest province of Pakistan. It has seen a
long-recurring and violent insurgency against the Pakistani state since the 1970s.
11. Its claim to political authority beyond this point, however, remained until
the Third Afghan War (1919), a fter which Afghanistan claimed full sovereign inde
pendence, including control over its own foreign relations.
12. “Appendix A: Extract Paras. 3 to 10 and 20 to 24 from Frontier Memo-
randum,” 1880, No. 186, Foreign Department, Political A, National Archives of
India, New Delhi (hereafter cited as NAI).
13. Their liminal position, at one and the same time inside and outside the
grasp of imperial sovereignty, was constitutionally different from the position held
by the subjects of India’s princely states.
14. Af ghan i
stan’s in de
pendence was recognized only in 1921 following
the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Ann Wilks, “The 1921 Anglo-Afghan Treaty: How
Britain’s ‘Man on the Spot’ Shaped This Agreement,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society 3 (2018): 1–20.
215
15. Lord Lansdowne, “The North-West Frontier of India” (Hansard, UK Parlia-

ment, 1898), col. 802.
16. Lansdowne, “North-West Frontier of India,” col. 813.
19. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” (Hansard, 1898),
col. 499.
20. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” cols. 528–29.
21. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” col. 588.
22. The Commons debate implicitly compared the tribesmen’s status with the
Irish, with the Liberal opposition equating them and the government differenti-
ating them.
23. The Parliamentary debate was occasioned by a massive uprising along the
northern reaches of the frontier in 1897, which Winston Churchill made famous
through his Story of the Malakand Field Force. Winston Churchill, The Story of
the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London: Cooper, 1989).
24. R. C. J. Cocks, “Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner,” Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, no. August 1822 (2018): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb
/17808.
25. See, generally, Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the
Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010);
Lauren A. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European
Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 246–50.
Maine’s ideas of “traditional society” were globalized through the imperial
careers of colonial bureaucrats. Maria Misra, “Colonial Officers and Gentlemen:
The British Empire and the Globalization of ‘Tradition,’ ” Journal of Global His
tory 3, no. 2 (10 July 2008): 1–28.
26. C. L. Tupper, Indian Political Practice: A Collection of Decisions by the Gov
ernment of India in Political Cases (Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 1974), cols. 44–45. The
continued sway of Maine’s opinion is evidenced by the fact his memo was repro-
duced by Tupper in his volume Indian Political Practice, which was meant to serve as
a reference guide for administrators. At the time of its publication, Tupper was the
Secretary of Foreign and Political Affairs for the Government of India. The volume
was originally published by the Government Printing Press.
27. Benton, for example, seemingly characterizes the Indian princely states
as “hill polities” that w ere backward and uncivilized in the eyes of imperial admin-
istrators, and consequently w ere best left to their own devices. But such a charac-
terization flattens the differences within the “hills,” which w ere as significant as
those between the “hills” and the “plains.” Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 241–42.
In this, Benton mimics Tupper’s surprisingly unnuanced view of the political
topography of British India. Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 244–45. Cf. Eric
Lewis Beverley, “Frontier as Resource: Law, Crime, and Sovereignty on the
Margins of Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 2
(3 April 2013): 241–72; Eric Lewis Beverley, “Securing Empire’s Borderlands:
Reflections from South Asia,” Journal of Modern European History 16, no. 4
(August 2018): 353–369.
216
28. See, for instance, Ian Copland, The British Raj and the Indian Princes:
Paramountcy in Western India, 1857–1930 (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1982).
29. On the concept of “layered sovereignty,” see Benton, Search for Sovereignty,
chap. 5; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History Power and
the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 17–18;
A. L. Stoler, “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,” Public Culture 18, no. 1 (2006):
125–46. On its relation to British India’s princely states, see Eric Lewis Beverley,
Hyderabad, British India and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sover
eignty, c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
30. Copland, British Raj and the Indian Princes.
31. See, for example, Lauren Benton, “Colonial Law and Cultural Difference:
Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State,” Comparative Studies
in Society and History 41, no. 3 (1999): 563–88; Lauren A. Benton and Richard Jef-
frey Ross, eds., Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850 (New York: New York
University Press, 2013); Benton, Search for Sovereignty; Burbank and Cooper,
Empires in World History Power; Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper, “Rules of Law,
Politics of Empire,” in Benton and Ross, Legal Pluralism and Empires, 279–94.
32. There are exceptions to this. For instance, in Law and Colonial Cultures as
well as her newer work Rage for Order, Benton does look at the legal status of
Australian aborigines. Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: L egal Regimes
in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
chap. 5; Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and
the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2016); Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous P eople
in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2010).
33. There were princely states in the region, including Chitral, Dir, Kashmir,
and Gilgit. Karine Gagné, “Building a Mountain Fortress for India: Sympathy,
Imagination and the Reconfiguration of Ladakh into a Border Area,” South Asia:
Journal of South Asia Studies 40, no. 2 (2017): 222–38; Sultan-i-Rome, Swat State
(1915–1969) from Genesis to Merger: An Analysis of Political, Administrative,
Socio-Political, and Economic Developments (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
2009).
34. See Benton’s discussion about this. Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 238–41.
35. Tupper, Indian Political Practice.
36. Drafted by Henry Maine, then legal member of the Viceroy’s Council, the
authority was rather benignly known simply as “Statute of 1870.” Charles Lewis
Tupper, “India and Sir Henry Maine,” Journal of the Society of Arts 46, no. 2365
(1898): 392, 396. See also Robert Nichols, The Frontier Crimes Regulation: A His
tory in Documents (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013).
37. Beginning with the Khyber Agency, the British created five tribal agencies—
Malakand, Khyber, Kurrum, North Waziristan, South Waziristan—which became
the FATA following the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Prior to the advent of the
agencies, which were run by political agents, these areas were known as “nonregu-
lation” areas and were under the administration of the Deputy Commissioners.
Lal Baha, N.-W.F.P. Administration under British Rule, 1901–1919, Historical
217
Studies (Muslim India) Series (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and

Cultural Research, 1978), 7–9.
38. It has been characterized as “almost hermetically separated from the ordi-
nary court structure.” François Tanguay-Renaud, “Post-Colonial Pluralism, Human
Rights and the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” Singapore Journal of International and Comparative
Law 6 (2002): 555.
39. “The Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1872, V/11/2779B, Punjab Government
Gazette, India Office Records (hereafter cited as IOR), London, sec. 6.
40. H. A. B. Rattigan, ed., “Regulation No. IV of 1887: The Punjab Frontier
Crimes Regulation,” The Bengal regulations, the acts of the Governor-General in
Council, and the frontier regulations, made under the thirty-third of Victoria, chap.
3, applicable to the Punjab with notes and an index: Vol. III containing acts from
1887 to end of 1895 (1899), sec. 3(1).
41. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 70.
42. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 69–72.
43. Anand Yang, “Dangerous Castes and Tribes: The Criminal Tribes Act and
the Magahiya Doms of Northeast India,” in Crime and Criminality in British
India, ed. Anand Yang (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 108–27;
Sandra Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India,” Modern
Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 227–61; Andrew Major, “State and Criminal Tribes
in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the ‘Dangerous
Classes,’ ” Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (1999): 657–88; Elizabeth Kolsky, Colo
nial Justice in British India, Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law:
Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000);
Sumit Guha, “States, Tribes, Castes,” Economic and Political Weekly l, no. 46 / 47
(2015): 50–57; Anastasia Piliavsky, “The Criminal Tribe in India before the British,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2 (2015): 323–54.
Colonial constructions of “tribe” w ere neither monolithic nor flat, but often
reflected sophisticated understandings of local socie
ties. Vinita Damodaran,
“Colonial Constructions of the ‘Tribe’ in India: The Case of Chotanagpur,” Indian
Historical Review 33, no. 1 (2006): 44–75.
44. Sec. 1 and 3, respectively. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” Punjab Govern
ment Gazette, 1872, 20–21.
45. This system was known as nanbati chaukidar. See §35[1].
46. H. A. B. Rattigan, ed., “Regulation No. III of 1901: The Frontier Crimes
Regulation,” The Bengal regulations, the acts of the Governor-General in Council,
and the frontier regulations, made under the thirty-third of Victoria, chap. 3, ap
plicable to the Punjab with notes and an index: Vol. IV containing India acts from
1896 to 1902 (1903), sec. 33.
47. Sec. 36[a]. “Fanatical” violence was specifically targeted by the Govern-
ment of the Punjab in the Murderous Outrages Act, first promulgated in 1867.
See Elizabeth Kolsky, “The Colonial Rule of Law and the Legal Regime of Excep-
tion: Frontier ‘Fanaticism’ and State Violence in British India,” American Historical
Review 120, no. 4 (2015): 1218–46; Mark Condos, “ ‘Fanaticism’ and the Politics
218
of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of British India,” Comparative Studies

in Society and History 58, no. 3 (2016): 717–45; Mark Condos, “Licence to Kill:
The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in Colonial India, 1867–1925,”
Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 2 (2016): 479–517.
48. Sec. 4.
49. “Regulation No. IV of 1887” (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government
Printing, India, 1888), sec. 10(1).
50. T. C. Hodson, India Census Ethnography, 1901–31 (New Delhi: Usha,
1987), 106.
51. See Chapter 3.
52. Quoting the District Magistrate of Peshawar, Mr. W. R. H. Merk. E. W.
Parker, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its
Dependencies during the Year 1891” (Lahore: “Civil and Military Gazette” Press,
1892).
53. “Correspondence,” 1887, L / P&J/202/776, Political & Judicial, IOR,
pp. 295–96.
54. Lepel Griffin, “Offg. Secy to the Govt., Punjab, to Secy. to Govt. of India,”
September 1871, No. 206, Foreign Department, Political A, NAI; “Regarding the
State of Crime in the Peshawar Division,” July 1887, No. 102–23, K.W. No. 1,
Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI.
55. W. M. Young, “Young to the Officiating Commissioner and Superintendent,
Peshawar Division,” 15 February 1886, L / P&J/202/776, Political & Judicial, IOR,
307–17.
56. Rattigan, “Regulation No. III of 1901: The Frontier Crimes Regulation,”
secs. 3–20. The fact that criminal sanction became more disciplined as well as
more punitive reflected larger trends within British India. Taylor C. Sherman,
State Violence and Punishment in India, Royal Asiatic Society Books (London:
Routledge, 2010).
57. This was also true of the Customary Law Codes the colonial government
went to great lengths to compose. These codes almost exclusively dealt with
matters of civil law. See, for instance, J. G. Lorimer, “Customary Law of the Main
Tribes in the Peshawar District,” in The Frontier Crimes Regulation: A History
in Documents, ed. Robert Nichols (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013),
194–253.
58. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1872, sec. 8.
59. On the idea that Pathan identity was predicated on performance (i.e.,
“doing Pashto”), see Fredrik Barth, “Pathan Identity and Its Maintenance,” in
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference,
ed. Fredrik Barth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), 117–34.
60. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the
“Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century, Studies in Imperialism
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Ajay Skaria refers to the “gen-
dering of wild tribes.” Ajay Skaria, “Shades of Wildness: Tribe, Caste, and Gender
in Western India,” Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 3 (1997): 734.
61. Rattigan, “Regulation No. IV of 1887: The Punjab Frontier Crimes Regu-
lation,” sec. 20(1).
219
62. Benton and Ford, Rage for Order.

63. These men were the “knowledge entrepreneurs” of Martin Bayly’s work.
Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, Interna
tional Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2016).
64. E. I. Carlyle, “Warburton, Sir Robert (1842–1899),” Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28677. See also
Akbar Ahmed, “Colonial Encounter on the North West Frontier Province,” Eco
nomic and Political Weekly 14, no. 51–52 (1979): 2092–97.
65. See, for example, C. H. Atkins, “Report on the Administration of Criminal
Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1896” (Lahore: “Civil
and Military Gazette” Press, 1897).
66. Quoting Mr. Cunningham, District Magistrate and Deputy Commissioner of
Hazara. E. W. Parker, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the
Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1888” (Lahore: W. Ball & Co., 1889).
Conversely, C. E. F. Bunbury, the District Magistrate for Peshawar, complained
that the FCR, and in particular the ability to refer matters to jirgahs, had a demor-
alizing effect on both police and magistrates, some of whom would refer issues to
jirgahs in order to lighten their administrative load. Atkins, “Report on the Admin-
istration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year
1896.”
67. Atkins, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab
and Its Dependencies during the Year 1896,” para. 41.
68. H. M. Plowden, “Report of the Frontier Committee: Remarks by H. M.
Plowden, Esquire, Judge, Chief Court, Punjab, on the Draft Frontier Regulation,”
July 1887, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI, para. 17.
69. This stands in stark contrast to the earlier practices of settler colonialism,
which rested on the nexus between sovereignty, territory, and jurisdiction. Ford,
Settler Sovereignty, 1–29.
70. Sec. 1(4).
71. Sec. 1(6).
72. H. M. Durand, “Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Depart-
ment, to the Secretary to the Government of the Punjab,” January 1888, No. 30,
Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI.
73. Curzon, Frontiers: The Romanes Lectures 1907 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1907), 40.
74. That independence was not confirmed until 1921. Wilks, “1921 Anglo-
Afghan Treaty.”
75. Indeed, the colonial judiciary ruled that the Punjab government’s initial no-
tification for the 1887 notification was faulty and vacated it. The government
quickly reissued the notification and made its effect retroactive.
76. On the territorialization of power, see Matthew Edney, Mapping an Em
pire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1990); Hopkins, Making of Modern Afghanistan.
77. All five cases appearing in the All India Reports dealt with the issue of ju-
risdiction, with two of them—Hari Singh and Bhola Roma—directly dealing
220
with the issue notification. Hari Singh s / o Mangal Singh v. Emperor, vol. 32, All
India Reporter (hereafter cited as AIR) 65 (1945); Nur Mohammad and others v.
Emperor, AIR 396 (1944); Bhola Ram v. Emperor, AIR 355 (1915); Drehan Khan v.
Bahadur Khan, AIR 338 (1934); Mt. Sabhai v. Emperor, AIR 436 (1932).
78. B. H. Baden-Powell, C. A. Roe, and Mr. Browne, “Latif, Wali Khan vs. The
Empress,” January 1888, No. 8, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI.
79. H. M. Plowden, “Mr. Henderson for the Crown, and Mr. Bridges Lee for
opposite party, Empress vs. Muhammad Umar Khan, et al.,” November 1888,
No. 146, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI.
80. On the issue of an “independent” judiciary, see Abhinav Chandrachud, An
Independent, Colonial Judiciary: A History of the Bombay High Court during the
British Raj, 1862–1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015).
81. Bhola Ram v. Emperor, AIR.
82. A. H. Benton, “Sessions Judge, Peshawar Division to the Commissioner and
Superintendent, Peshawar Division,” July 1887, No. 118, Foreign Department,
Frontier A, NAI.
83. W. G. Waterfield, “Commissioner and Superintendent, Peshawar Division, to
the Deputy Commissioner, Kohat,” January 1888, No. 16, Foreign Department,
Frontier A, NAI.
84. “Administration Report of the Northwest Frontier Province from 9th No-
vember 1901 to 31st March 1903,” NWFP Administration Reports (London, 1903),
sec. 44; H. H. Risley, Census of India, 1901: Vol. I, India: Ethnographic Appen
dices, Being the Data upon Which the Caste Chapter of the Report Is Based, vol. 1
(Calcutta: Office of the Supt. of Government Printing, 1903).
85. Plowden, “Report of the Frontier Committee,” para. 35.
86. Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan, AIR.
87. See, for instance, B. P. Caton, “Social Categories and Colonisation in
Panjab, 1849–1920,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, no. 1 (1
February 2004): 33–50.
88. On Elsmie, see G. R. Elsmie, Thirty-Five Years in the Punjab (Edinburgh:
David Douglas, 1908); F. H. Brown, “Elsmie, George Robert (1838–1909),” Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33015.
89. §14 “Notification,” June 1870, No. 170, Foreign Department, Political A,
NAI. §§11–15 of the Rules are the relevant portion that formed the basis of the
1872 version of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.
89. “Notification.”
90. H. M. Durand, “Rules for the Administration of the Agrore Valley,” 1870,
Nos. 169–171 K. W., Foreign Department, Political A, NAI; Lord Mayo, “Memo-
randum: Policy to be adopted towards offending tribes on the Huzara frontier,”
1870, Nos. 105–107 K. W., Foreign Department, Political A, NAI.
91. Cf. Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of
Permanent Settlement, Le Monde d’outre-Mer Passe et Present. Primiere Serie:
Etudes XIX (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1963).
92. There is a local history to these settlements, which is best discussed by
Robert Nichols. Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier: Law, Land and Society in
the Peshawar Valley, 1500–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 7.
221
93. Clive Dewey, “The Influence of Sir Henry Maine on Agrarian Policy in
India,” in The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A Centennial Reap
praisal, ed. Alan Diamond, First (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
353–75.
94. Charles Boulnois, Notes on Customary Law as Administered in the Courts
of the Punjab (London: Stevens and Sons, 1878), 204–5; Dewey, “Influence of Sir
Henry Maine,” 371.
95. The IPC was, of course, preceded by a number of other penal codes, some
of which were in effect at the time of the Permanent Settlement.
96. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 49–74.
97. M. E. Yapp, “Tribes in the Khyber, 1838–1842,” in The Conflict of Tribe
and State in Iran and Afghanistan, ed. Richard Tapper (London: Croom Helm,
1983), 150–91.
98. See, generally, Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
99. See Christian Tripodi, “Good for One but Not the Other: The ‘Sandeman
System’ of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier
1877–1947,” Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 767–802.
100. Sandeman’s was not the only school of frontier administration. That
championed by Sir Robert Warburton was often contrasted with Sandeman’s ap-
proach. See the debate regarding the so-called Baluchistan versus Punjab system in
Parliament. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” cols. 601–6.
While the Sandeman and Warburton systems differed in their details, their gen-
eral thrust was the same. See, generally, Christian Tripodi, Edge of Empire: The
British Political Officer and Tribal Administration on the North-West Frontier,
1877–1947 (London: Routledge, 2016).
101. “Administration Report of the North-West Frontier Province for 1903–04,”
1904, V/10/370, NWFP Administration Reports, IOR.
102. For a history of the establishment of tribal frontier militias, see Govern-
ment of the Punjab, ed., “Report on the Administration of the Punjab and Its De-
pendencies for the Year 1870–71” 1871, V/10/329, Punjab Administration Report,
IOR, para. 157.
103. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” col. 602.
104. There is a long history of violence against bania merchants along the Fron-
tier, much of it clothed in religious rhetoric. The “Hindustani Fanatics” regularly
kidnapped and often killed t hese merchants. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of
the Afghan Frontier, 75–100.
105. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market
Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 2008). Such economic dislocations have a modern counterpart with the
migration of Frontier inhabitants to Pakistan’s cities, and farther abroad. For a
discussion of the effect these migrations and their associated remittances have on
tribal structure, see Mariam Abou Zahab, “Kashars against Mashars: Jihad and So-
cial Change in the FATA,” in Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along
the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier, ed. Benjamin D. Hopkins and Magnus Marsden
(London: C. Hurst & Co., 2013), 93–106.
222
106. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in

Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault,
ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1991), 87–104.
107. This was also colonial governing practice on the North-East Frontier.
Sudatta Sikdar, “Tribalism vs. Colonialism: British Capitalistic Intervention and
Transformation of Primitive Economy of Arunachal Pradesh in the Nineteenth
Century,” Social Scientist 10, no. 12 (1982): 15–31.
108. Maj. H. P. Burn, “Burn to Lumsden,” 30 August 1850, No. 15, Foreign
Department, Secret Consultations, NAI.
109. See Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures.
110. Saurabh Pant, “The Frontier Crimes Regulation in Colonial India: Local
Critiques and Persistent Effects,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41,
no. 4 (2018): 789–805; Farooq Yousaf, “Pakistan’s Colonial Legacy,” Interven
tions 21, no. 2 (2019): 172–87.
111. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1890, V5361, The Baluchistan Code, IOR;
C. U. Aitchison, “Foreign Department—(Political),” 2 November 1876, L / P&S/7/11
/217, Political & Secret, IOR, pp. 309–20.
112. Reeju Ray, “Interrupted Sovereignties in the North East Frontier of British
India, 1787–1870,” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (2019): 582–605. See also Scott
Relyea, “Lamas, Empresses and Tea: Early Twentieth-Century Sino-British Encoun-
ters in Eastern Tibet,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46, no. 2
(March 2018): 257–85.
Ideas and practices of frontier governmentality seemed to pervade colonial and
proto-colonial governance of Southeast Asia as well. Andrew Walker, The Legend
of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thai
land, China, and Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).
113. On the North-East Frontier and its governance, see, generally, Thomas
Simpson, “Bordering and Frontier-Making in Nineteenth-Century British India,”
Historical Journal 58, no. 2 (2015): 513–42; Debojyoti Das, “Colonial Construc-
tion of a Frontier: Debating the Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar-Naga Hills,”
Economic and Political Weekly 53, no. 7 (2018): 52–61; David Vumlallian Zou
and M. Satish Kumar, “Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-
Body of India’s Northeast,” Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 1 (2011): 141–70;
Bert Suykens, “State-Making and the Suspension of Law in India’s Northeast:
The Place of Exception in the Assam-Nagaland Border Dispute,” in Violence on
the Margins: States, Conflicts and Borderlands, ed. Benedikt Korf and Timothy
Raeymaekers (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 167–92.
114. H. K. Barpujari, Problem of the Hill Tribes North-East Frontier, 1873–
1962: Vol. III, Inner Line to McMahon Line (Gauhati, Assam: Spectrum Publica-
tions, 1981), 10.
115. For example, the cross-border relations of tribes in the Kachin Hills with
Chinese authorities was noted as a justification for the promulgation of the Kachin
Hills Regulation.
116. See Tamina Mahmud Chowdhury, Indigenous Identity in South Asia:
Making Claims in the Colonial Chittagong Hill Tracts (London: Routledge, Taylor
223
& Francis, 2017), chap. 2; Hopkins, “Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier
Governmentality,” 374–75.
117. “Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition
of India during the Year 1892–93” (London, 1894), 159.
118. “Regulation No. V of 1896: The Chin Hills Regulation, 1896, with Rules
Framed Thereunder, and Notifications,” May 1897, L / P&S / 18 / B146, Political &
Secret, IOR; “Regulation No. I of 1898: A Regulation to Amend the Kachin Hill-
Tribes Regulation, 1895,” May 1898, L / P&S / 18 / B147, Political & Secret, IOR.
119. “Burma Frontier Tribes Regulation,” Pub. L. No. Regulation No. II of
1896, 280 (1896), 280–81.
120. C. P. Ilbert, “Regarding the State of Crime in the Peshawar Division,” 26
October 1886, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI.
121. It also has a postcolonial legacy shaping the region. Rajashree Mazumder,
“Illegal Border Crossers and Unruly Citizens: Burma-Pakistan-Indian Borderlands
from the Nineteenth to the Mid- Twentieth Centuries,” Modern Asian Studies
(2019): 1–39; Marcus Franke, “Wars without End: The Case of the Naga Hills,”
Diogenes 53, no. 4 (2006): 69–84.
122. Pum Khan Pau, “Administrative Rivalries on a Frontier: Problem of the
Chin-Lushai Hills,” Indian Historical Review 21, no. 1 (2007): 200–201.
123. Skaria, “Shades of Wildness.”
124. Barpujari, Problem of the Hill Tribes, 104–5.
125. In 1871, Robert Sandeman and his system of administration for Baluch-
istan ultimately triumphed over his bureaucratic bugbear and superior, William
Mereweather, at the Mithankot conference. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of
the Afghan Frontier, 59–60.
126. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005). Cf. Kolsky, “Colonial Rule of Law.”
127. See Chapter 3.
128. See Chapter 5.
129. On Taiwan, see Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mi-
metic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan,” American Historical
Review 107, no. 2 (2002): 388–418; Paul D. Barclay, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s
Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2018). On China, see Andres Rodriguez, “Building the Nation, Serving the
Frontier: Mobilising and Reconstructing China’s Borderlands during the War of Re
sistance (1937–1945)” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2011), 345–76. On Argen-
tina, see Chapter 6.
130. Derek Gregory, “Dirty Dancing: Drones and Death in the Borderlands,” in
Parks and Kaplan, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, 29.
131. On Agamben and colonialism, see Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignall,
eds., Agamben and Colonialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
132. See Benton’s discussion of an Agambenian analysis in Benton, Search for
Sovereignty, chap. 6. On the idea of “protection” and the colonial rule of indige-
nous peoples, see Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of
Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century
British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
224
133. For a recent critique of the contemporary FATA and the FCR, see Maira
Hayat, “Empire’s Accidents: Law, Lies, and Sovereignty in the ‘War on Terror’ in
Pakistan,” Critique of Anthropology, 18 July 18 2019, https://journals.sagepub
.com/doi/10.1177/0308275X19850686, accessed on 25 October 2019.
134. “Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants,” Asia Report (Islam-
abad / Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2006).
135. Rumi, “Pakistan: Ungoverned Spaces.”
136. Some scholars refer to this phenomenon as “postcolonial colonialism.”
Martin Sokefeld, “From Colonialism to Postcolonial Colonialism: Changing
Modes of Domination in the Northern Areas of Pakistan,” Journal of Asian
Studies 64, no. 4 (2005): 939–73.
3. the imperial life of the frontier crimes regulation
1. “Proposed special legislation for tribal areas,” 1924, Cabinet Office Papers,
CAB 24/165/54, The National Archives, London (hereafter cited as TNA).
2. In “Proposed special legislation for tribal areas,” Samuel wrote, “3. The powers
prescribed in sections 2 and 3 are modelled on provisions in legislation issued in ‘Iraq
since the British Occupation for dealing with tribes. The object of section 4 is to
make effective the imposition of a punitive police post on a lawless tribe. The object
of section 5 is to prevent the initiation of blood feuds, the fear of which deters the
police in many cases from dealing rigorously with offenders in tribal areas.”
3. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation” (London: British Library,
1915); “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” 1915, Political & Secret,
L / P&S10 / 617 / P3889 / 1916, IOR.
4. See generally Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1959).
5. On the Mesopotamian campaign, see generally Charles Townshend, Desert
Hell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
6. On forms of Ottoman rule in frontier spaces, see Nilay Özok-Gündogan,
“Ruling the Periphery, Governing the Land: The Making of the Modern Ottoman
State in Kurdistan, 1840–70,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 160–75; Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire:
Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2011); Ebubekir Ceylan, “Carrot or Stick? Ottoman Tribal Policy in
Baghdad, 1831–1876,” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 3, no. 2
(2009): 169–86; Isa Blum, “Contesting the Edges of the Ottoman Empire: Re-
thinking Ethnic and Sectarian Boundaries in the Malesore, 1878–1912,” Interna
tional Journal of Middle East Studies 35 (2003): 237–56.
7. For a brief biography of Dobbs, see J. E. Shuckburgh, “Dobbs, Sir Henry
Robert Conway (1871–1934),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2006),
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32842.
8. Following the war, Dobbs returned to India and negotiated the Anglo-
Afghan treaty of friendship, which fully recognized Afghanistan’s independence.
Ann Wilks, “The 1921 Anglo-Afghan Treaty: How Britain’s ‘Man on the Spot’
225
S haped This Agreement,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (2018): 1–20. In
1923, he was named High Commissioner to mandatory Iraq, a position he held
until 1929.
9. “The Baluchistan Code” (1890).
10. Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History
Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 94. For an overview of
Cox’s c areer, see Robert Pearce, “Cox, Sir Percy Zachariah (1864–1938),” Oxford
On the British occupation and subsequent mandatory period, see generally Peter
Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914–1932 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007).
11. Ali Hammoudi, “ ‘The Pomegranate Tree Has Smothered Me:’ International
Law, Imperialism & L abour Struggle in Iraq, 1917–1960” (York University, 2018),
24–31.
12. The dead hand of Henry Maine had a long temporal reach. See Karuna
Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
13. Cf. this type of protection against modernity with Lauren Benton and Lisa
Ford’s discussion of protection of aboriginal peoples as a colonial justification of rule.
Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins
of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
14. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation.”
15. “Note on procedure devised for the regulation of criminal and civil dis-
putes arising between tribesmen or in which tribesmen are concerned in the Oc-
cupied Territories,” 1916, Secret & Political, L / P&S/10/617/4168/16, IOR.
16. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” sec. 15.
17. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” 1918, Political & Secret,
L / P&S/10/619 / P1427 / 1919, IOR.
18. “Annex to C.P. 152 (24). Herbert Samuel to the Duke of Devonshire,” 30
November 1923, Cabinet Office Papers, CAB 24 / 165, 367–68, TNA. The ordi-
nance itself is included in the file.
19. Matthew John Longland, “A Sacred Trust? British Administration of the
Mandate for Palestine, 1920–1936” (University of Nottingham, 2013), 206.
20. Longland, A Sacred Trust?, 207.
21. Norman Bentwich, “Palestine,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and In
ternational Law 10, no. 3 (1928): 175; Naomi Shepard, Ploughing Sand: British
Rule in Palestine (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 197; Falah
Ghazi, “The Pro cesses and Patterns of Sedentarization of the Galilee Bedouin,
1880–1982” (Durham University, 1982), 239. See also Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth
Kark, “Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: In-
fluence on the Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870–1948,” New Middle
Eastern Studies 1 (2011): 15.
22. Longland, A Sacred Trust?, 207. Quoting Albert Abramson, a District Com-
missioner in the Palestinian mandate. Leo Amery, then Colonial Secretary, noted the
collective responsibility was “congruent with Arab customs.” Citing Amery to Sir
Gilbert Clayton (Chief Secretary), 4 August 1925, CO 733 / 87. Amery was later Sec-
226
retary of State for India during World War II (1940–1945) when he u ndoubtedly
became acquainted with the Frontier Crimes Regulation, if he had not been already.
23. Shepard, Ploughing Sand, 197–98.
24. Emmanuel Marx, Bedouin of the Negev (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1966), 33.
25. Mansour Nasasra, The Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics and Resis
tance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), chap. 3.
26. Quoting Lord Oxford, Nasasra, Naqab Bedouins, 66.
27. See Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s
Liberal Settler State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). For a sense of
the ongoing debate about the place of Negev Bedouin in Israel, see, for instance,
Akiva Bigman, “Why the Bedouin’s Claims to the Negev Are Outrageous,” The
Tower, January 2014, accessed at http://www.thetower.org/article/why-the-bedouins
-claims-to-the-negev-are-outrageous/, accessed on 5 June 2019.
28. On TransJordan and the colonial imprimatur on the mandatory state, see
Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
29. Yoav Alon, “The Tribal System in the Face of State-Formation Process:
Mandatory TransJordan, 1921–46,” International Journal of Middle East Studies
37, no. 2 (2005): 224.
30. Alon has a useful comparative discussion of British policies in Iraq and
TransJordan. According to him, the main distinction was that while in the former
the British tried a kind of divide and rule between urban nationalist and rural
tribesmen, in the latter the lack of an urban populace, making nearly everyone
“tribal,” meant such tactics could not be followed. The absence of a meaningful
urban / rural divide arguably made TransJordan more similar to the Afghan fron-
tier than to mandatory Iraq. Alon, “Tribal System,” 221–22.
31. This was perhaps best exemplified through the Organic Law, which cre-
ated a Legislative Council that reserved seats for, and thus preserved the power of,
tribal shaykhs. Alon, “Tribal System,” 223.
32. The Bedouin tribal courts employed by the Palestinian mandate w ere also
used to ensure the smooth functioning of “interterritorial tribal relations” between
Palestine and TransJordan. Nasasra, Naqab Bedouins, 67–71.
33. They were F. G. Peake, the commander of the Arab Legion, and Amir
Shakir, who was charged with tribal governance. Robert Fletcher, British Imperi
alism and “the Tribal Question”: Desert Administration and Nomadic Societies in
the Middle East, 1919–1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 120.
34. See generally James Lunt, “Glubb, Sir John Bagot [Known as Abu Hunaik;
Called Glubb Pasha] (1897–1986),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/40128. Glubb’s ascendancy over the
desert Bedouin was assured with the death of Amir Shakir, Amir Adbullah’s
brother who had been charged with desert administration, in 1934. Tancred Brad-
shaw, ed., The Glubb Reports: Glubb Pasha and Britain’s Empire Project in the
Middle East, 1920–56 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 35.
35. Glubb was critical of the Iraqi government’s desert policy, especially with
regards to Saudi raiding. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 17–18.
227
36. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports,18–19. Robert Fletcher, while acknowledging the

importance of India as an administrative exemplar, warns against “exaggerating
the power of Indian examples or ‘precedents’ over the rest of the empire without ex-
ploring how they were transmitted and enacted.” He goes on to minimize, if not
dismiss, the influence of Sandeman on Glubb. Yet this chapter is meant to directly
answer Fletcher’s welcome and well-considered admonition of the need to docu-
ment the lines of transmission, as opposed to generally asserting the influence of
India on the “tribal question” around the Empire. Fletcher, British Imperialism and
“the Tribal Question,”50.
37. “A monthly report on the administration of the TransJordan deserts for the
month of March 1935,” Foreign Office Records, FO 371 / 19016 / E3536, TNA.
Reprinted in Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 46–47.
38. This remained a small force through the 1930s, numbering roughly 180
men. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 36.
39. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 35; Alon, “Tribal System,” 225–27.
40. Both Alon and Bradshaw discuss the impoverishment suffered by the desert
Bedouin through the 1930s. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 35; Alon, “Tribal System,” 225.
41. P. J. Cain, “Character and Imperialism: The British Financial Administra-
tion of Egypt, 1878–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 34,
no. 2 (2006): 177–200; Roger Owen, “The Rapid Growth of Egypt’s Agricultural
Output, 1890–1914, as an Early Example of the Green Revolutions of Modern
South Asia: Some Implications for the Writing of Global History,” Journal of
Global History 1, no. 1 (2006): 87.
42. See generally Fletcher, British Imperialism and “the Tribal Question.”
43. James Lunt, “Peake, Frederick Gerard (1886–1970),” Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35429.
44. Longland, “A Sacred Trust?,” 207. See also “The Collective Punishment Ordi-
nance,” 1912, Southern Nigeria Ordinances 1910–1912, Library of Congress,
Washington, DC (hereafter cited as LOC).
45. See generally Margery Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1937); A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John
Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2008); Margery Perham, “A Re-statement of Indirect Rule,” Africa: Journal of
the International African Institute 7, no. 3 (1934): 321–34.
46. Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th ed.
(London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1965).
47. On Lugard’s reliance on Indian models of administration, see Michael Fisher,
Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1991), 471–74. Interestingly, Lugard himself suggested the replication of
village panchayats in the Sudan. Frederick D. Lugard, The Diaries of Lord Lugard,
ed. Margery Perham (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1959), 90.
48. Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority, 1898–1945, Volume 2
(Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968), 149; Lugard, Dual Mandate in British
Tropical Africa, 200, n. 1.
49. Perham, Lugard, 469–70.
228
50. On the Malaya comparison, see Kirk- Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John
Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945).” There has also been significant debate within
African historiography regarding other instances of indirect rule in Africa pre-
ceding Lugard, which he drew upon. See, for example, Norman Etherington,
“The Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-Century Natal,” Theoria: A Journal
of Social and Political Theory 47, (October 1976): 11, 18.
51. Among his most vociferous posthumous critics was I. F. Nicholson, who
authored a damning critique that largely attributed Lugard’s success to his wife’s
campaign in the press. Nicholson wrote that “as [Charles] Temple said of Lugard’s
‘writing, writing, writing,’ its main purpose was to mystify and mislead, and a long
sustained attempt to fathom its meaning involves risk of brain damage.” I. F. Nich-
olson, The Administration of Nigeria, 1900–1960: Men, Methods and Myths
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 206.
52. Political Memorandum (1906), in A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, ed., The Principles
of Native Administration in Nigeria: Selected Documents 1900–1947 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1965); Nicholson, Administration of Nigeria, 1900–
1960, 147–48.
53. “The Unsettled Districts Ordinance,” 1911, Southern Nigeria Ordinances,
LOC; “The Unsettled Districts Ordinance,” 1912, Southern Nigeria Ordinances,
LOC.
54. Perham, Lugard, 40. See Memo VII “Native Courts,” in Kirk-Greene,
Principles of Native Administration in Nigeria, 136–48.
55. Kirk-Greene, Principles of Native Administration in Nigeria, 146–47.
56. He was invalided back to England in 1881. On his return, he remained with
his regiment in Peshawar u ntil he moved to Umballa in 1884 as a transport officer.
Perham, Lugard, 40–46. Lugard’s service record is available at the National Ar-
chives, WO 76/384/6. A summary of his Indian service is provided in the annual
The Indian Army List.
57. Perham, Lugard, 121, 149; Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria.
58. Miss Margery Perham, “Some Problems of Indirect Rule in Africa,” Journal
of the Royal African Society 34, no. 135 (1935).
59. The prominent role of Kano in the genesis of Lugard’s system cannot be
ignored.
60. Kirk-Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945).”
61. He likely also encountered the Collective Punishment Ordinance operating
in Palestine.
62. There was a previous Native Courts Ordinance dating from 1900. Perham,
Lugard, 40. For a discussion of the Nigerian legal system under Lugard, see Fred-
erick Lugard, “The Judicial System in Nigeria,” 1932, Lugard Papers, L56 / 7,
Bodleian Library Special Collections, Oxford.
63. For a history of this frontier space, see Keren Weitzberg, We Do Not Have
Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 2017); Vincent B. Thompson, “The Phenomenon of Shifting
Frontiers: The Kenya-Somalia Case in the Horn of Africa, 1880s–1970s,” Journal of
Asian and African Studies 30, no. 1 / 2 (1995): 1–40; Julie MacArthur, “Decolonizing
229
Sovereignty: States of Exception along the Kenya-Somali Frontier,” American His

torical Review 124, no. 1 (2018): 108–43.
64. “Special Districts Administration Ordinance,” 1934, The Official Gazette
of the Colony and Protectorate of K enya, Vol. 36 / No. 19, CO 542 / 32, TNA.
65. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I” (Nairobi, 1934), 93, 96.
66. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Kenya),” 1929, Colonial Office Rec
ords, CO 533/392/14, TNA.
67. Joseph Byrne, “Diary of the visit of Sir Joseph Byrne,” 1932, Colonial Office
Records, CO 533/425/22, TNA.
68. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I,” 91.
69. Hannah Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa: Conflict and Co-
lonial Development on the Margins c. 1930–60,” Journal of African History 58,
no. 3 (2017): 387.
70. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Kenya),” 1931, Colonial Office Rec
ords, CO 533/407/2, TNA.
71. “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance,” 1932, Colonial Office
Records, CO 533/427/6, TNA.
72. “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance” (London, 1932).
73. The Official Gazette of the Colony and Protectorate of K enya, February 1
(Nairobi: Government Press, 1836), 213–15; “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. II”
(Nairobi, 1935), 989–90.
74. The draft regulation listed which sections were “practically extracts from
the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901.” Appendices to the draft included a
“Comparative Table of Sections,” which listed the other colonial laws the draft
was drawn from. Also included was a copy of the 1901 FCR. “Frontier Districts
(Administration) Ordinance,” secs. 5–4, 11, 28–46.
75. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I,” 96. The Attorney General was re-
sponding to two members of Indian origin, the Hon. Shamsud-Deen and the Hon.
J. B. Pandya who w ere against the law due to its repressive Indian origins. “Legisla-
tive Council Debates, Vol. I,” 93–94.
76. Marginal note on the draft regulation by J. W. Flood, “Frontier Districts
(Administration) Ordinance,” 5.
77. They would continue to be viewed as such through the postcolonial period
as well. Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa.”
78. Byrne, “Diary of the visit of Sir Joseph Byrne.”
79. See, for example, “Impositions u nder Collective Punishment Ordinance
(Kenya),” 1935, Colonial Office Records, CO 533/458/21, TNA.
80. Charles Chenevix Trench, Men Who Ruled Kenya: The Kenya Administra
tion (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993), 129.
81. “Tribal Police System,” 1931, Colonial Office Records, CO 533/416/15,
TNA. The relatively poor pay limited recruitment to men of social standing and
relative means, imbuing the force with an esprit de corps as well as a function in
social policing and hierarchy.
82. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Tanganyika),” 1928, Colonial Office
Records, CO 691/96/11, TNA; “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Somalia),”
1933, Colonial Office Records, CO 535/100/4, TNA.
230
83. In a cover letter, the Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, did, however, note Tan-
ganyika’s resemblance to the Kenyan Code. “Collective Punishment Ordinance
(Tanganyika),” 3–4, 7, 9.
84. Norman Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theophilus (1817–1893),” Oxford
Jeremy Martens offers a cogent, if overstated critique of the focus on Shepstone the
man as progenitor of the personalized system of administration. Jeremy Martens,
“Decentring Shepstone: The Eastern Cape Frontier and the Establishment of Na-
tive Administration in Natal, 1842–1849,” South African Historical Journal 67,
no. 2 (2015): 180–201. A related issue is the extent to which Shepstone’s system
marked an innovative break from or instead a continuity with past practice.
Favoring the latter, see John Lambert, Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in
Colonial Natal (South Africa: University of Natal Press, 1995).
85. On the latter assessment, see in particular D. Welsh, The Roots of Segrega
tion: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845–1910 (Cape Town: Oxford University
Press, 1971). For a succinct description of the Shepstone system, see Norman Ether-
ington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” in
Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, ed. Andrew
Duminy and Bill Guest (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989), 170–92.
86. Arguably the best statement of the Shepstone system appears in the evi-
dence he offered to the Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs in
1883. His testimony ran nearly eighty transcribed pages. See “Report and Proceed-
ings, With Appendices of the Government Commission on Native Laws and Cus-
toms” (Cape Town, 1883).
87. While Shepstone and his system may have preceded Sandeman and the FCR
by twenty years, he was nonetheless influenced by an important British Indian con-
nection. Sir Henry Pottinger was the governor of the Cape Colony at the time
Shepstone headed the Locations Commission in 1847. Along the eastern Cape
frontier, Pottinger introduced what was in effect a form of the British Indian resi-
dency system. He was very familiar with that system, having himself been the resi-
dent to the court of Sindh in the 1820s, which lay along the British Indian frontier
with the lands that would later become Afghanistan. Martens, “Decentring Shep-
stone,” 195–96.
88. For the most comprehensive recent biography of Shepstone, see Jeff Guy,
Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler
Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Pietermaritzburg: University
of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014). Shepstone authored a volume on the “Natal tribes”
based on interviews with native informants. Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty:
The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 90–91, 99–100. His focus on the ethnog-
raphy of Natal is reminiscent of British Indian scholar administrators, such as
Mountstuart Elphinstone.
89. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 88.
90. Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theophilus (1817–1893).”
91. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-Century Natal.” Vari-
ations of Shepstone’s system were subsequently applied to Transkei and Zululand.
231
Sean Redding, Sorcery and Sovereignty: Taxation, Power, and Rebellion in South
Africa, 1880–1963 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 96–100; Hamilton, Ter
rific Majesty, 130–67.
93. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 25.
94. Jeremy Martens characterizes Shepstone’s system of indirect rule as “decen-
tralized despotism,” fitting with contemporary ideas that “savage” societies re-
quired despotic rule. Jeremy Martens, “Enlightenment Theories of Civilization and
Savagery in British Natal: The Colonial Origins of (Zulu) African Barbarism
Myth,” in Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present, ed. Benedict Carton, John
Laband, and Jabulani Sithole (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-
Natal Press, 2008), 126. See also Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 103. Such beliefs had
an Asian doppelganger in the form of “Oriental despotism.”
95. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 97–101.
96. J. C. Myers, Indirect Rule in South Africa: Tradition, Modernity and the
Costuming of Political Power, ed. Toyin Falola, Rochester Studies in African His-
tory and Diaspora (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), chap. 1;
Clifton Crais, “Custom and the Politics of Sovereignty in South Africa,” Journal of
Social History 39, no. 3 (2006): 721–40.
97. KwaZulu was another Bantustan that was located in Natal. While
“granted” self-government under the apartheid system, it was not declared inde
pen dent like Transkei. See also Clifton Crais, “Chiefs and Bureaucrats in the
Making of Empire: A Drama from the Transkei, South Africa, October 1880,”
American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003): 1034–56.
98. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-Century Natal,” 13;
Martens, “Decentring Shepstone,” 193.
99. This was formally changed with the advent of a Native High Court estab-
lished by the Native Administration Act of 1875. Substantively, however, this new
judicial venue made little difference. Thomas V. McClendon, White Chief, Black
Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845–1878
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2010), 121–22.
101. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 164. See also McClendon, White Chief,
Black Lords, 122.
102. McClendon, White Chief, Black Lords, 123.
103. Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theophilus (1817–1893).”
104. It was additionally criticized on other grounds, including that “it inhibited
the imposition of a work ethic, monogamy, a need for clothing, commodities, and
civilization.” Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 99.
105. Much of that labor was actually provided by Indian coolies imported by
the colonial regime.
106. Lugard likewise enforced a hut tax in Nigeria.
107. Etherington argues the ability of the Africans to pay t hose taxes, and thus
the fiscal health of the Natal state was predicated on their relative increase in pur-
chasing power and economic prosperity. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the
232
Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” 175. See also Martens, “Enlightenment
Theories of Civilization and Savagery in British Natal,” 126.
108. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 184. Just as with the American Indians, the
Africans’ misuse of the land was used to justify its taking. Welsh, Roots of Segrega
tion, 42. Etherington notes that the Trust was established over the objections of
settlers who wanted the Africans to receive individual title, likely in the expecta-
tion they could quickly be deprived of it. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in
Nineteenth-Century Natal,” 18.
109. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond
the Borders,” 178. On the long history of indigenous dispossession due to “unpro-
ductive” use of land in Africa, see David Boucher, “Invoking a World of Ideas:
Theory and Interpretation in the Justification of Colonialism,” Theoria 63, no. 147
(2016): 6–24.
110. Minute by the Secretary for Native Affairs on the late operations against
Langalibalele and Tribe, 12 June 1874, p. 1875, LIII, C. 1121. Quoted in Ether-
ington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-Century Natal,” 20, n. 26.
111. On the Transvaal annexation, see Bridget Theron, “Theophilus Shepstone
and the Transvaal Colony, 1877–1879,” African Historical Review 34, no. 1
(2002): 204–27.
112. This does not include the potentially hostile Orange F ree State to Natal’s
west, partially buffered by the Basutoland protectorate.
114. On the evolution of frontiers in southern Africa, see Noël Mostert, Fron
tiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People
(New York: Knopf, 1992).
115. Frere had been both the Commissioner to Sindh, which included Baluch-
istan at the time he held the office, as well as the Governor of Bombay. John Be-
nyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884), Colonial Gov-
ernor,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093
/ref:odnb/10171.
116. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond
the Borders,” 187.
117. Martens, “Enlightenment Theories of Civilization and Savagery in British
Natal,” 127.
118. See Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowl
edge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
119. It was repealed by the Statute Law (Repealed and Miscellaneous) Amend-
ment Act of 1997.
120. Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa.” On more recent, con
temporary effects of frontier governmentality in Northeast K enya, see Jeremy
Lind, “Devolution, Shifting Centre-Periphery Relationships and Conflict in Northern
Kenya,” Political Geography 63 (2018): 135–47; Jeremy Lind, Patrick Mutahi, and
Marjoke Oosterom, “ ‘Killing a Mosquito with a Hammer’: Al-Shabaab Violence
and State Security Responses in Kenya,” Peacebuilding 5, no. 2 (2017): 118–35.
233
121. Amatzai Baram, “Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Tribal Policies

1991–96,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 1 (1997): 1–31.
4. the colonial specter of “savagery”
1. There is some fascinating work on the role of defeat in the British imperial
mindset. See generally Stephanie Barczewski, Heroic Failure and the British (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).
2. See generally John Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet
(1815–1884), Colonial Governor,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10171.
3. Frere wrote, “I may note in passing that, though I belong to an old Tory
family, I have myself been especially employed as much by Liberal as by Conserva-
tive Administrations, and, like my companions in the Indian services, have been
trained to take, as my examples in public life, those who placed the honour and
welfare of E ngland above all other considerations, and to serve our Sovereign and
country apart from all questions of party politics, as Englishmen above and before
all things, whether we w ere Tories, Radicals, or Whigs. It was therefore a new ex-
perience to me to find myself looked upon as a party tool.” Bartle Frere, Afghani
stan and South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: State Library, 1969), 24.
4. This view is very much indebted to the stadial view of civilization, an intel-
lectual idea pop ular
ized by the Scottish Enlightenment of the late eigh teenth
century. See, for instance, Nathaniel Wolloch, “The Civilizing Process, Nature, and
Stadial Theory,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 245–59.
5. He went on: “But whether the civilized man, with his gin, his greed and his
dynamite, is r eally very superior to the savage is another question, and one which
would bear argument, although this is not the place to argue it. . . . Savagery is
only a question of degree.” Henry Rider Haggard, “Cetywayo and His White
Neighbours Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal”
(Hamburg: Tredition, 2011), liii. Quoted in Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty:
The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998), 115.
6. This was true across Britain’s global empire, and not just in South Africa and
Afghanistan. See, for example, Lisa Ford’s discussion of civilization and savagery
along the frontier of New South Wales in the early nineteenth century. Lisa Ford,
Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in Americ a and Australia,
1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 76–83.
7. The focus on property has a long intellectual history in Europe, manifest in
multiple ways. E arlier philosophers and legal theorists justified the taking of lands
from indigenous peoples based on the idea they did not properly use these lands as
ordained by God. David Boucher, “Invoking a World of Ideas: Theory and Inter-
pretation in the Justification of Colonialism,” Theoria 63, no. 147 (2016): 13–14.
On attitudes t oward property, dispossession, and violence in the colonial encounter,
see Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2018).
234
I contend that by the nineteenth century this idea of use had become codified
and embodied by individuated legal ownership.
8. While in the Russian case, this may partly have been driven by religious, mis-
sionary zeal, Frere noted that in the British case this was something “studiously
discouraged and generally distrusted by our politicians.” Frere, Afghanistan and
South Africa, 29. Generally, Frere was very much in favor of Christian proselytiza-
tion, a fact demonstrated both in his writings and in his patronage and support of
David Livingstone’s missionary activities. F. V. Emery, “Geography and Imperi-
alism: The Role of Sir Bartle Frere (1815–1884),” Geographical Journal 150, no. 3
(1984): 346–47.
9. This was the philosophy undergirding the Bengal Permanent Settlement of
1793. See generally Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the
Idea of Permanent Settlement, Le Monde d’outre-Mer Passe et Present, Primiere
Serie: Etudes XIX (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1963).
10. There were, of course, exceptions to this, such as the ryotwari and mahal
wari systems in British India. But they resulted from administrative expediency
rather than ideological commitment to an alternative model. In any case, they w ere
suboptimal outcomes and further evidence of the sad civilizational state of colo-
nized p eople.
11. These two are often paired in studies of frontiers. See, for example,
David J. Weber and Jane M. Rausch, Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin
American History (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994).
12. “Remember the Rights of the Savage,” speech delivered by William Glad-
stone in Dalkeith on 26 November 1879, Liberal History, http://www.liberalhistory
.org.uk/history/remember-the-rights-of-the-savage/, accessed on 11 April 2018.
See generally H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1875–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995), 41–60.
13. Though it is not centrally important for the discussion in this chapter,
the fact that Gladstone characterized the Afghan hill tribes as enjoying “more or
less political independence” is both striking and in keeping with the colonial
practice that made these people “imperial objects,” as discussed in earlier
chapters.
14. Frere writes, “The storm of Midlothian invective was directed not only
against the Afghan policy of the late Government, but against all they had done
and allowed in South Africa, and I, as one of their officials, was to be discreditably
connected with their Afghan policy, in order to diminish any weight which might
otherwise attach to my opinions as an actor in South Africa.” Frere, Afghanistan
and South Africa, 24.
15. Frere, Afghanistan and South Africa, 14.
16. Frere, Afghanistan and South Africa, 6–7.
17. Frere, Afghanistan and South Africa, 15–16. On colonial ideas of Zulu
savagery, which were supposedly closely tied with the difiqane, see Jean Comaroff
and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Co
lonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008), 169.
235

22. Emery, “Geography and Imperialism,” 347. I mention “public intellectual,”
because one of Frere’s many positions in public life was that of founding member
and President of the Royal Geographical Society.
Frere himself explicitly stated this as a principle of relations between civilized
and uncivilized people. H. B. E. Frere, “On the Laws Affecting the Relations be-
tween Civilized and Savage Life, as Bearing on the Dealings of Colonists with Ab-
origines,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of G reat Britain and Ireland 11
(1882): 351.
23. Frere was, of course, speaking hypothetically as the Russians did not annex
the territories between their own empire and British India. This was, a fter all, the
central competition of the so-called Great Game. Frere, Afghanistan and South
Africa, 29.
26. Imperial policy along British India’s North-West Frontier was classically
divided between the “Forward School,” which supported regular armed interven-
tion beyond the British Indian frontier, and those supporting “masterly activity” or
a policy of restraint that limited imperial actions beyond the settled districts. For a
discussion of these, see Mark Condos and Gavin Rand, “Coercion and Concilia-
tion at the Edge of Empire: State-Building and Its Limits in Waziristan, 1849–
1914,” Historical Journal 61, no. 3 (2017): 695–718.
27. Frere, Afghanistan and South Africa, 73–76; H. B. E. Frere, “Memorandum.—
Sind and Punjab Frontier Systems,” Political and Secret Memoranda (London,
1876).
28. Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884), Co-
lonial Governor.”
29. Frere, “On the Laws Affecting the Relations between Civilized and Savage
Life.”
30. Emery, “Geography and Imperialism,” 348. See also Frere, “On the Laws
Affecting the Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.”
31. See, for example, Ray Allen Billington, The American Frontier Thesis: At
tack and Defense (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1971); Chris
Rojek, “F. J. Turner’s ‘Frontier Thesis’: The Ruse of American ‘Character,’ ” Euro
pean Journal of Social Theory 20, no. 2 (2017): 236–51. For an example of the
influence of Turner’s frontier thesis on other areas, see Igor Kopytoff, The African
Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1989).
32. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, vol. 30 (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1921), 3.
33. Turner, Frontier in American History, 2–3.
34. Turner, Frontier in American History, 3–4.
35. Turner, Frontier in American History, 4.
236
37. This vision, of course, presupposes that Indians were not agriculturalist,
something patently false.
42. Turner, Frontier in American History, 14–15. Turner’s body and disease
motif mark his prose, with him comparing the spread of American civilization to
germ theory. Turner, Frontier in American History, 3.
43. The fact that Turner placed cities at the apogee of civilization, and due to
their industrial / capitalist character, is something Sarmiento echoed in his writing.
See below.
44. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of
Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
45. “First Annual Message,” 3 December 1901, https://millercenter.org/the
-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1901-first-annual-message, accessed
on 13 May 2019.
Roosevelt himself thought the frontier had been vanquished. He used his mes-
sage to Congress to call for the dissolution of tribal bonds and tribal funds, instead
treating Indians as individuals and preferably citizens.
46. For a recent discussion of Sarmiento’s changing role in the construction of
Argentina’s national memory and self-understanding, see Brendan Lanctot, Be
yond Civilization and Barbarism: Culture and Politics in Postrevolutionary Ar
gentina. (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015).
47. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the
Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism, trans. Mary Mann (New York: Hurd and
Houghton / Riverside Press, 1868), 11; Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo, o Civili
zacion i Barbarie (Montevideo: Biblioteca Latino-Americana, 1888), 52.
I use Mary Mann’s first English translation from 1868 for ease of reference.
Where her translation notably varies from the original Spanish text, I note this.
48. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 11; Sarmiento, Facundo, 52.
50. See William H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Al
berdi, Sarmiento, Mitre (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996).
51. Though it would take another twenty years to fully realize that victory with
the final unification of the republic. Quiroga was assassinated in 1835 by another
caudillo.
56. T. Hartley Crawley, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, wrote in 1838 that
“the principal lever by which the Indians are to be lifted out of the mire of folly
and vice in which they are sunk is education.” Quoted in Kristine L. Jones, “Civili-
zation and Barbarism and Sarmiento’s Indian Policy,” in Sarmiento and His Argen
tina, ed. Joseph T. Criscenti (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 36.
237
57. Diana Sorensen Goodrich, Facundo and the Construction of Argentine Cul
ture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 9; David T. Haberly, “Scotland on the
Pampas: A Conjectural History of Facundo Scotland on the Pampas: A Conjec-
tural History of Facundo,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83, no. 6 (2006): 790. See
generally Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the
Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
64. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 2, 9; Sarmiento, Facundo, 38, 50.
65. Quoted in Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello, “Introduction:
Sarmiento between History and Fiction,” in Sarmiento: Author of a Nation, ed.
Tulio Halperin Donghi et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 6.
His language of the colonial state “absorbing” the indios is noteworthy, as to a
significant extent this is what accounted for their extermination (see Chapter 6).
67. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 796.
68. On Scott and the Highlands, see Kenneth McNeil, Scotland, Britain, Em
pire: Writing the Highlands, 1760–1860 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
2007), 83–116.
70. For Sarmiento’s claim of personally traveling to the Arab world, see
Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 43, n. 1; Sarmiento, Facundo, 100–101.
In Beckman’s words, his knowledge of both is “eminently textual.” Ericka
Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas: Medievalism and Orien-
talism in Sarmiento’s Facundo,” Chasqui 38, no. 2 (2009): 43.
72. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 7; Sarmiento, Facundo, 47. His
language echoed that of another lowland Scot, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who im-
puted the “republican ideals” of the Afghans he documented to the elevated geog-
raphy they inhabited. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of
Caubul, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1991).
For a more modern take on the idea of generative geographies, see James C.
Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast
Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
73. Haberly argues that Sarmiento’s reference to the Orient did not mark him
as an Orientalist, but rather was a function of the sources available to him. But
such an assertion ignores the idea that Sarmiento’s sources, though limited, w ere
nonetheless structured by Orientalism. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 808.
See also Carolina Alzate, “Modos de la Metáfora Orientalista en la Hispanoa-
mérica del Siglo XIX. Soledad Acosta, Jorge Isaacs, Domingo F. Sarmiento y José
María Samper / Modes of the Orientalist Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century Hispanic
238
America. Soledad Acosta, Jorge Isaacs, Domingo F. Sarmiento and José María
Samper,” Taller de Letras no. 45 (2009): 131–43.
74. Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas,” 42. She notes that
“nineteenth century colonial projects had established Orientalism as a readily
available vocabulary of temporal and spatial otherness” (43).
75. Sarmiento comments that “we may h ere call to mind the noteworthy re-
semblance between the Argentines and the Arabs.” Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine
Republic, 48, n. 1; Sarmiento, Facundo, 100–101.
79. See generally James Donald Fogelquist, “Cooper y Sarmiento: El Tema de la
Civilization y la Barbarie,” Cuadernos Americanos 234, no. 1 (1981): 95–112.
81. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 26; Sarmiento, Facundo, 76–77.
82. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 60–61; Sarmiento, Facundo, 127.
84. See generally Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas.”
85. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 805. This sentiment is echoed by
Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas,” 41–42.
86. It was also a constituent element of state sovereignty. See Andrew Fitzmau-
rice, Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2014); Jennifer Pitts et al., “Empire and L egal Universalisms in the Eigh
teenth C entury,” American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (2012): 92–121.
87. The reality was invariably, and quite markedly, different.
5. ruling the chiricahua apache in ameri c a’s

desert southwest
1. Mark Bowden, “The Hunt for ‘Geronimo,’ ” Vanity Fair, November 2012,

http://w ww.v anityfair.c om/n ews/p olitics/2 012/1 1/i nside-o sama-b in-l aden
-assassination-plot, accessed on 25 October 2019.
2. For similar interpretations applied to the American West, see Richard
Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier,
1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006); Richard Drinnon,
Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).
3. D. A. Barber, “Bin Laden’s Death Sparks Concern for Arizona Intelligence Base,”
2 May 2011, https://suite.io/d-a-barber/5d8k2ek, accessed on 25 October 2019.
4. It subsequently became the headquarters of the 10th Cavalry Regiment,
better known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”
5. See generally Michael L. Tate, “John P. Clum and the Origins of an Apache
Constabulary, 1874–1877,” American Indian Quarterly 3, no. 2 (1977): 99–120;
Douglas Firth Anderson, “ ‘More Conscience Than Force:’ U.S. Indian Inspector
239
William Vandever, Grant’s Peace Policy, and Protestant Whiteness,” Journal of the
Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2010); John Bret Harte, “The San Carlos Indian
Reservation, 1872–1886: An Administrative History” (University of Arizona,
1972).
6. Clum was initially approached for the position by J. H. Ferris, the Secretary
of the Board of Home Missions of the Dutch Reformed Church, in a letter dated
22 November 1873. John P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 1930, AZ003, Box
1, Folder 9, pp. 1–2, Papers of John P. Clum, University of Arizona Library Special
Collections, Tucson (hereafter cited as UAL).
7. The Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs included a de-
tailed list of which Indian agencies had been assigned to which religious bodies.
See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the
Year 1874” (Washington, DC, 1874), 178; “Annual Report of the Commissioner
of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875” (Washington, DC, 1875), 172; “Annual Re-
port of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876” (Washington, DC,
1876), 278; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1877” (Washington, DC, 1877), 318. On Grant’s “peace policy,” see David Sim,
“The Peace Policy of Ulysses S. Grant,” American Nineteenth C entury History 9,
no. 3 (2008): 241–68; Robert H. Keller, American Protestantism and United States
Indian Policy, 1869–1882 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).
8. Clum authored a number of articles in both the New Mexico Historical
Review and Arizona Historical Review detailing his tenure at San Carlos, as well as
discussing a number of the personalities with whom he interacted while there.
9. Both New Mexico and Arizona had territorial governments, but these had
greatly circumscribed powers in comparison with their state counterparts.
10. See Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among
the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996); Bertha P.
Dutton, Navahos and Apaches, the Athabascan P eoples (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1976).
11. For a discussion of relations between indigenous p eoples and the Spanish
imperial and then Mexican government in this region, see Brian DeLay, War of a
Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale
12. Scott Rushforth, “Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of Chiricahua
National Monument and Fort Bowie National Historic Site. National Park Service
Task Agreement J1233040013” (Denver, 2010), 9–14; Brian DeLay, “Independent
Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War,” American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (2007):
35–68.
13. “Treaty with the Apaches,” in British and Foreign State Papers, 1852–53
(London: William Ridgeway & Sons, 1864), vol. XLII. The treaty was subsequently
ratified by the Senate and signed by President Franklin Pierce in March 1853. For
a treatment of Mangas Coloradas, see Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas:
Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011).
14. “Treaty with the Apaches,” sec. 10.
15. Janne Lahti, Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the South
west Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 120–21.
240
16. This is not quite the same as the “middle ground,” which Richard White
considered in his works. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires,
and Republics in the G reat Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
17. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas.
18. The policy was partially born out of the Great Peace Commission of 1867–
1868, which itself was a response to concerns of a general Indian war engulfing the
plains. Jill St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and
Canada, 1867–1877 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
19. St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy, 11.
20. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,”
296; Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 2. Clum’s views both s haped and echoed
those of his superiors in Washington, who used the same language to describe the
Apache. See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
for the Year 1875,” 41.
21. Edwin R. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches,
1874–1886 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 15–27.
22. See generally C. L. Sonnichsen, “Who Was Tom Jeffords?,” Journal of Ari
zona History 23, no. 4 (1982): 381–406; Harry G. Cramer III, “Tom Jeffords—
Indian Agent,” Journal of Arizona History 17, no. 3 (1976): 265–300.
23. The other three were the San Carlos / White Mountain reservation in Ari-
zona and the Mescalero and Ojo Caliente (Warm Spring) reservations in New
Mexico. On the history of Apache reservations, see Matthew Babcock, “Blurred Bor-
ders: North America’s Forgotten Apache Reservations,” in Contested Spaces of
Early America, ed. Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 163–83.
135.
25. See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
for the Year 1878” (Washington, DC, 1878), 8. This tradition continues today
with the issue of the Oak Flat land swap. See also the Conclusion.
26. On the Western Apache, which the Chiricahua are related to but distinct
from, see Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places.
27. On the policy of concentration at San Carlos, see John P. Clum, “Concen-
tration of the Apaches,” n.d., AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, Papers of John P. Clum,
UAL. See also Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” chap. 6.
28. Clum provided a discussion of his actions following the breakout in his an-
nual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. See “Annual Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 34–35.
29. Though the papers of the agency w ere destroyed by fire in 1924, Clum’s
personal papers are h oused at the University of Arizona. In the main, this collec-
tion is composed of private correspondence with his family, particularly his wife,
Mary, and later press clippings, as well as drafts of articles published in assorted
journals, including the New Mexico Historical Review and Arizona Historical Re
view. In the main, the papers have surprisingly little to say of substance of his time
as agent at San Carlos, although they include a number of pieces both boosting
241
and defending his actions there. They are available as Papers of John P Clum
1860–1970, AZ 003, UAL. Additionally there are papers held at the Arizona
Historical Society, as well as the National Archives and Records Administration.
216. Clum proved flexible on the disarming of the Indians. He allowed the Chir-
icahua removed from their reservation to keep their weapons in order to avoid
hostilities with them.
31. In 1874, the reservation’s population was reported as a mere 892. The
following year it increased to 4,233 and by 1876 stood at 4,500. “Annual Report
of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,” 106; “Annual Report of
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 41; “Annual Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” 12.
32. San Carlos and the White Mountain reservations were formally divided by
an act of Congress in 1897. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
for the Year 1897” (Washington, DC, 1897), 398.
33. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo, 59.
xvii.
288.
36. Robert N. Watt, “Apaches Without and Enemies Within: The US Army in
New Mexico, 1879–1881,” War in History 18, no. 2 (2011): 166.
37. Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” 169, 184–85, 295, 347, 414, 737.
38. William E. Dodge Jr., controlling partner of the Phelps Dodge corporation,
was on the Board of Indian Commissioners, which oversaw Grant’s peace policy
and the governance of the San Carlos reservation.
39. Clum detailed his relationship with the military in his private papers. Clum,
“Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 8–12.
40. Clum kept clippings from the Arizona Citizen celebrating his days as
agent in his private papers. See AZ003, Box 2, Folder 10, Papers of John P. Clum,
UAL.
215–20; John P. Clum, “Apache Misrule,” Arizona Historical Review 3 (1931):
64–71.
42. See generally Magnus Marsden and Benjamin D. Hopkins, Fragments of
the Afghan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), chap. 2.
43. Letter from Sandeman dated 19 April 1891. Quoted in Thomas Henry
Thornton, Colon el Sir Robert Sandeman: His Life and Work on Our Indian Fron
tier (London: John Murray, 1895), title page.
44. Tate, “John P. Clum and the Origins of an Apache Constabulary;” John P.
Clum, “The San Carlos Apache Police,” Arizona Historical Review 3, no. 2 (1930):
12–25; John P. Clum, “The San Carlos Apache Police,” Arizona Historical Review
3, no. 3 (1930): 21–43.
45. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1876,” 11.
242
58, 297; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1875,” 42.
47. Clum offered an overview of police activities and responsibilities in his an-
nual reports. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1875,” 215–16.
xviii, 4.
49. The scouts who tracked down the Chiricahua renegades, including
Geronimo, w ere in the main Western Apache, with a large contingent of White
Mountain Apache. Joyce Evelyn Mason, “The Use of Indian Scouts in the Apache
Wars, 1870–1886” (Indiana University, 1970), 335. This partly explains the tense
relations between the Chiricahua and White Mountain Apache, who had both
been relocated to the San Carlos reservation as part of the concentration policy.
7. At least off the reservation, the Indians w ere paid for their labor. On the reser-
vation, the agents forced them to work on public projects to receive their rations.
“Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 42,
220, 230.
51. See generally Law Enforcement Services, “Indian Law Enforcement His-
tory” (Washington, DC, n.d.).
52. Oakah L. Jones, “The Origins of the Navajo Indian Police 1872–1873,” Ari
zona and the West 8, no. 3 (1966): 225–38.
53. Clum’s successor, H. L. Hart, wrote glowingly of the police, stating they
were “the greatest executive assistance an agent could possibly have.” “Annual Re-
port of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1878,” 8. See also John P.
Clum, “Es-Kim-in-Zin,” Arizona Historical Review 2 (1929): 53–72; Clum, “San
Carlos Apache Police” (1930).
54. The statute set the pay scale for an Indian policeman at $5 per month, well
below the $15 Clum offered at San Carlos. The low pay quickly became an issue in
the functioning of such police forces. Law Enforcement Services, “Indian Law En-
forcement History,” 6.
55. Law Enforcement Services, “Indian Law Enforcement History,” secs. 8–10.
The year 1883 proved the high point of this experiment, when Congress appropri-
ated $82,000 and authorized one thousand privates and one hundred officers.
56. John R. Wunder, “Retained by the P eople”: A History of American Indians
and the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
57. See generally David E. Wilkins, “Federal Policy, Western Movement, and
Consequences for Indigenous P eople, 1790–1920,” in The Cambridge History of
Law in America: Volume II, The Long Nineteenth Century (1789–1920), ed. Mi-
chael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 204–44.
58. Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the
Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 246.
59. United States v. Kagama, 118 US 375 (1886) at 381.
243
60. See, for instance, Lisa Ford, Tim Rowse, and Anna Yeatman, Between In
digenous and Settler Governance (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013).
61. For a general background, see St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy,
chap. 1. On the imperial inheritance of the United States with regard to Indian re-
lations, see generally Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the
Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books,
2007). See also Gregory Evans Dowd, “Indigenous Peoples without the Republic,”
62. Gregory Ablavsky, “The Savage Constitution,” Duke Law Journal 63,
no. 5 (2014): 999–1089.
63. Article I, Section 8, subsection 3.
64. The Indian Intercourse Act was passed in 1790, 1793, 1796, 1799, 1802,
and 1834.
65. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 30 US 1 (1831) at 17. See also Jonas Bens,
“When the Cherokee Became Indigenous: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Its
Paradoxical Legalities,” Ethnohistory 65, no. 2 (2018): 247–67.
66. Worcester v. Georgia 31 US 515 (1832) at 551–56.
67. Johnson v. McIntosh 21 US 543 (1823) at 591–92.
68. Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics
of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
On the anomalous character of Indian sovereignty, see also Mark Rifkin, “Indi-
genizing Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the ‘Peculiar’ Status of Na-
tive P eoples,” Cultural Critique 73 (2009): 88–124.
69. The law grandfathered in already-signed treaties. See St. Germain, Indian
Treaty-Making Policy, 150–52. This profoundly important change was not fully
recognized until the turn of the twentieth century in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187
US 553 (1903), which stripped American-Indian relations of any pretense of parity,
much less equity. The decision has long been referred to as the Indian “Dred Scott”
decision.
70. David E. Wilkins, “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Explication of ‘Federal Plenary
Power’: An Analysis of Case Law Affecting Tribal Sovereignty, 1886–1914,” Amer
ican Indian Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1994): 349–68.
133; Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” 2, n. 1.
72. Cherokee Nation, at 17.
73. K. Tsianina Lomawaima, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Sovereignty,”
American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013): 333.
74. The concept of “birthright citizenship” in the F ourteenth Amendment was
not extended to Indians in the main case establishing it. United States v. Wong Kim
Ark 169 US 649 (1898). See Jill St. Germain for a discussion about the Fourteenth
Amendment and Congress’s view of its inapplicability to Indians. St. Germain,
Indian Treaty-Making Policy, 152.
75. St. Germain argues there w ere three elements—Christianity, education, and
agriculture. St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy, 99–128.
76. Elk v. Wilkins 112 US 94 (1884).
244
77. See generally Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American

Indian, 1887–1934 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
78. In his 1901 First Annual Address to Congress, President Theodore Roose
velt noted there were only 60,000 Indians who had been granted citizenship at
the time. “First Annual Message,” 3 December 1901, https://millercenter.org/the
-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1901-first-annual-message, accessed
13 May 2019.
79. See generally Wunder, “Retained by the People.”
80. Roosevelt called for the end of Indian marriage laws. See his “First An-
nual Message.”
81. Robert Weil, “The Legal Status of the Indian” (Columbia College, 1888),
72–73.
82. Lisa Ford refers to Indian country as a “juridically disorderly space.” Lisa
Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous P eople in America and Aus
tralia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 67.
83. Standing Bear v. Crook, [5 Dill. 453.] 1 Circuit Court, D. Nebraska (1879).
It is worth noting the Crook named as defendant in this suit was the head of the
Arizona military department with whom Clum struggled for control of San Carlos.
84. On the issue of legal personhood, see Barbara Young Welke, “Law, Per-
sonhood, and Citizenship in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in Grossberg and
Tomlins, Cambridge History of Law in America: Volume II, 345–86.
85. Ex parte Crow Dog 109 US 536 (1883).
86. “The Major Crimes Act,” Pub. L. No. 1153 (1885). The Act has since been
amended and today includes thirteen crimes.
87. United States v. Kagama, 118 US 375 (1886) at 383–84.
88. He escaped from custody before the day was out. Sweeney, From Cochise to
Geronimo, 59.
89. Clum, “Es-Kim-in-Zin,” 67–71.
90. The guardhouse contained “six large cells” and could “accommodate at
least fifty prisoners.” “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the
Year 1876,” 12.
91. The Court of Indian Offenses’ main punishments w ere fines and hard labor.
Law Enforcement Services, “Indian Law Enforcement History,” 14.
Jirgahs after the 1887 revision of the FCR were able to impose sentences of
transportation and whipping. The 1901 version of the FCR further augmented these
punishments. See Chapter 2.
92. Clum, “Es-Kim-in-Zin,” 67.
93. Rules for the Courts w ere promulgated in a memorandum dated 10
April 1883. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1888” (Washington, DC, 1888), xxix–xxx. A modified version of those rules is avail-
able online: “Rules Governing the Courts of Indian Offenses,” https://en.wikisource
.org/wiki/Code_of_Indian_Offenses, accessed on 25 October 2019.
94. His reasons for resigning included his low salary ($125 per annum) and the
“vacillating support” of his superiors in Washington. He initially submitted his res-
ignation 26 February 1876, on the second anniversary of his official appointment.
245
However, he was persuaded to withdraw it by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs

with promises of support. John P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent, Resigna-
tion,” n.d., AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, pp. 41–42, Papers of John P. Clum, UAL.
95. Clum lived a long and colorful life. As mayor of Tombstone a fter departing
San Carlos, he worked with Wyatt Earp. He served as a postal inspector and later
postmaster in Alaska from 1898 to 1909. In 1911, he requested reinstatement into
the Indian Service, but was rebuffed. “Application for Superintendency, Indian Ser
vice,” 1912–17, AZ003, Box 5, MS. 284, 2 / 12, Papers of John P. Clum, UAL.
Clum was the subject of a laudatory biography authored by his son, which was
subsequently reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. Woodworth Clum,
Apache Agent: The Story of John P. Clum, with Illustrations (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1936); R. L. Duffus, “This Man Understood the Indians,” New York Times
Book Review, 2 February 1936, 6. Clum was later the subject of numerous televi
sion episodes and films, including most famously Walk the Proud Land (1956),
where he was portrayed by Audie Murphy.
96. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year
1877,” 34.
97. Joseph C. Tiffany was accused of gross mismanagement and incompetence,
and he was even charged in the territory’s federal court for the misappropriation of
funds. His public disgrace paved the way for the army’s resumption of control over
San Carlos in 1883. John Bret Harte, “The Strange Case of Joseph C. Tiffany: Indian
Agent in Disgrace,” Journal of Arizona History 16, no. 4 (1975): 383–404.
98. Lahti, Wars for Empire, 214–15.
99. On the idea of “federative crisis,” see Thomas Bender, A Nation among Na
tions: Amer ca’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006),
i
133–35.
100. On the colonial character of US relations with Native Americans t oday, see
J. M. Bacon and Matthew Norton, “Colonial Americ a Today: U.S. Empire and the
Political Status of Native American Nations,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 61, no. 2 (2019): 301–31.
101. Cf. Mark Rifkin, “Indigenising Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in
Light of the ‘Peculiar’ Status of Native P eoples,” in Agamben and Colonialism, ed.
Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignal (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2012), 77–109.
102. It should be noted that the meaning of “Indian country” itself was opaque
and open to a variety of l egal constructions and interpretations. Weil, “Legal Status
of the Indian,” 59.
103. Some historians view such comparisons dimly. Dowd, “Indigenous Peoples
without the Republic.”
104. John P. Clum, “Geronimo (Concluded),” Arizona Historical Review 1
(1929): 43.
105. John P. Clum, “Apaches as Thespians in 1876,” New Mexico Historical
Review 4 (1931): 80–98. He even mentioned the trip in his annual report to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 34.
246
6. argentina’s conquest of the desert and the

limits of frontier governmentality
1. See Chapter 4. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the

Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism, ed. Mary Mann (New York:
Riverside Press, 1868); Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo, o civilizacion i barbarie
(Montevideo: Biblioteca Latino-Americana, 1888).
2. It is sometimes referred to as the campaign of the desert (la campaña del
desierto) in order to distinguish it from the earlier conquista of the 1830s under
Manuel Rosas.
3. The “organización nacional” is usually dated from roughly 1862 to 1880. See,
for instance, David Rock, State Building and Political Movements in Argentina,
1860–1916 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Alberto Rodolfo Lett-
ieri, La república de las instituciones: Proyecto, desarrollo y crisis del régimen
político liberal en la Argentina en tiempos de la organización nacional (1852–
1880) (Buenos Aires: El Quijote Editorial, 2000). See also Martha Bechis, “La ‘or-
ganización nacional’ y las tribus Pampeanas en Argentina durante el siglo XIX,”
Revista TEFROS 4, no. 2 (2006): 1–24.
4. Pedro Navarro Floria, “Las viejas fronteras revisitadas: Problematizando la
formación territorial de los bordes de los estados-nación latinoamericanos a través
del caso de la Norpatagonia Argentina,” Antíteses 4, no. 8 (2011): 432.
5. Eugenia Ortiz Gambetta, Modelos de civilización en la novela de la orga
nización nacional (1850–1880) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2012).
6. See, for example, Rob Hager, “State, Tribe and Empire in Afghan Inter-Polity
Relations,” in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan, ed. Richard
Tapper (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 83–118.
7. Indios amigos is, literally, “friendly Indians” or, more precisely, “allied
Indians.”
8. María Cristina Guzzo, “El hibrido Argentino, el testimonio de Lucio v. Man-
silla y el modelo americano” (Arizona State University, 1997).
In the 1890s, there was a proposal that Argentina should employ the American
model of reservations. Enrique Hugo Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena: El des
tino final de los indios sometidos en el sur del territorio (1878–1930) (Buenos Aires:
Prometeo Libros, 2010), 166–67. During the twentieth century, reservations w ere
created but they did not grant their inhabitants “sovereignty” as did their Amer-
ican counterparts. Raul Diaz and Carlos Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure
and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” in Contemporary Per
spectives on the Native Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego Living
on the Edge, ed. Claudia Briones and Jose Luis Lanata (Westport, CT: Bergin &
Garvey, 2002), 24–26.
9. For an excellent treatment of this, see Geraldine Davies Lenoble, “Filing the
Desert: The Indigenous Confederacies of the Pampas and Northern Patagonia”
(Georgetown University, 2016).
10. The idea of indigenous reservations has been widespread throughout the
colonial and postcolonial Latin American world. See, for instance, William Y.
247
Adams, Indian Policies in the Americ as: From Columbus to Collier and Beyond
(Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2014).
11. For a discussion of Natal in South Africa, see Chapter 3. For an interesting
comparison between Argentina and South Africa as white colonies of settlement,
see P. D. Curtin, “Location in History: Argentina and South Africa in the Nine-
teenth C entury,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1999): 41–92.
12. Mases documents the repeated referencing of the United States as a model
for Argentina in Congressional debates. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena,
166–67.
13. “Memoria del Ministério del Interior, Washington, Asuntó indios,” n.d.,
Sala VII 1383 Leg. 155, Archivo Julio A. Roca, Archivo General de la Nación,
Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as AGN).
14. On the weakness of the Argentine state, see Javier Cikota, “Frontier Justice:
State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880–1940” (University of California,
Berkeley, 2017).
Diaz and Falaschi characterize the state presence in Patagonia as late as the early
twentieth century as “only institutional—basically schooling and civil registration
of the Indians.” Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of
Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 21.
On the relative weakness of the Argentine state’s administration, see generally
the work of Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Construir el estado, inventar la nación: El Río
de La Plata, siglos XVIII–XIX, Colección Historia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Pro-
meteo Libros, 2007); Pierre Gautreau and Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “The Weak-State
Cadastre: Administrative Strategies to Build Territorial Knowledge in Post-Colonial
Argentina (1824 to 1864),” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geo
graphic Information and Geovisualization 47, no. 1 (2012): 29–49.
15. There was, in fact, an attempted “revolution” in 1880, which was violently
suppressed by conservative forces led by Roca. See, for example, Ariel Yablon,
“Disciplined Rebels: The Revolution of 1880 in Buenos Aires,” Journal of Latin
American Studies 40, no. 3 (2008): 483–511.
16. Vitor Izecksohn, “The War of the Triple Alliance and the Argentinean Uni-
fication: A Reevaluation,” História Unisinos 21, no. 3 (n.d.): 365–77.
17. Julio A. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 1878, Archivo Gen-
eral de Ejécito Argentino, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as AGE), 407.
18. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, “Customs of Governance: Colonialism and
Democracy in Twentieth Century India,” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (2007):
441–70.
19. For a classic discussion of the idea of the “ethnographic state,” see Nicholas
Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), chap. 3.
20. Carolyne Ryan, “Indigenous Possessions: Anthropology, Museums, and
Nation-Making in Argentina, 1862–1943” (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011).
21. See Cikota, “Frontier Justice.”
22. Alberto Arturo Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties: Postcolonial Colo-
nialism and State Making in Patagonia, Argentina and Chile, 1840s–1922”
(Stony Brook University, 2012).
248
23. For a summary of the relevant political events, see Paula Alonso, A Concise
History of Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
24. Irma Bernal, Rosas y los indios (Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos [Ar-
gentina]: Ediciones Bsqueda de Aylla, 1997).
25. William H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Al
berdi, Sarmiento, Mitre (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996);
David William Foster, The Argentine Generation of 1880: Ideology and Cultural
Texts (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990).
26. Articles 1, 5–7. Reproduced in Juan Carlos Walther, La conquista del desi
erto: Síntesis histórica de los principales sucesos ocurridos y operaciones militares
realizadas en la Pampa y Patagonia, contra los indios (años 1527–1885) (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1970), 576–78. This law was passed
to fulfill the Land Act of 1867 (Ley 215), which had called for the conquest, an-
nexation, and settlement of the frontier. Similar to the US Homestead Act of 1862,
it converted the conquered land into private property. F. J. McLynn, “The Frontier
Problem in Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” History Today 30, no. 1 (1980): 31.
For a collection of t hese laws, see Coleccion de leyes y decretos militares concerni
entes al ejercito y armada de la republica Argentina, 1810 a 1896: Tomo segundo
1854 a 1880 (Buenos Aires: Compania Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1898).
Additionally, the soldiers who participated in the conquest were rewarded with
land. For instance, as a lieutenant coronel, Ignacio Fotheringham received eight
leagues of land, which he sold for six hundred pesos a league. See Ignacio H. Foth-
eringham, La vida de un soldado: Reminiscencias de las fronteras, 2nd ed. (Buenos
Aires: Ediciones Ciudad Argentina, 1998), 353.
27. The spoils of the conquest were highly concentrated. Thirty-five million
hectares were divided among a mere twenty-four individuals. D. Aagesen, “Crisis
and Conservation at the End of the World: Sheep Ranching in Argentine Pata-
gonia,” Environmental Conservation 27, no. 2 (2000): 209.
28. See, for instance, David Rock, “The British in Argentina: From Informal
Empire to Postcolonialism,” in Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Com
merce and Capital, ed. Matthew Brown (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 49–77.
29. A. G. Ford, “Argentina and the Baring Crisis of 1890,” Oxford Economic
Papers, New Series, 8, no. 2 (June 1956): 127–50; William Miles, “The Barings
Crisis in Argentina: The Role of Exogenous European Money Market Factors.”
Review of Political Economy 14, no. 1 (2002): 5–29.
Jeremy Adelman has also provided a compelling study of Argentina’s role in
the Atlantic world of capital through the nineteenth c entury in Republic of Cap
ital: Buenos Aires and the L egal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
30. See Hilda Sábato, Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos
Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1840–1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1990), 23–39.
31. “Nuestra policia sobre indios. Los nuevos y antiguos sistemas: Compara-
cion de los metodos de administracion,” n.d., Sala VII Leg. 155, Archivo Julio A.
Roca, AGN, p. 506. Cf. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for
the Year 1878” (Washington, DC, 1878).
249
32. “Nuestra policia.”

33. It is unclear what war he was referring to. At the time, the British Empire was
involved in both the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the Anglo-Zulu War. Julio A.
Roca, “Direccion al Congreso,” 1879, Sala VII Leg. 155, Archivo Julio A. Roca,
AGN, p. 457.
34. J. A. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra” (Buenos Aires, 1879), xii.
35. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” viii.
36. Alberto Harambour, “Soberania y corrupcion: La construccion del estado y
la propriedad en Patagonia austral (Argentina y Chile, 1840–1920),” Historia 2,
no. 50 (2017): 555–96.
37. Abelardo Levaggi, Paz en la frontera: Historia de la relaciones diplomáticas
con las comunidades indígenas en la Argentina (siglos XVI–XIX) (Buenos Aires:
Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, 2000), 435.
38. “En una palabra . . . el plan del Poder Ejecutivo es contra el desierto para
poblarlo y no contra los indios para destruirlos,” Buenos Aires, 25/8/1875 Con-
gresso Nacional, Camara de Senadores: Session de 1867 [hasta 1894], Buenos
Aires, 1867–1894, 828–29. Quoted in Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 485.
39. There is significant debate within Argentine historiography, and con
temporary politics, regarding whether the conquest of the desert constituted a
genocide. See, for example, Perla Zusman and Sandra Minvielle, “Sociedades
geográficas y delimitación del territorio en la construcción del estado-nación
Argentino,” in Colección territorio, ambiente y sociedad (Educ.ar, 2007);
Diana Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide: Challenging the He-
gemonic National Narrative and Laying the Foundation for Reparations to
Indigenous Peoples,” Armenien Review 53, no. 1–4 (2012): 63–84; Mariano
Nagy, “Circulación e incorporación en la frontera: Trayectorias indígenas tras
la ‘conquista del desierto,’ ” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (Online), 5 October
2012, https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/64156#quotation, accessed
25, October 2019.
Diaz and Falaschi argue that “ethnic extermination mechanisms . . . brought
about either marginality or integrationism to the native peoples of Patagonia.” Diaz
and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in
Northern Patagonia,” 18.
Unfortunately, the Argentine state was more “effective” in its genocidal design
against the peoples of Tierra del Fuego, such as the Selk’nam.
40. “14172 indios suprimidos de la pampa.” Additionally, Roca noted that
480 captives w ere rescued: “5 caciques soberanos prisioneros y uno muerto;
1.271 indios de lanza prisioneros; 1.313 indios de lanzas muertos; 10.539 indios
chusma prisioneros; 1.049 indios reducido; Cautivos rescatados: 480. Lo que da
por resultado la cantidad de 14.172 indios suprimidos de la Pampa. Sin incluir en
esta cifra el numero considerable de indios muertos en las persecuciones y a conse-
cuencia del hambre en el seno mismo del desierto.” Roca, “Memoria del Depart-
mento de Guerra,” vi.
41. It is unclear if the warriors were part of or in addition to the larger
number. “Población indígena que hay sobre el territorio de faldas de Cordillera al
250
sud de Mendoza desde Rio Grande hasta Limay,” n.d., Salva VII 1383 Leg. 155,
Archivo Julio A. Roca, AGN.
42. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 491–92.
43. Lenoble, “Filing the Desert.”
44. These included Puan in Buenos Aires, as well as Valcheta and Chichinales
in Río Negro. Mariano Nagy, “La conquista del desierto,” http://www.congresojudio
.org.ar/coloquio_nota.php?id=140, accessed 17 January 2018.
45. See generally Harambour, “Soberania y corrupcion.”
46. See Chapter 4. For a discussion of the political and legal revolution of the
nineteenth century, see Adelman, Republic of Capital.
47. For a recent discussion of this, see Gary Fields, Enclosure: Palestinian
Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).
48. This idea was central to the Homestead Acts in the United States, passed begin-
ning in 1862. Similar legislation was also passed in Argentina, 1501 of 1884, called
the Argentine Home Law. Claudia N. Briones and Walter Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of
the Desert’ as a Trope and Enactment of Argentina’s Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest
Destinies and Indigenous Peoples, ed. David Maybury-Lewis, Theodore Macdonald,
and Biorn Maybury-Lewis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 62.
49. Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide,” 65. Indian raiders were
termed indios maleneros (Indian bandits).
50. Adelman, Republic of Capital, 285.
51. Briones and Delrio, “ ‘Conquest of the Desert,’ ” 55.
52. The original reads as follows: “Por otra parte, mencionar al indio como tal es
un insulto. ¿Por qué indio? El es, simplemente, un argentino entre treinta y siete mil-
lones de habitantes, con los mismos derechos y obligaciones que todos. No merece
ningún tratamiento especial ni más derechos que otros, pero tampoco ninguna
tacha que lo invalide, que lo relegue o que lo menoscabe, porque tiene también
todas las prerrogativas constitucionales. Es nuestro conciudadano y, por lo tanto,
nuestro hermano. Merece y tiene todo nuestro fraterno afecto. No más, no menos.
Lo contrario es indigno y discriminatorio.” Juan José Cresto, “Roca y el mito geno-
cidio,” La Nacion, 23 November 2004, http://www.lanacion.com.ar/656498-roca
-y-el-mito-del-genocidio, accessed 17 January 2018.
Adelman argues that “revolutionary Buenos Aires was an Enlightenment birth-
right.” Adelman, Republic of Capital, 285.
53. Historians have increasingly acknowledged the decidedly illiberal tenden-
cies of liberal nationalisms during this same period. Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism
and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999); Duncan Bell, ed., Reordering the World: Es
says on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).
54. See Ryan, “Indigenous Possessions.”
55. Axel Lazzari and Diana Lenton, “Araucanization and the Nation, or How to
Inscribe Foreign Indians upon the Pampas during the Last Century,” in Briones and
Lanata, Contemporary Perspectives, 34.
56. Hernán Feldman, “La cesura imposible: La cuestión de fronteras en la cul-
tura Argentina (1870–1889),” MLN 124, no. 2 (2009): 404–24; Richard W. Slatta,
251
“Comparing and Exploring Frontier Myth and Reality in Latin America,” History
Compass 10, no. 5 (2012): 375–85; Kristine L. Jones, “Comparative Ethnohistory
and the Southern Cone,” Latin American Research Review 29, no. 1 (1994):
107–18.
57. For a discussion of the rise of ethnography in Argentina in the 1870s, see
Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 488–90.
58. In 1878, Zeballos wrote a tract for Julio Roca, La conquista de 15000 le
guas, which was designed to convince members of Congress of the need for the
impending expedition. Ines Yujnovsky, “La conquista visual del país de los arau-
canos,” Takwa 14 (2008): 108.
59. Rendering these spaces as national parks also denied the indios claims of
ownership of the land. Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Con-
trol of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 22–24.
60. The same move was seen in the United States under the leadership of John
Muir. See Gabriela A. Alvarez, “El lugar de los parques nacionales en la represen
tation de una Patagonia turistica, discussion y habilitacion del paisaje patagonico
durante el siglo XX,” Magallania 42, no. 1 (2014): 60.
61. The linkage between scientific classification and the indios was powerfully
acknowledged by the exclusion of both from the reproduction of Blanes’s La ocupa
ción militar de Río Negro on the 100-peso bill.
62. There were, of course, exceptions to this, as during Rosas’s conquest of the
desert in the 1830s.
63. For a fairly comprehensive list of the tratados, see Levaggi, Paz en la fron
tera, 569–72. He includes a number of representative examples in his text.
Some of these treaties, “tratados de paz,” documented political settlements be-
tween the forces of the republic and indios along the frontier. “Copia,” 26 Au-
gust 1872, No. 1182, Compaña contra los Indios, AGE.
Later, these treaties assumed the form of contracts regarding the delivery of
rations and staples to the tribes. See, for instance, “Solicitacion de raciones ir la
tribu de Coliqueo,” 29 July 1876, No. 24-B-7564, Frontera con los Indios, AGE.
This document, running through seven articles, provides a detailed list of the
goods to be delivered to the tribe by state authorities. See also “Juan F. Gutierrez
contrato para provisiones,” 6 November 1876, No. 2180, Frontera con los Indios.
AGE.
64. See Jill St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and
Canada, 1867–1877 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
65. For a discussion of how the treaties changed over time, as well as examples
of the treaties themselves, see Claudia Briones, Morita Carrasco, and IWGIA,
Pacta sunt servanda: Capitulaciones, convenios y tratados con indigenas en Pampa
y Patagonia, Argentina, 1742–1878 (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2000). Briones observes
that the category of “Argentine subject” resembled a previous category of “Indige-
nous citizens” (50–51).
66. Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 35–36.
67. See Chapter 5.
68. See generally Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 141–61; Claudia Salomón
Tarquini, “Procesos de subalternización de la población indígena en Argentina:
252
Los ranqueles en la Pampa, 1870–1970,” Revista de Indias 71, no. 252 (2011):
545–70.
69. For an example of a colonia and the type of bureaucratic discussion it pro-
voked, see “Colonia General Conesa,” n.d., Sala VII Leg. 156, Archivo del Cnel
Alvaro Barros, AGN. Many of the colonias w ere connected with a religious con-
gregation, which retained the title deed. Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the
Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 24. For example,
Colonia General Conesa, which was established for the remnants of a tribe led by
Cacique Catriel, fell u nder the control of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. “Co-
lonia General Conesa, Patagonia;” “Patagonia, Colonia Indigena: Decreto,” 14
February 1879; Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 412.
The establishment and running of the colonias was detailed in the annual re-
port of the Department of War. See, for example, Roca, “Memoria del Departmento
de Guerra,” 407–15.
70. Though there was a category of reservas (reserves), these w ere different le-
gally than reservations in North Americ a. Reservas provided the indios usufruct
rights as opposed to title to land. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 164, n. 3.
71. This is in stark contrast to the emphasis on preserving “traditional society”
espoused by the likes of Henry Maine.
72. “. . . el indio, conservando y trasmitiéndose el lenguaje, costumbres y es-
píritu de tribu.” Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 407–8.
73. “. . . desaminar estos indios prisioneros, respetando la integridad de sus fa-
milias, dentro de las poblaciones rurales, donde, sometidos al trabajo que regenera
y a la vida y ejemplo cotidiano de otros costumbres, que modificaran insensible-
mente las propias, despojándoles hasta el lenguaje nativo como instrumental inútil,
se obtendrá su transformación rápida y perpetua en el elemento civilizado y fuerza
productiva.” Julio A. Roca, “Colonias indigenas, A S.E. el senor Gobernador de la
Provincia de Tucuman,” 4 November 1878, AGE.
Although this was addressed to the Governor of Tucuman, Roca’s efforts to ex-
pand the system of colonias during his presidency indicates his instructions here
may be viewed as a general statement of policy.
74. Benjamin Victoria, “Memoria del Ministeria de Guerra y Marina,” 1881,
AGE, xxxvi.
75. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 146.
76. “Memoria del Estado Mayor General del Ejército,” 1887, Biblioteca del
Estado Mayor del Ejército, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as BEM), 15–16.
77. Three of the eight leagues granted to Namuncurá and his followers were
allotted to the cacique. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 169–70, nn. 17–18.
78. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 486.
79. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 146.
80. See, for example, María Alejandra Estrada, “¿Mesianismo salesiano en Pa-
tagonia septentrional? Último cuarto del siglo XIX, Pueblo General Roca?,” Re
vista Española de Antropología Americana 41, no. 1 (2011): 97–116.
81. One significant exception to this is the Colonia Emilio Mitre, which was
established in 1900 and populated by various victims of the conquest. Originally a
project of Franciscan friars who sought to create an agricultural settlement for the
253
indios, it lacked both water and state support, though not state policing. Hernández
Graciela, “En tiempos del malón: Testimonios indígenas sobre la ‘conquista del
desierto,’ ” Memoria Americana, no. 14 (2006): 143. See also Colonia Emilio Mitre,
http://www.lapampa.edu.ar/poblamientopampeano/PAGES/m_ind_colmitre.htm,
accessed 17 January 2018; Claudia Salomón Tarquini, “Redes sociales y campos
de negociacion en una colonia pastoral indigena (Emilio Mitre, La Pampa, prin-
cipios del siglo XX),” Revista Estudios Digital, autumn 2010.
82. See Chapter 5.
83. Thomas Biolsi, “Imagined Geographies: Sovereignty, Indigenous Space and
American Indian Strug gle,” American Ethnologist 32, no. 2 (2005): 243; K.
Tsianina Lomawaima, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Sovereignty,” American
Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013): 333–51.
84. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 145, 158.
85. The respective totals for these categories w ere 1,717 and 2,236. Martin
Garcia thus housed 10.5 percent of Indians and 4.74 percent of families. Mases,
Estado y cuestión indigena, 146–47.
86. Yujnovsky, “La conquista visual del país de los araucanos,” 108; Mariano
Nagy and Alexis Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín García. Entre el
control estatal dentro de la isla y las prácticas de distribución de indígenas (1871–
1886),” Corpus 1, no. 2 (2011).
87. See Nagy and Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín García.”
88. Indian prisoners were also used as labor on the spot. For example, some
captured indios were put to work as forced labor on Fort General Roca. “. . . sobre
indios que debe ser ocupades a las trabajos de Gral. Roca,” 9 May 1884, No. 32–
8455, Frontera con los Indios, AGE.
89. See, for instance, “Fort Snelling Concentration Camp Dakota Prisoners,
1862–3,” American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 1–2 (2004): 170–74. Flinders Island
off of Tasmania has been described as a concentration camp for aborigines. Ben-
jamin Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide, 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasma-
nians, the Yuki of California and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide
Research 6, no. 2 (2004): 175. The Andaman Island penal colony could likewise be
described as such in British India. Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colo
nialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (New Delhi: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000). This, of course, raises the question of the difference between con-
centration camps and penal colonies. For a more general discussion of the idea of
concentration camps, see Vinay Lal, “The Concentration Camp and Development:
The Pasts and F uture of Genocide,” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 220–
43; Andrea Pitzer, One Long Night: a Global History of Concentration Camps
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017).
90. On American assimilationist policies of the 1880s and 1890s, see E. N.
Olund, “From Savage Space to Governable Space: The Extension of United States
Judicial Sovereignty over Indian Country in the Nineteenth Century,” Cultural Ge
ographies 9, no. 2 (2002).
91. On the church’s activities in Patagonia, see, for example, Estrada, “¿Mesian-
ismo salesiano en Patagonia septentrional?”
254
92. A kind of “who’s who” of important caciques is Meinrado Hux, Caciques

huilliches y salineros (Buenos Aires: El Elefante Blanco, 2004).
93. Ingrid De Jong and Silvia Ratto, “Redes políticas an el área Arauco-
Pampeana: La confederación indígena de Calfucurá (1830–1870),” Intersecciones
en Antropología 9 (2008): 241–60; Ingrid De Jong, “Armado y desarmado de una
confederación: El liderazgo de Calfucurá en el período de la organización na-
cional,” Quinto Sol 13 (2009): 11–45.
94. See K. L. Jones, “Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas, 1750–
1880” (University of Chicago, 1984).
95. Following his surrender, Namuncurá was integrated into the apparatus of
the Argentine state. In his later life, he was appointed a coronel and given three
leagues of land in San Ignacio (Neuquén). His tribe was given an additional five
leagues. Adalberto A. Clifton Goldney, Monografia del indio, coronel de la na
cion, D. Manuel Namuncurá, “garron de piedra.” (Buenos Aires, 1947).
96. “Memoria presentada por el Ministro Secretario de Estado en el Depart-
mento de Guerra y Marina,” 1878, AGE, p. 89.
97. Estanislao Severo Zeballos, Viaje al país de los araucanos (Buenos Aires:
Ediciones El Elefante Blanco, 2005), 212.
98. “. . . un archivo, el archivo del gobierno o cacicazgo de Salinas Grandes. . . .
Estaban allí (y fue completado después el hallazgo por una donación de docu-
mentos que el coronel Levalle tomara antes a los indios), las comunicaciones cam-
biadas de potencia a potencia entre el gobierno argentin y los caciques araucanos,
las cartas de los jefes de frontera, las cuentas de comerciantes que ocultamente
servían a los vándalos, las listas de las tribus indígenas y sus jefes, dependientes del
cacicazgo de Salinas, los sellos gubernativos grabados en metal, las pruebas de la
complicidad de los salvajes en las guerras civiles de las Republica a favor y en-
contra alternativamente de los partidos, y en medio de tan curiosos materiales no
faltaba un diccionario de la lengua castellana, de que se servían los indígenas para
interpretar las comunicaciones del gobierno argentino, de los jefes militares, de sus
espías (este archive prueba que eran numerosos) y de los comerciantes, con los que
sostenían cuentas Corrientes tan religiosamente respetadas (causa esto asombro),
como pueden serlo entrar los mercados de Paris y de Buenos Aires.” Zeballos, Viaje
al país de los araucanos, 212–13.
99. “. . . documentos dignos de la observación de la historia, suscritos por
presidentes, ministros y otros altos dignatarios del Estado en que se trata de
iguale a igual rebajando la dignidad del país.” Juan Guillermo Durán, Namun
curá y Zeballos: El archivo del cacicazgo de Salinas Grandes, 1870–1880 (Buenos
Aires: Facultad de Teologia, Universidad Catolica Argentina; Bouquet Editores,
2006), 52.
100. “—Mire, hermano [dijo Mariano], por que no me habla la verdad?—Le
he dicho a usted la verdad, le conteste.—Ahora va a ver, hermano. Y esto diciendo,
se levanto, entro en el toldo y volvió trayendo un cajón de pino, con tapa corrediza.
Lo abrió y saco de el una porción de bolsas de zaraza con jareta. Era su archive.
Cada bolsita contenía notas oficiales, cartas, borradores, periódicos. El conocía
cada papel perfectamente. Podía apuntar con el dedo a párrafo que quería referirse.
255
Revolvió su archivó, tomo una bolsita, descorrió la jareta y saco de ella un impreso
muy doblado y arrugado, revelando que había sido manoseado muchas veces. Era
La Tribuna de Buenos Aires. En ella había marcado un articulo sobre el gran fer-
rocarril interoceánico. Me lo indico, diciéndome:— Lea, hermano.” Quoted in
Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 29.
Mariano Rosas was named a fter the famed Argentine caudillo, Juan Manuel de
Rosas.
101. He had been educated in Chile and served as Juan Calfacurá’s secretary.
Upon Calfacurá’s death, the parlamento de los indios de Salinas Grandes (Indian
parliament of Salinas Grandes) elected a triumvirate to lead them, including him-
self, Manuel Namuncurá, and Alvarito Reumay. Manuel quickly established him-
self as sole leader, after which Bernardo served as both a secretary and counselor.
Hux, Caciques huilliches y salineros, 193–96.
Bernardo at times served as his brother-in-law’s translator. Bechis, “La ‘orga-
nización nacional,’ ” 3.
During the period between Namuncurá’s expulsion from the Salinas Grandes
and his surrender in 1884, he was served by an additional secretary, Juan Paille-
cura. Clifton Goldney, Monografia del indio, 53.
Additionally, white cautivos (captives) kidnapped during raids, as well as passing
merchants and traders, served as translators. Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 30.
102. Julio Estaban Vezub, “Mapuche-Tehuelche Spanish Writing and Argentinian-
Chilean Expansion during the Nineteenth C entury,” in Written Culture in a Colonial
Context: Africa and the Americas, 1500–1900, ed. Adrien Delmas and Nigel Penn
(Leiden: Brill, 2012), 215.
103. It was also seen as a resource by caciques for establishing their own pri-
macy among the indios. Vezub, “Mapuche-Tehuelche Spanish Writing,” 229.
104. Interestingly, Lavalle’s find was part of a larger discovery that included the
tomb of Juan Calfacurá. In addition to the two boxes of papers full of Namuncurá’s
papers, his expedition also took the skull of Calfacurá, which was later deposited in
the ethnographic museum of La Plata. Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 44–49.
105. See Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construc
tion of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
106. See C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information (New Delhi: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2002).
107. “El antiguo rey de la Pampa, el antes temido y poderoso Namuncurá, es
ahora agricultor de una colonia indígena.” Benjamin Victoria, “Memoria de Minis-
terio de Guerra y Marina,” 1884, BEM, 6.
108. Bechis, “La ‘organización nacional,’ ” 9, 15.
109. Saygüeque is the subject of the superb work of Julio Vezub, the most impor
tant and complete part of which is his biography of the cacique. Julio Vezub, Val
entin Saygüeque y la “gobernació n indigena de Las Manzanas”: Poder y etnicidad
en la Patagonia septentrional (1860–1881) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2009).
Nearly the entirety of this correspondence can be found in the Barros papers in
the Archivo General de la Nacion in Buenos Aires in Sala VII, Legajo 723, “Angel
Justiniano Carranza,” and Legajo 155, “Alvaro Barros.”
256
110. For a reproduction of this treaty, see Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA,
Pacta sunt servanda, 176–80.
111. This correspondence included treaty relations that promised the delivery
of rations to the cacique and his followers. For a discussion of such rations, see, for
example, “Frontera,” 11 February 1878, No. 16–7966, Frontera con los Indios,
AGE.
112. Maria Paula Irurtia, “El avance de la frontera. La vision indigena respecto
de los blancos en Pampa y Patagonia en el siglo XIX,” in Fronteras: Espacios de
interacción en las tierras bajas del sur de America, ed. Carina P. Lucaioli and
Lidia R. Nacuzzi (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Argentina de Anthropologia, 2010).
113. The area is known as such for its agricultural productivity, especially
along the Río Negro. Today it constitutes one of the most agriculturally productive
parts of the country. Much of its fruit produce is exported for hard currency.
114. This is best translated as “Governorship of the Country of the Apples.”
115. “Villegas a Saygüeque,” 19 August 1879, Sala VII Leg. 723, Archivo Angel
Justiniano Carranza, AGN. This is only one of many such examples that can be
found in this collection, as well as the Barros Papers (Leg. 155).
116. Article 5. See Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 178.
117. With a reduced salary and minus the appointment as a lieutenant coronel.
Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 181–83.
118. Even in his posed photographed image, his authenticity is challenged by
national authorities who insist he is an Araucano, and thus a Chilean Indian.
119. “. . . un aliado importantísimo, que cooperara a la consolidación de los
intereses argentinos en el Río Negro.” Estanislao Severo Zeballos, La conquista de
quince mil leguas: Estudio sobre la traslación de la frontera sur de la república al
Río Negro (n.p.: Forgotten Books, 2016), 365. Zeballos also characterized him as
the most powerful chief in Patagonia (364).
120. Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 378–79.
121. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 529–30.
122. Elizabeth Garrels, “Sobre indios, afroamericanos y los racismos de
Sarmiento,” Revista Iberoamericana 63, no. 178–79 (1997): 99–113.
123. Martin Garcia itself served as a labor reservoir for the city of Buenos
Aires. Contemporary newspaper accounts, and even advertisements, attest to the
use of Indian captives as l abor by both the army and private individuals. Mariano
Nagy, “La conquista del desierto,” http://www.congresojudio.org.ar/coloquio
_nota.php?id=140, accessed 17 January 2018. See also Lenton et al., “Argentina’s
Constituent Genocide,” 77.
124. See J. E. Vezub, “The Convoy of Musters and Casimiro: The ‘Tehuelche
Issue’ Revisited by Social Networks Analysis. Punta Arenas-Carmen de Patagones,
1869–70 [La caravana de musters y Casimiro: La ‘cuestión Tehuelche’ revisitada
por el análisis de redes. Punta Arenas-Carmen],” Magallania 43, no. 1 (2015):
15–35.
125. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 353.
126. For a reproduction of the treaty recognizing Casimiro’s status, see Hux,
Caciques huilliches y salineros, 415–15; Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 353–55.
257
127. See generally Brendan Lanctot, “The Tiger and the Daguerreotype: Early
Photography and Sovereignty in Post-Revolutionary Latin America,” Journal of
Latin American Cultural Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 1–17.
128. See, for example, Mateo Martinic, “Consideraciones sobre el primer re-
trato fotografico de un Patagon,” Magallania 32 (2004): 23–27.
129. “Retrato del Cacique Patagòn Casimiro en 1866,” No. 289897, Archivo
General de la Nación, Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires.
130. See Beverly Chico, “Liberty Cap,” in Hats and Headwear around the
World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013).
131. When revolting slaves donned them during the Haitian Revolution under
the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, Europeans trembled at the potential ex-
cesses of the revolution in the overturning of the Atlantic’s racial order. Philippe R.
Girard, Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian
War of Independence, 1801–1804 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014),
262–63.
And the British East India Company faced one of its indigenous mortal threats
in the person of Tipu Sultan, whose armies defending his capital of Seringapatam
also wore these markers of liberty. C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Em
pire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), 173.
132. On the process of bordering and its importance in Argentina, see Haram-
bour, “Borderland Sovereignties.”
133. Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide”; Gabriela Nacach,
“Cuestión de paradigmas: Conquista, representaciones y pensamiento racial en la
Pampa y Patagonia Argentina (1860–1915),” Eä: Revista de Humanidades Médicas
& Estudios Sociales de La Ciencia y La Tecnología 1, no. 2 (2009).
Lazzari and Lenton trace the assertion of the Indian’s Chilean roots to Estan-
islao Zeballos’s La conquista de las quince mil leguas. Lazzari and Lenton, “Arau-
canization and the Nation,” 35. See also Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil
leguas, chap. 8.
134. This is not to say that it prevented f uture competition within that order.
135. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in
the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011).
136. Irurtia, “El avance de la frontera,” 233.
137. B. D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan, ed. Megan Vaughan
and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series (Bas-
ingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
138. “Geografia operaciones recientes de frontera . . . extracto,” n.d., Sala VII
Leg. 1382, Archivo Julio A. Roca, AGN, 121–30.
139. George Victor Rauch, “The Argentine-Chilean Boundary Dispute and the
Development of the Argentine Armed Forces” (New York University, 1989).
140. See Lazzari and Lenton, “Araucanization and the Nation”; Diana Lenton,
“De centauros a protegidos: La construccion del sujeto de la politica indigenista
Argentina desde los debated parlamentarios (1880–1970)” (Universidad de Buenos
Aires, 2005); Richard O. Perry, “Argentina and Chile: The Struggle for Patagonia
1843–1881,” Americas 36, no. 3 (1980): 347–63.
258
141. Elizabeth Baigent, “Holdich, Sir Thomas Hungerford (1843–1929), Sur-

veyor and Geographer,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://
doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33932.
Holdich authored a volume about Argentina and Chile based on his experiences
demarcating their southern border. Thomas Hungerford Holdich, The Countries of
the King’s Award (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1904). I thank Kyle Gardner for this
reference.
142. Fotheringham authored a hyperbolically self-serving autobiography. In-
terestingly, his account of the conquest of the desert in his autobiography, La vida
de un soldado, makes hardly any mention of Indians. He portrays cold, rather than
the Indians, as the army’s main antagonist (337–54). The work was initially pub-
lished in 1925 and was dedicated to his patron and mentor, Julio A. Roca. For an
overview of Fotheringham’s life and biographical details, see Eduardo M. Tyrell,
“Gral de Bgada Ignacio Hamilton Fotheringham inglés, de nacimiento, Argentino
y niocuarteuse po adopción,” (n.d.), http://letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com/aaa
/tyrrell_eduardo/gral_de_bgada_ignacio_hamilton.htm.
143. For a discussion of Fotheringham’s role in the conquest of the Chaco, see
Christine Joy Mathias, “South America’s Final Frontier: Indigenous Leadership and
the Conquestion of the Gran Chaco, 1870–1955” (Yale University, 2015), 44–46.
144. This was undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the family’s Catholicism.
145. Upon his arrival in Bombay, he was assigned as a midshipman first to the
Elphinstone and then to the Semiramis where he served as the Commodore’s Mid-
shipman to the commander of the Persian Gulf squadron, William Balfour. His
service records are listed in India Register, 2nd ed. (London: W. H. Allen & Co.,
1859 / 1860), p. 96 of Bombay section, as well as Indian Army and Civil Service
List, 2nd ed. (London: W. H. Allen & Co., January 1861 / 1862), p. 457.
According to t hese records, where Fotheringham is mistakenly listed as “J. Foth-
eringham” (though in the index he is correctly listed as “Ignatius Fotheringham”),
he was appointed a captain’s clerk on 3 December 1858, though his assignment to
the Elphinstone was not recorded until the 1860 volume. His 1861 record notes his
promotion to Commodore’s Clerk on the Falkland; he was later transferred to the
Tigris (1862 volume), which also notes his impending reassignment to the Ajdaha.
146. Fotheringham claimed his dismissal was due to a diplomatic incident he
caused while visiting a mosque in Bushire, the port with the Residency for the Per-
sian Gulf. He vaguely hints his dismissal was as much a consequence of anti-
Catholic sentiment within the Company as a just punishment for his transgression.
147. See, for instance, Abraham Matthews, Crónica de la colonia galesa de la
Patagonia (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Alfonsina, 1995).
148. The painting was completed in 1896. It is currently housed in the Na-
tional Historical Museum in Buenos Aires.
149. The scene depicted never happened, and many of the subjects included were
never in such close proximity to one another.
150. In the original painting, to the left of Roca in the foreground, Indians are
depicted being ministered to by a Catholic priest, Manuel Espinosa. However, the
image was cut to exclude them on the bill, just as they have been cut out of the
Argentine national memory. Briones and Delrio, “ ‘Conquest of the Desert,’ ” 77,
259
n. 13. Similarly excised are the scientists and naval officers standing on the right
side of the painting, representing the conquest as a scientific undertaking and
technological progress. Roberto Amigo, “Region y nacion: Juan Manuel Blanes en
la Argentina,” in Exposicion Juan Manuel Blanes: La nacion naciente, 1830–1901
(Buenos Aires: Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blanes: Asociacion
Amigos del Museo Juan Manual Blanes, 2001), 72–74.
151. The image was placed on the bill in 1980, during the last military dicta-
torship, which, interestingly enough, was called “el processo de reorganización
nacional” and is today popularly referred to simply as “el processo.” Clearly, the
dictatorship sought to place the military at the center of the national memory in
order to secure its own place in the then national present.
conclusion
1. Karl Adalbert Hampel, “The Dark(er) Side of ‘State Failure’: State Forma-
tion and Socio-Political Variation,” Third World Quarterly (July 2015): 1–20.
2. “President Approves FATA-KP Merger Bill,” Dawn, 1 June 2018, https://www
.dawn.com/news/1411320, accessed on 14 August 2018. The amendment amalgam-
ates the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which are ruled by the FCR, with the
province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, thus extending normal civil administration over
the entirety of the frontier. For background, see Imtiaz Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s
Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” Special Report 421 (Washington, DC, 2018).
3. Such integration w ill undoubtedly run the gauntlet of many problems—
political as well as bureaucratic. See Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Ad-
ministered Tribal Areas”; Harrison Akins, “Mashar versus Kashar in Pakistan’s
FATA: Intra-Tribal Conflict and the Obstacles to Reform,” Asian Survey 58, no. 6
(2018): 1136–59; Khan Zeb and Zahid Shahab Ahmed, “Structural Violence and
Terrorism in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” Civil Wars 21,
no. 1 (2019): 1–24.
4. See Chapter 2.
5. Alexandre Kedar, Ahmad Amara, and Oren Yiftachel, Emptied Lands: A
Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 2018).
6. Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, eds., The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghan
istan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 231; Anatol Lieven,
“Counter-Insurgency in Pakistan: The Role of Legitimacy,” Small Wars and Insur
gencies 28, no. 1 (2 January 2017): 166–90.
7. Magnus Marsden and Benjamin Hopkins, eds., Beyond Swat: History, So
ciety and Economy along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
8. As spectacularly, the stand-off and eventual storming of the Lal Masjid, or
Red Mosque, in 2007 is considered by many analysts, scholars, and Pakistanis to
have been a definitional moment in the Global War on Terror when the violence
was domesticated within Pakistan itself. See, for instance, Joshua White, “Vigi-
lante Islamism in Pakistan: Religious Party Responses to the Lal Masjid Crisis,”
260
Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 7 (n.d.): 50–65, 130; Adam Dolnik and Khuram
Iqbal, Negotiating the Siege of the Lal Masjid (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
2016).
9. Ahmad Amara, Ismael Abu-Saad, and Oren Yiftachel, Indigenous (In)justice:
Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab / Negev (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2013); Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel, Emptied Lands.
10. Selected Economic Characteristics, 2012–16 American Community Survey
5-Year Estimates, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages
/productview.xhtml?src=CF, accessed 13 August 2018. The national averages are
15.1 percent and $55,322, respectively.
11. See, for example, “The Thin Red Line,” Earth Island Journal 30, no. 3 (Sep-
tember 2015): 21; Lydia Millet, “Selling Off the Holy Land,” New York Times, 29
May 2015.
12. See Emily Bregel, “Senate Passes Defense Bill, Including Mine Land-Swap
in Superior,” Arizona Daily Star, n.d.; “Sen. Sanders Introduces Save Oak Flat Act,”
US Fed News Service, Including US State News, 30 November 2015, ProQuest
1737408711; “Statement by Senator John McCain on Protest of Resolution
Copper Land Exchange in Washington, D.C. Today,” VoteSmart.org, 22 July 2015,
https://votesmart.org/public-statement/1001325/statement-by-senator-john-mccain
-on-protest-of-resolution-copper-land-exchange-in-washington-dc-today#.XcWZQl
VKipo, accessed on 8 November, 2019; John McCain, “Copper Mine Will Boost
Economy, Protect Sacred Sites,” AZCentral.com, 28 December 2018, https://www
.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/12/29/resolution-copper-pro/20865455/,
accessed on 13 August 2018; “Sanders Fights BHP, Rio Tinto,” Australian Finan
cial Review, 29 March 2016.
13. Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” 4.
14. The Morenci mine, now run by Freeport-McMoRan, has long been a source
of pollution affecting the San Carlos reservation and its inhabitants. Phelps Dodge
agreed to pay $9 million in penalties and remediation for the mine in the 1980s. See
“Phelps Dodge Corp. Settles U.S. Charges on Water Pollution,” Wall Street Journal
(1923–Current file), n.d., http://search.proquest.com/docview/135166754/, accessed
13 August 2019.
For the recent settlement between the US government and Freeport-McMoRan
for environmental damage caused by the mine, see “Freeport-McMoRan Corp. and
Freeport McMoRan Morenci Inc. Will Pay $6.8 Million in Damages for Injuries to
Natural Resources from the Morenci Copper Mine in Arizona,” States News Ser
vice, 24 April 2012.
15. On the use of Apache Scouts, see Edwin R Sweeney, From Cochise to
Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886 (Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 2014); John G. Bourke, “The Use of Apache Scouts, 1873–1886,” in
Spencer C. Tucker, The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890:
A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011),
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), accessed 13 August 2018). On the Navajo, and
other Native American “code talkers,” see William C. Meadows, “ ‘They Had a
Chance to Talk to One Another . . .’: The Role of Incidence in Native American
Code Talking,” Ethnohistory 56, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 269–84.
261
16. Nikolas Gardner, “Morale and Discipline in a Multiethnic Army: The Indian
Army in Mesopotamia (1914–1917),” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 4,
no. 1 (1 January 2013): 1–20; Charles Townshend, Desert Hell (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2010).
17. See generally Scott Rushforth, “Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of
Chiricahua National Monument and Fort Bowie National Historic Site. National
Park Service Task Agreement J1233040013” (Denver, 2010).
18. See Radikha Singha, The Coolie’s Great War: Indian Labour in a Global
Conflict, 1914–1921 (London: C. Hurst and Co Publishers Ltd, 2019).
19. Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), chaps. 4–6.
20. Claudia Salomón Tarquini, “Procesos de subalternización de la población
indígena en Argentina: Los ranqueles en la Pampa, 1870–1970,” Revista de Indias
71, no. 252 (2011): 555; Mariano Nagy, “Circulación e incorporación en la fron-
tera: Trayectorias indígenas tras la ‘conquista del desierto,’ ” Nuevo Mundo
Mundos Nuevos (Online), October 5, 2012, https://journals.openedition.org
/nuevomundo/64156#quotation, accessed October 25, 2019.
21. Mariano Nagy and Alexis Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín
García: Entre el control estatal dentro de la isla y las prácticas de distribución de
indígenas (1871–1886),” Corpus 1, no. 2 (2011).
22. T. R. Moreman, “The Arms Trade and the North-West Frontier Pathan
Tribes, 1890–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, no. 2
(1994): 187–216; B. D. Hopkins, “Race, Sex and Slavery: ‘Forced L abour’ in Cen-
tral Asia and Af ghani
stan in the Early Nineteenth C entury,” Modern Asian
Studies 42, no. 2 (2007): 629–71.
23. See, for instance, Jonathan Goodhand, Bandits, Borderlands and Opium
Wars: Afghan State-Building Viewed from the Margins (Copenhagen: Danish Insti-
tute for International Studies, 2009).
24. Theodore Christov, Before Anarchy: Hobbes and His Critics in Modern
International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jeremy
Larkins, From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and Politics before Westphalia
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner, eds.,
Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
25. This is not unique to the American government, as demonstrated by the
treatment of the Mohawk nation, whose reservation at Akwesasne, straddling
the US-Canadian border, remains a hotly disputed site of sovereignty. See, for
instance, Audra Simpson, “Subjects of Sovereignty: Indigeneity, the Revenue

Rule, and Juridics of Failed Consent,” Law and Contemporary Problems 71, no. 3
(2008).
26. See, for instance, Pekka Hämäläinen and S. Truett, “On Borderlands,”
27. The newly independent South Sudan, however, may be a case of such fron-
tier genesis.
28. John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,”
Economic History Review 6, no. 1 (1953): 1–15.
262
29. David Rock, “The British in Argentina: From Informal Empire to Postcolo-
nialism,” in Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital,
ed. Matthew Brown (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 49–77.
30. Jens Uwe Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South- West Africa:
German Colonialism, Indians, and American Westward Expansion,” Modern Intel
lectual History 7, no. 3 (2010): 523–52.
31. Christian Tripodi, “Good for One but Not the Other: The ‘Sandeman
System’ of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier
1877–1947,” Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 772–86.
32. Paul D. Barclay, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage
Border,” 1874–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018); Robert Es-
kildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874
Expedition to Taiwan,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (2002): 388–418;
Reo Matsuzaki, Statebuilding by Imposition: Resistance and Control in Colonial
Taiwan and the Philippines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019);
Ronald G. Knapp and Laurence Hauptman, “ ‘Civilization and Savagery’: The Japa
nese and the United States Indian Policy, 1895–1915,” Pacific Historical Review
(1980): 647–52; Kirsten L. Ziomek, Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s
Colonial Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).
33. Steven Sabol, The Touch of Civilization: Comparing American and Russian
Internal Colonization (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017); Dominik
Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism or How the Savage Lost His Nobility: The
Russian Perception of the Caucasus between 1817 and 1878 (Vienna: LIT, 2017);
Eva Maria Stolberg, “The Siberian Frontier between ‘White Mission’ and ‘Yellow
Peril,’ 1890s–1920s,” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (2004): 165–81; Andrew A.
Gentes, “Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian
History, and: Sibir ´ v Sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii [Siberia as Part of the Russian
Empire] (Review).” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10,
no. 4 (2018): 963–73; Timothy K. Blauvelt, “Military-Civil Administration and
Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–83,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eur
asian History 11, no. 2 (2010): 221–55. For a discussion of the formative role the
frontier has played in Russian history, see Brian J. Boeck, Imperial Boundaries: Cos
sack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the G reat (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), chap. 1; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe
Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana
The FATA has rather bafflingly been held up as a model for contemporary Rus
sian Chechnya. Maria Sultan, “The Quest for Peace in Chechnya: The Relevance of
Pakistan’s Tribal Areas Experience,” Central Asian Survey 22, no. 4 (2003): 437–57.
34. John P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 1930, AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9,
pp. 12–14, Papers of John P. Clum, UAL. See also Matsuzaki, Statebuilding by
Imposition; Rick Baldoz and Cesar Ayala, “The Bordering of America: Colonialism
and Citizenship in the Philippines and Puerto Rico,” Centro Journal 25, no. 1
(2013): 76–105; Alfred W. McCoy, “Covert Netherworld: An Invisible Interstice in
the Modern World System,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 4
(2016): 847–79.
263
35. Andres Rodriguez, “Nation-Building and Anthropology during the Repub-

lican Period: The Missionary Anthropological Enterprise in Western Sichuan
(1922–1945)” [Minguo Shiqi de Mingzugoujian he Renleixue: Sichuan Xibu de
Chuanjiao Renleixue Shiye (1922–1945)], in Duoyuan zuqun yu Zhongxi
wenhua jiaoliu, ed. Temule (Shanghai: Renmin Chubanshe, 2010), 105–33. On Chi-
nese frontier policy generally, see Matthew W. Mosca, From Frontier Policy to
Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in
Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Diana Lary, ed., The
Chinese State at the Borders (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
2007); Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eur
asia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010); Xiaofei Kang and Donald S. Sutton,
Contesting the Yellow Dragon: Ethnicity, Religion, and the State in the Sino-Tibetan
Borderland (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Eric Vanden Bussche, “Contested Realms: Colo-
nial Rivalry, Border Demarcation, and State-Building in Southwest China, 1885–
1960” (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Charles Patterson Giersch,
Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
36. See, for example, Carwil Bjork-James, “Hunting Indians: Globally Circu-
lating Ideas and Frontier Practices in the Colombian Llanos,” Comparative Studies
in Society and History 57, no. 1 (6 January 2015): 98–129; Catherine Legrand,
Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850–1936 (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1986); Cynthia Radding Murrieta, Landscapes of
Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of
Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
37. Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd Session of the United Nations
General Assembly, 19 September 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings
-s tatements /r emarks -p resident -t rump -7 2nd -s ession -u nited -n ations -g eneral
-assembly/, accessed on 13 August 2018. See also Stewart M. Patrick, “Trump’s
Sovereignty Doctrine,” Council on Foreign Affairs, https://www.cfr.org/blog/trumps
-sovereignty-doctrine, accessed on 13 August 2018.
264
Archives Consulted
Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina

—Archivo Angel Justiniano Carranza
—Archivo del Cnel Alvaro Barros
—Archivo Julio A. Roca
Archivo General del Ejército, Argentina
Biblioteca del Estado Mayor del Ejército Argentino, Argentina
Bodleian Library, Rhodes House, UK
—Private Papers of Frederick Lugard
British Library, India Office Records
Library of Congress, USA
National Archives, UK
National Archives and Records Administration, USA
National Archives of India
Tribal Research Cell, Pakistan
University of Arizona Library, Special Collections, USA
—Private Papers of John P. Clum
265
Acknowledgments
Like many of the peoples portrayed here, the origins of this book lay in a seem-
ingly ethereal, indefinite past. Though I can recall fragments of the project coming
together, I cannot pinpoint a single moment of genesis. I remember giving a job pre
sentation at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008 vaguely talking about
a project focusing on “tribe” as a category of colonial control. That was at best the
early stages, understandable given that my first book only appeared that year. I had
the g reat fortune of enjoying a three-year postdoc as a Junior Research Fellow at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. That, combined with a year at the LSE as well
as a further year at Trinity College Cambridge, afforded me the unparalleled op-
portunity to mine the archives and think. I spent much of that time in the National
Archives in India, as well as the British Library. And somewhere between those
two, and in writing one book and editing another on the Afghan frontier with my
good friend Magnus Marsden, I stumbled across the Frontier Crimes Regulation
(FCR). My initial reaction to the FCR was something to the effect of “That’s so
wrong.” But in looking at the spaces to which it applied—the colonial tribal agen-
cies and the postcolonial Federally Administered Tribal Areas—I felt I recognized
those places, and not because of my previous scholarship. Though they were not
called such in the colonial, postcolonial, or scholarly literature, these were clearly
reservations, much like the ones I was vaguely familiar with growing up in the
United States. And so the seed was planted. With nurturing and a g reat deal of
patience—not all of which was mine—it has finally come to fruition here.
Initially, I thought the FCR would provide an interesting article about a gross,
and continuing, colonial injustice. Yet the more I looked into it, the more perversely
gripping the story grew. I soon arrived at a point where I had too much for an ar-
ticle, yet not enough for a book, which nobody would read in any case. But I had
something more—something invaluable: an idea that the FCR was itself not the story,
but rather a character in the story. And that story is frontier governmentality—the
tale of how bureaucrats, administrators, colonial and national officials, and men
267
Acknowle dgments
on the spot ruled the p eople of the proverbial hills—be they a ctual hills, marsh-
lands, or desert “wastes.” I have been both fascinated by and fortunate to follow
the leads of this story around the globe. And while I know the argument and nar-
rative I present here are incomplete, I believe they make a good start.
That start would not have been possible without incurring an enormous number
of debts along the way—from individuals and institutions around the world. Intel-
lectually, I shall forever be indebted to a long list of mentors, colleagues, and friends
who have pushed, prodded, and supported me at every step of the journey. I would
not be where I am t oday without the belief, support, and friendship of Joya Chat-
terji. I am still not sure what she saw in an inarticulate undergraduate, but what
ever she did, she decided to invest in me. And I am forever grateful. My PhD super-
visor, Chris Bayly, trained me well and instilled in me a humility before his erudition,
breadth, and inquisitiveness even before I met him. When I moved to the United
States to take up my tenure-track position, I had the great fortune to become the
intellectual mentee of Dane Kennedy. A kind and caring colleague, he has an inci-
sive wit that is matched only by his solicitude and graciousness. Dane’s generosity of
spirit has been matched by many of my colleagues at the George Washington (GW)
University, including Paula Alonso, Dina Khoury, Deepa Ollapally, Katrin Schul-
theiss, David Silverman, Denver Brunsman, and Tyler Anbinder, among many
others. I am thankful daily for my happy home at GW.
Of course, there is a wider body of scholars to whom I owe a great deal of
gratitude—intellectual as well as emotional. The relatively small but growing band
of scholars who work on Afghanistan has proven time and again to be an extremely
supportive community of knowledge, and my work bears the marks of its mem-
bers’ individual and collective contributions. More widely, I have benefited from
the insight, knowledge, and forbearance of colleagues whose own specializations
range much further afield than my own. Though I will undoubtedly, and uninten-
tionally, leave some out, it would be remiss of me not to mention some fellow trav-
elers by name: Magnus Marsden, Shah Mahmud Hanifi, Robert Nichols, Robert
Crews, Amna Qayyum, Elisabeth Leake, Martin Bayly, Naysan Adlparvar, Ayesha
Jalal, Ben Johnson, Andrew Greybill, Keren Weitzberg, Hannah Whittaker, Bill Cal-
lahan, Taylor Sherman, Justin Jones, Kyle Gardner, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard, Julio
Vezub, Geraldine Davies Lenoble, Amanda Cheney, Tom Simpson, Yaqoob Bangash,
Dan Haines, Sabrina Katz, and Brandon Roselius. My editors at Harvard, Joyce
Seltzer and Kathleen McDermott, have been an absolute joy to work with. And the
comments and insights of the three anonymous readers for the Press both encour-
aged and challenged me.
The research for this work was supported by a wide variety of institutions
spanning the globe, including Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the George Wash-
ington University; the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, where I
enjoyed a fellowship in 2015; the Leverhulme Trust, which supported a major grant
award; the School of Oriental and African Studies; STANCE at Lund University;
the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, where I had
the good fortune to take a Senior Research fellowship; the Sigur Center for Asian
Studies (of which I am now director); and the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities, which supported my participation in a summer seminar. The staff and ar-
268
Acknowle dgments
chivists at the British Library, the National Archives in the United Kingdom, the
National Archives of India, the Archivo General de la Nación (Argentina), and the
Archivo General del Ejército (Argentina), as well those of the Special Collections at
the University of Arizona all provided critical assistance to the project.
Portions of Chapter 2 were first published as “The Frontier Crimes Regulation
and Frontier Governmentality,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 2 (2015): 369–89.
I thank the editors of JAS for granting their permission for the material to be
reprinted.
Finally, none of this would have been possible without the love, support, and
tolerance of my family. They have quite literally followed me across the globe in
pursuit of this work. My wife, Lila, has been a rock of support like no other. I will
never be able to express my gratitude or love sufficiently in words. This book
roughly coincides with the life of our eldest d
aughter, so t hese pages w
ill forever be
indelibly marked by the memories of our children. And it is to them this book is
dedicated, with all my love.
269
Index
Note: Figures are indexed in italic.
Abbott, James, 112; Abbottabad, 112 Pashtuns, 135, 144; customs, 136; efforts
Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, to civilize, 101–102, 103; federal
An (Elphinstone), 17 government relations with, 130–132, 135,
Afghanistan: border conflict with Pakistan, 136–137; indirect rule, 150; land rights,
195–196; as buffer state, 25; Frontier 131, 135; legal status, 20, 136, 147;
Crimes Regulation, 43–44; independence, military labor, 199; post-colonial fate,
215n11, 215n14; treaty of friendship 196–197; potential advancement, 148;
with Britain, 225n8 (see also Treaty of property ownership, 134, 136, 146;
Rawalpindi). See also British India’s reservations, 11, 58–59, 102, 118,
North-West Frontier 241n23 (see also Chiricahua reservation;
Afghanistan and South Africa. See Frere Ojo Caliente reservation; San Carlos
Agror Valley Act III, 50 Apache reservation); restorative justice,
All-India Congress, 66 136; sovereignty, 133, 135, 147, 150,
Al-Shabaab terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196 262n25; taxation, 134; territory, 150;
Alsina, Adolfo, 163 treaties, 132, 147, 150
American Civil War, 118 Amery, Leo, 74, 226n22, 231n83
American frontier: characteristics, 100–101, Anglo-Zulu War, 88–89, 91, 92, 97, 185, 193
146; closure, 14–15; construction, Anwar, Rao, 27
150–151; financial resources, 146; Apache: about, 117; political economy of
governance, 146, 150 plunder, 117, 118, 125; in popular
American Indians: administrative control, imagination, 152; reputation for
141–142; assimilation policy, 137, 146; “savagery,” 120; settlements, 117;
boarding schools, 137; capitalist economy sovereignty, 149; territory, 117, 118; U.S.
and, 101–102; Christianity and, 102; government relations with, 117, 118,
citizenship status, 132, 133–134, 135, 119–120, 123. See also Chiricahua
149, 194, 196, 245n78; comparison to Apache
271
Index
Apache Pass, Battle of, 120 Arizona Territory, 11, 26, 115, 118, 122, 198
Apache scouts, 22, 141 Army Public School attack, 1, 12, 196
apartheid, 86, 89 Australia and New Zealand Army Corps
Argentina: agricultural revolution, 162; (ANZAC), 65
army, 163; British influence of, 161–162; Avellaneda, Nicolas, 164, 165
carceral state, 200; citizenship, 166–167;
criollos population, 168, 169; economic Baathist coup, 194
development, 157, 188; finances, 188; Baluchistan, 29, 30, 53, 72, 143, 215n10,
frontier governmentality system, 222n100; Baluchistan Agency, 10,
155–158, 159, 188, 190, 191; as global 55–56, 73
periphery, 189; historical background, Baluch people: legal identity, 46–47;
156, 160–161; Home Law, 251n48; military labor, 199; vs. Pashtuns, 30–31,
indigenous population, 158, 167–168, 48; social order, 31
247n8; indios policy, 155, 157, 159, 164, Bantustans of South Africa, 22, 86
165–173, 190–191; international capital, Barros, Alvaro, 178
161, 162; Land Act, 249n26; map, 154; Bascom Affair, 120
national framework, 159–160; one- Basra, 65, 66
hundred-peso bill, 187, 188–189, 189, Beauford, Clyde, 127
259n150, 260n151; relations with Chile, Bedouin of the Negev: blood feuds, 18;
185; state building, 163, 183; territorial British rule, 72, 73; under Israeli
expansion, 11, 155, 158, 161, 162, jurisdiction, 70, 90, 194, 196; tribal
184–185, 191; treaty-based relationship courts, 69, 72, 227n32. See also Palestine
with indigenous people, 168–169, 170, Bengal Regulation, 56, 218n40
180, 252n63; vs. United States, 148; Benton, A. H., 46, 48, 49, 216n27
weakness of state power, 158, 189–190 Bhola Ram v. Emperor, 46
Argentina’s conquest of the desert: as act of Bigua, Casimiro (also known as Patagón
imperial violence, 193; in comparative Casimiro), 173, 181–182, 183
perspective, 185; cost, 158, 161, 163; Bin Laden, Osama, 112, 113
displacement of indios, 146, 164–165, Blanes, Juan Manuel: La ocupación militar
250n40; driving forces, 161–162, 183; as de Río Negro, 187–188, 188, 189,
genocide, 250n39; impact on state- 259n150
building, 153, 155, 160, 191; land rewards, Boko Haram terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196
161, 249n26, 249n27; manpower problem, British Empire: challenge to supremacy,
163; onset of, 162–163; scholarly debates 64–65; colonial governance, 2, 64,
on, 250n39; time span, 153 144–145; defeats, 89, 91; map, 62;
Argentine Pampas: Argentine expansion sovereign pluralism, 149
into, 155, 161; barbarism of, 106, 153; as British India: administrative power, 31, 41;
biblical Palestine, 108; characteristics, 6; vs. American republic, 143, 144, 151;
Christian savages of, 107; as empty capital of, 203; colonial administration,
wasteland, 106; frontier governmentality 235n10; communal civil codes, 20;
practices, 26; as frontier territory, 185; criminal justice system, 21, 218n47,
gauchos of, 108–109; indios’ erasure 219n56; decennial census, 49; in the First
from, 165; land ownership, 165; map, 9, World War, 11; influence over people of
154; poverty, 107–108; productive value, periphery, 56, 57, 143, 145; judicial
163–164, 189. See also Sarmiento authority, 43–44, 46; Muslim law
Arizona Citizen, 126, 140, 141 statutes, 21; political relations, 35–36, 45;
272
Index
rhetoric, 32; Scheduled Districts Act, marker of, 105, 237n43; classic view of,
215n4; singular sovereignty, 201. See also 147; education and, 137, 237n56;
tribal areas in colonial India property rights and, 94, 105–106, 107,
British India’s North-West Frontier: 137; rule of law and, 94, 129; vs. savagery,
administration, 17, 31–32, 33, 56; 109–110, 234n5; Scottish Enlightenment
Criminal Tribes Act, 38; demarcation, 10, and idea of, 234n4
56; Deputy Commissioners reports, 39, civilizational / savagery dialectical divide,
40, 41–42; frontier governmentality 92–93, 94–95, 96–97, 100
practices, 25–26, 114, 144; imperial policy, Clum, John Philip: annual reports, 138,
236n26; independent tribal areas, 32–34, 241n20, 242n30, 243n47, 246n105;
35–36, 37; indigenous forms of rule, 18; Apache relocation, 123–124; archive,
indirect rule, 37; judicial regulations, 37, 241n29; career, 114, 126, 140, 240n6,
38–40; labor migration, 222n105; land 246n95; comparison to Robert San-
allocation, 135; liminal lands, 30; maps, 9, deman, 143–144; connections with Dutch
29; murder rate, 39; Pashtun inhabitants, Reformed Church, 115; control over San
30; political communities, 30; topography Carlos reservation, 125–126, 137–138;
of, 30; tribal agencies, 217n37; tribal education, 115; federal government and,
militia system, 52–53, 54; tribal popula- 140, 205; frontier administration,
tion, 31, 36; violence against bania 114–115, 123, 126, 127–128, 141, 143,
merchants, 222n104 145; opinion of Geronimo, 152;
British Raj. See British India personality, 141; photograph, 116;
buffer states, 25 punitive innovations, 138–139; relation-
Burma Frontier Tribes Regulation, 57 ship with the military, 125–126;
resignation, 141, 245n94; support of
Calfacurá, Juan, 173, 178, 256n104 territorial governor, 126; “supreme court”
Camp Grant Agency, 123 of, 138, 139–140; tribal police force,
capitalism: civilization and, 94–95, 126–127, 128, 137, 138; Tucson ring of
101–102; global expansion, 16 merchants and, 146; writings, 240n8
Carlisle School, 137 Cochise (Chiricahua Apache chief), 120,
census: as practice of governmentality, 17 121
center / periphery dichotomy, 203 collective punishment, 38–39, 51, 57, 61,
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 131, 133 68–69, 75, 83
Chile, 154, 181, 184, 185, 193 Collective Punishment Ordinance, 74, 78
Chin Hills, 57 collective responsibility, 61, 67, 69, 70, 75,
Chiricahua Apache: about, 120; federal 88, 226n22
government and, 120, 127; governance colonias, 170–172, 181, 200
of, 142; lack of legal protection, 121; colonial governmentality, 21
relations with White Mountain Apache, colonial / postcolonial dichotomy, 203–206
243n49; relocation, 123–124, 142, 151; colonial states: civil codes, 20–21; political
return to Southwest, 151; sovereign order, 19, 20; property in, 51; sovereign
treaties, 169–170; subjugation of, 157 pluralism, 19–20
Chiricahua reservation, 121, 122, 125, 149 Cooper, James Fennimore, 109
citizenship: liberal idea of, 147, 166–167; Council of Elders (jirgah): comparative
political identity and, 148 view, 139; establishment, 38; forms of,
civilization: capitalism and, 94–95, 101–102, 38; sentences, 245n91; trial by oath, 42;
105; Christianity and, 102, 137; cities as use of customary law by, 38
273
Index
Court of Indian Offenses, 78, 140, 245n91 Frere, Bartle: administrative practices, 10,
Cox, Percy, 66 11, 99–100; Afghanistan and South
Cromer, Evelyn Baring, Earl of, 72 Africa, 95, 97, 99; Anglo-Zulu War, 88,
Crook, George, 122, 141, 142, 146 89; career, 91–92, 99, 100, 111, 233n115;
customary law, 38, 86–87, 219n57, 222n94 on causes of colonial wars, 97; on cult of
the “man on the spot,” 98; discourse of
Dawes Severalty Act (also known as savagery, 92, 95, 97, 98, 110; downfall,
Dawes Act), 102, 106, 123, 134, 137, 92, 100; on expansion of Russian Empire,
146, 171, 196 98, 236n23; founding member of Royal
Deputy Commissioners (DCs): authorities Geographical Society, 236n22; on
and responsibilities, 37, 38, 39, 41–42 governance of frontier tribes, 98; letters
Disraeli, Benjamin, 91 to Gladstone, 91, 92, 96–97; on
Dobbs, Henry, 64, 65–66, 68, 85, 114, ownership regime, 98; political views,
225n8 234n3; portrait, 93; on protection of
Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan, 47, 49 “uncivilized” races, 97–98; reputation,
Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 11; response to criticism, 235n14; Sind
The. See Lugard frontier system, 99; support of Christian
Durand Agreement, 10, 33, 44 proselytization, 235n8; vision of the
progress of humanity, 110
East India Company, 19, 51, 186, 187, frontier: as barren land, 3, 74; centers and,
258n131. See also British India 12; changing nature of, 14–15; as
Egerton, Walter, 75 dangerous place, 1; definitions, 13–14,
Elk v. Wilkins, 133 100; imperial wars and, 192–193; as
Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 238n72; An laboratory of governance, 64; labor
Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 17 regime, 21, 22–23, 199–200; natural
Elsmie, George, 50 resources, 198–199; as practice, 15, 26,
Empress v. Muhammad Umar Khan, 45 150, 193; in relation to the state, 12, 15,
epistemic violence, 51, 195 202–203; as reservation, 58–59;
sovereignty, 201, 202; as space of
Facundo (Sarmiento), 95, 103–105, 108 generative destruction, 100; spatiality and
Federally Administered Tribal Areas temporality of, 14, 15
(FATA): agencies, 214n3, 217n37; Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR): adultery,
amendments, 260n2; dissolution, 59; treatment of, 39–40, 46; in Africa, 10–11,
inhabitants, 27, 28; as model for 83; annual reports, 41–42; applied to
Chechnya, 263n33; offensives against Baluch inhabitants, 215n4; banishment of
militants, 195–196 blood feud, 39; in British India, 40–41,
First Afghan War, 10 63–64; collective punishment, 38–40; in
First World War, 64–65 comparative perspective, 58–59;
Fort Bowie, 120 contestation in colonial court, 45–46;
Fort Huachuca, 113 creation, 28, 37, 144, 194; criticism,
Fotheringham, Ignacio: autobiography, 220n66; jurisdictional reach, 43–45,
259n142; background, 186–187; on 46, 47–48, 220n77; vs. Major Crimes
Blanes’s painting, 187; c areer, 186, Act, 144; in the Middle East, 61, 65,
259n145; diplomatic incident, 259n146; 72; as mode of governance, 70;
inheritance, 187; land grant, 249n26; postcolonial legacy, 59–60; preceding
military experience, 186, 187 acts, 50, 51; principles, 10; on property
274
Index
ownership, 51; reporting requirements, band, 141; in popular imagination, 152;

39, 40; Sandeman system and, 111, 114, resistance and capture, 113, 127, 140; in
228n36, 230n74; in South East Asia, 55, Roosevelt’s inauguration parade, 152;
56–58; tribal judiciary under, 37–38 surrender, 142, 151
frontier economy: dependence on imperial Gladstone, William: on Afghan hill tribes,
economy, 21; illicit spheres, 23, 200; 235n13; correspondence, 91, 92, 96–97;
migratory labor flows, 22–23; military discourse of savagery, 92, 95; political
labor market, 21–22, 52, 53–54, 199; career, 91; “Rights of the Savage” speech,
monetization of, 22 96, 99
frontier governmentality: American Indians Glubb, John (also known as “Glubb
and, 149–150; British system of, 10; Pasha”): career, 23, 71, 73; criticism of
characteristics, 13, 83–84, 150; collapse, Iraqi desert policy, 227n35; desert
194; vs. colonial governmentality, 21; as administration system, 71–72, 227n34;
colonial practice, 192–193, 204–205; governance of TransJordan, 84; Sande-
common forms, 151; defining elements, 6, man’s influence on, 71, 84, 228n36
11, 12, 17–18, 23, 77; development, Glubb’s Desert Patrol, 22, 71, 72, 73,
25–26; epistemic violence, 195; FCR as 127, 199
template of, 72–73; frontier administrators governmentality: census as practice of, 17;
and, 23–24, 98; global capitalism and, 10, vs. governance, 16; as temporal signifier,
16; imperial state and, 7–8; legacies, 190, 16–17
191, 193–196, 197–198, 200–201; legal Grant, Ulysses S.: peace policy, 115,
regime, 5, 23; vs. other forms of gover- 241n18
nance, 24–25; as personal administration Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 117
system, 5; in postcolonial era, 89; roots,
25, 192; tribal p eople’s role in, 5 Haggard, H. Rider, 93, 234n5; King
frontier people: administrative regime, 4–5, Solomon’s Mines, 93
7, 18; categorization, 202; colonial rule, Haitian Revolution, 258n131
6, 24; demarcating practices, 24–25; Hamilton, George Francis, Lord, 33–34
economic dependence, 6, 21–22, 23, Hazara Settlement Rules, 50, 51, 134
53–54, 55; exclusion from colonial legal Hindus, 46, 48, 49
sphere, 21; impact of FCR on, 54, 55; Holdich, T. H., 185
indigenous polities, 25; indirect rule, 74; Howard, O. O., 120, 128
labor market, 21–22; marginalization, Hussein, Saddam, 90
111; as “savages,” 2–3, 11, 24, 92–93,
195; as subjects to frontier governmen- Ilbert, Courtenay, 57
tality, 111; violence against, 193, imperial objecthood, 6, 20, 23, 77
194–196, 197 Indian Appropriations Act, 132
frontier rule, 2, 3, 6–7 Indian Citizenship Act, 82, 134, 171
Indian Civil Service (ICS), 65, 66
Gadsden Purchase, 115 Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) “D,” 61,
Garissa University massacre, 1, 89, 196 65, 67, 68, 199
General Allotment Act. See Dawes Indian Penal Code (IPC), 39, 51, 222n95
Severalty Act Indian police force, 128
Geronimo: Apache War, 185; bin Laden as, Indian princely states, 35, 36, 75, 216n27,
112, 152; federal government and, 113; 217n33
hunt for, 243n49; leader of Chiricahua Indian sovereignty, 130
275
Index
indios population: agricultural colonies, (SDAO), 78, 80, 81–82, 83, 89; tribal
170–172; anthropologization, 167–168; police, 82–83; tribesmen, 78, 79–80
araucanization, 184; archives of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, 59, 260n2
chieftancy correspondence, 175–176, Khyber Rifles, 199
177, 178; in Argentine political imagi- Kimberley, John Wodehouse, earl of, 33
nary, 181–184; citizenship, 165–168, Klamath reservation, 128
172–173; colonias, 170–171, 172, 181,
200, 253n69, 253n73, 253n81; displace- Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), 260n8
ment and deaths, 165; forced labor, 172, Lansdowne, Henry Charles, Marquess of,
200, 254n88; governance, 173–174; land 32, 34, 35
ownership claim, 167, 252n59; language Latif Wali Khan v. Empress, 45
of communication, 176–177; literacy and Lavalle, Juan, 177, 256n104
education, 176, 177; military operation League of Nations Permanent Mandates
against, 158, 163, 164–165; penal Commission, 77
colonies for, 172; photographs of chiefs, liberty cap. See Phrygian cap
182; political identity, 180–181; Livingstone, David, 235n8
reservations, 253n70; statistics, 163, 165; Louverture, Toussaint, 258n131
subjugation, 146–147, 155, 157, 159, Lugard, Frederick: African governance, 64,
164, 168, 183, 200; treaties with the 114; career, 23, 68, 76–77, 78, 229n56;
Argentine state, 168–170, 252n63 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical
indirect rule, 6, 11, 18, 23, 63, 74, 75 Africa, 74; idea of collective punishment,
informal empire, 204 75; Political Memorandum, 75; posthu-
Inner Line Regulation, 56 mous critics, 229n51; system of indirect
Iraq: British rule of, 65–66, 68, 227n30; rule, 11, 18, 63, 74–75, 77, 85
Collective Responsibility for Crimes Lyautey, Hubert, 204
Ordinance, 68; mandatory administra- Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 185
tion, 69; modernity danger, 66; uprising
against British, 67. See also Tribal Maine, Henry, 34–35, 36, 216n25, 216n26,
Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation 217n36
(TCCDR) Major Crimes Act, 78, 136, 140, 144;
Iraq Occupied Territories Code, 67 vs. Frontier Crimes Regulation, 144
Mangas Coloradas, 117
Jacob, John, 99 Mansilla, Lucio, 176
Jeffords, Tom, 121 Marshall trilogy, 131, 132
Jewish Agency, 69 Martin Garcia island, 172, 257n123
jirgah. See Council of Elders (jirgah) McCain, John, 197
Johnson v. McIntosh, 131 McKinley, William, 205
Mehsud, Naqeebullah, 27, 28, 30, 60
Kachin Hills, 56–57 Merewether, William, 126, 224n125
Kenya’s Northern Frontier Province: Mesopotamia: British rule, 61, 65–66; tribal
administration system, 78, 81–82; blood governance, 71. See also Iraq
feuds, 18; Collective Punishment Mexican-American War, 115, 117
Ordinance, 78–79, 80, 82, 83, 194; Miles, Nelson, 142, 151
frontier governmentality practices, 26; military labor market, 21–22
maps, 9, 79; migrations, 80; Special Mitre, Bartolomé, 181
Districts Administration Ordinance Modoc Indians, 128
276
Index
Morenci Copper Mine, 198, 198, 261n14 Pakistan: border conflict, 195–196; labor
Moreno, Francisco, 167 migration, 222n105; legacy of frontier
governmentality in, 60; repeal of Frontier
Namunará, Bernardo, 176, 256n101 Crimes Regulation, 194. See also Federally
Namuncurá, Manuel: archive of correspon- Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
dence of, 175–176; as cacique of the Palestine: Bedouin Control Ordinance, 69;
Pampa, 173–174; defeat, 173, 177; land British mandate, 61; Collective Punish-
grants, 170–171; photograph, 174; ment Ordinance, 68, 69, 74, 194; Deputy
political activities, 178, 181; state career, Commissioners authority, 71; Prevention
255n95 of Crime in Tribal Areas Ordinance, 68,
Natal colony: administrative system, 84–85, 71; reproduction of the FCR, 69–70;
86, 88; chiefs, 85; collective responsibility tribal militia, 69–70; tribal unrest, 61,
and punishment, 88; economy, 87; l abor 225n2. See also Bedouin of the Negev
market, 87; Native Administration Act, Paraguayan War. See War of the Triple
232n99; native courts, 86; Native Alliance
Magistrates, 85, 86; native police force, Pashtuns: vs. Baluch p eople, 30–31, 48;
87; population, 88; property ownership, blood feuds, 18, 39; British rule, 27–28;
87; taxes, 87, 232n107 in colonial imagination, 30; Frontier
Natal Native Code, 10, 86–87 Crimes Regulation, 38–40; legal status,
Natal Native Trust, 87, 233n108 28, 46–47, 48; migratory labor, 200;
nation-states, 204 military employment, 199; nominal
Native Courts Ordinance, 75 independence, 32–34, 35, 36, 56; origin
Navajo Constabulary, 128 of the term, 214n2; in Pakistan,
Nicholson, I. F., 229n51 treatment of, 27–28; parallel with
Nigeria: Collective Punishment Ordinance, American Indians, 144; railway workers,
68–69, 74, 75, 78, 83; colonial adminis- 23; social order, 31; in tribal militia, 52;
tration, 75–77; indirect rule system, 11, violence, 39, 40
74–75, 77, 85; Native Courts Ordinance, Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement,
75, 77–78, 229n62; taxation, 77 27, 28, 59, 60, 190, 194
Northbrook, Thomas George Baring, earl Patagonia: Argentine expansion into, 155,
of, 33 161; barbarism, 153; as frontier territory,
185; indios’ erasure from, 165; land
Oak Flat, 197, 198 ownership, 165; map, 154; productive
Obama, Barack, 197 value, 164, 189; state presence in, 248n14
Ocupación militar de Río Negro, La Peake, Frederick, 72–73
(painting), 187–188, 188, 189, penal colonies: vs. concentration camps,
259n150 254n89. See also Martin Garcia island
Ojo Caliente Apache, 140 periphery: as space of administrative
Ojo Caliente reservation, 125, 127 innovation, 64
Orientalism, 238n73, 239n74 Peshawar, 1, 11, 17, 44, 45, 50, 76, 196,
Ottoman Empire, 65 215n4, 229n56
Phelps Dodge, 125, 198, 242n38, 261n14
Pais de las Manzanas: agricultural Phrygian cap, 182
productivity, 189, 257n113; comparison Plowden, H. M., 42, 47
to Apache reservation, 6; conquest, 181; political economy, 16
governance, 179; map, 154 postcolonial colonialism, 225n136
277
Index
Pottinger, Henry, 231n87 creation of tribal militia, 52–53;

property rights, 94, 106, 134–135, 165, frontier administration system, 33, 73,
234n7 84, 88, 126, 224n125; idea of border
Punjab Field Force, 22 management, 143; legacy, 114;
Punjab Regulation, 57 portrait, 53
Sarmiento, Domingo: on Argentine society,
Quiroga, Juan Facundo, 103 103–104, 107; on Asiatic barbarians,
108; on the city of Cordoba, 105; on
Rawalpindi, Treaty of, 44 civilizing effect of the city, 105, 106;
Reece, Gerald, 82 Cooper’s influence on, 109; discourse of
Resolution Copper, 197, 198 civilization and barbarism, 104–106, 107,
Ricardo, David, 16 108–109; Facundo, 95, 103–104; on
Ripon, George Frederick, marquess of, 33 individual ownership, 106; literary
Roca, Julio A.: conquest of the desert, 157, works, 102–103; on native societies,
158, 162–163, 187; idea of agricultural 108–109, 110; Orientalism, 108–109,
colonies, 170; on indios population, 238n73, 239n75; political career, 103;
164–165, 250n40; relations with portrait, 104; reputation, 11; Scott’s
Saygüeque, 180; on reservation system, influence on, 107, 108; on Spanish
170; on system of colonias, 253n73 conquest of America, 107; vision of the
Roosevelt, Theodore, 102, 106, 152, Pampas, 106, 108, 153, 155; vision of the
237n45, 245n78 progress of humanity, 110
Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 103, 160 savages / savagery: vs. barbarians, 24,
Rosas, Mariano, 176 213n41; citizenship and, 147; vs. civilized
Russian Empire: colonial expansion, 98, order, 3, 100–101, 234n5; in colonial
235n8, 236n23; governance of periphery, imagination, 93, 110; imperial discourse,
204; imperial ambitions of, 185 92–94, 95–96; poverty and, 107–108;
property rights, 94, 106, 110; state
Safford, Anson, 126 strategies against, 110–111
Samuel, Herbert, 61, 68, 74, 90, 225n2 Saygüeque, Valentin: archive, 176;
San Carlos Apache, 196–197, 199 correspondence, 178–179; defeat, 173,
San Carlos Apache reservation: administra- 181; imprisonment, 200; land grants,
tion, 114, 115, 145; Agency buildings, 171; photograph, 179, 257n118; political
124, 245n90; army scouts, 141–142; authority, 178–180; power, 181, 184;
civilian control over, 125, 129; climate, salary, 179; signature, 178, 179
122; copper mines, 125; creation, 121; scientific racism, 147–148
crime and punishment, 137, 138–139, Scott, Walter, 107; Waverly, 108
140; governance, 121, 136, 142–143; Scottish Enlightenment, 108
inhabitants, 122–123, 242n31; labor Second Anglo-Afghan War, 89, 91, 97, 185,
force, 243n50; legal regulations, 129, 192–193
132; map, 9, 122; police force, 127, 128, Shaka, King of the Zulu, 85–86, 88
137, 141–142, 243n54; relocations to, Shepstone, Theophilus: career, 84, 85,
124, 140–141; restorative justice, 138; 231n87; colonial affairs, 86–87, 88, 89;
“supreme court,” 138, 139–140; tribal education, 84; legacy, 84; Natal Code, 10;
breakouts from, 123, 141 title, 85; writings, 231n88
Sandeman, Robert Groves: career, 10, 23, Shepstone system: apartheid regime and, 86,
63, 126; comparison to Clum, 143–144; 89; creation, 84–85, 88; critique, 231n84,
278
Index
231n86, 232n94; economic effects, 61, 67; as replication of the FCR, 65–66,
87–88; Henry Pottinger and, 231n87 114; on tribal shaykhs, 67
Sherman, William T., 157 tribal militia, 22, 52–53, 54, 69–70, 71,
Sind frontier system, 99 230n81
Smith, Adam, 16 Tsarist Russia. See Russian Empire
South Africa: British rule, 10; Indian coolie Tupper, C. L., 36, 216n27; Indian Political
labor, 22. See also Natal colony Practice, 216n26
sovereign pluralism, 6, 19–20, 23, 149, 193 Turner, Frederick Jackson: on American
sovereignty, 19, 59, 148, 149, 201–202, frontier, 95, 100–101, 102, 113; on
211n19 American Indians, 110; on capitalism and
Special Districts Administration Ordinance civilization, 102; on Christianity, 102; on
(SDAO-Kenya), 78, 80, 81, 82, 82, cities and civilization, 237n43; on
89,114, 194 civilizational / savagery divide, 100–101;
Standing Bear v. Crook, 136, 212n25, reputation, 11; vision of the progress of
245n83 humanity, 110
states: development of modern, 16;
intrusion into individuals’ lives, 17. United States: Apache campaigns, 193;
See also colonial states birthright citizenship, 244n74; compar-
statistical sciences, 16, 17 ison to Argentine state, 148; vs. European
Sumner, E. V., 117 colonial empires, 149, 151; foreign policy,
suzerainty, 18–19 117; frontier governmentality, 205;
Homestead Acts, 251n48; Indian
Taft, William Howard, 205 relations, 112–113, 119, 130–131, 194,
Taliban terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196 196; Mexican border, 118; National
Third Anglo-Afghan War, 44, 215n11 Defense Authorization Act, 197; norms of
Tiffany, Joseph C., 246n97 governance, 151; peace policy, 119;
traditional society, 216n25. See also Henry reservation system, 11, 102. See also
Maine Dawes Severalty Act
TransJordan: Arab Legion, 70, 71; British United States v. Kagama, 136
rule, 227n30; mandatory government, 70; Unsettled Districts Ordinance, 75
replication of FCR, 84; Tribal Control Uriburu, Napoleon, 180
Board, 70, 71; tribal courts, 72, 227n32;
tribal governance, 70–71, 72, 84; tribal Victoria, Benjamin, 177
militia, 71. See also Glubb’s Desert Patrol Victorio’s War, 193
tribal areas in colonial India: banishment Villegas, Conrado, 178
of dangerous fanatics, 39; British
governance, 37; collective punishment, Wace, E. G., 50
38; military interventions, 36; Parlia- Warburton, Robert, 41, 222n100
mentary debate on independence of, War of the Triple Alliance, 158, 161
32–34, 35, 36; vs. princely states, 35–36. War on Terror, 112, 152, 196, 260n8
See also FATA Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 186
Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes White Mountain Apache, 123, 243n49
Regulation (TCCDR): abolition, 90, 194; Worcester v. Georgia, 131
on adultery, 68; amendments, 67;
authority, 71; on collective punishment, Zeballos, Estanisloa, 167, 177, 180, 252n58
67; development, 67–68; proclamation, Zulu kingdom, 88, 97
279

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ruling the savage periphery

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

Frontier Governance and the Making of

Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Introduction: The Edges of Authority 1

T he edges of ­today’s global po­liti­cal and economic order—­the world’s

The latent vio­lence of the world’s limits exploded in dramatic fashion,

The increasingly power­ful states of the time could conceivably deal

dif­fer­ent names that are still in use ­today—­reservations, native reserves,

authority.5 From the North-­West Frontier of British India, to the Northern

state-­centric order constructed at the time. And they continue to have

Map 1. ​The world, c. 1920. Circles indicate frontiers discussed.

by sinews into a discernable if not unitary ­whole, highlighting global cir­

Frontier governmentality facilitates a deeper understanding of the

T he nineteenth-­century world was a new world marked by rapid pro­

Frontier governmentality is composed of two distinct phenomena that

as the circumscribed assertion of that authority, often based on an assess-

enforce inimitability. The Eu­ro­pean imperial formations that sprouted in

authority, legible to its equals who themselves are similarly constituted.

colonial juridical sphere, the state exercised a rule of difference through

imperial economy. Pashtun railway workers in northwest India and far-

their in­de­pen­dence and authority through bureaucratic surveillance in the

r­evealed ­those edges to be blurred. State authority receded rather than

The practices developed and employed along the Afghan frontier in

N aqeebullah Mehsud’s body was handed over to his f­amily on Jan-

Waziristan in 2009, Naqeebullah joined the uncounted exodus of frontier

Map 2. ​North-­West Frontier Province, British India, c. 1909.

promise of colonial justice, however ephemeral, was intentionally fore-

To talk of tribal in­de­pen­dence is, I cannot help thinking, a ­little mis-

Lansdowne’s characterization of the tribesmen’s in­de­pen­dence as “quali-

in my dispatches more than once, but it is always explained by the words

imperial power could be channeled and to which l­imited powers could

Regulation refined this tribal judiciary, specifying a “Council of Elders”

hujras.46 Exclusion and banishment ­orders could include persons whom

while reinforcing it for other transgressions. Colonial ste­reo­types of

demands of British settlers elsewhere.62 While such concerns w ­ ere para-

British India considered them separate, sovereign, and, most importantly,

c­ ollective identities bounded by colonial understandings of culture. While

judicial venues through which to pursue their claims.86 Though clearly

If followed to its logical conclusion, Benton’s holding had the poten-

through other con­temporary administrative practices, such as the recruit-

Figure 2.1. ​Sir Robert Groves Sandeman. Frontispiece of A. L. P. Tucker, Sir

Taken as a w ­ hole, ­these practices of frontier governmentality rendered

system of tribal administration, frontier governmentality achieved its

British and Chinese spheres of influence.117 The Regulation was fi­nally

The FCR’s replication in similarly situated and similarly conditioned

agencies ­were in essence reservations.128 And such administrative arrange-

I n November 1923, shortly ­after Palestine had been made into a British

British Territory NEW

Map 3. ​British Empire, c. 1920.

“center-periphery,” which infused so much con­temporary understanding

replaced with the Bedouin Control Ordinance (1942).21 ­These ordinances

as opposed to colonial subjects, who w ­ ere eco­nom­ically dependent on,

mandatory Iraq, it was in fact a variation on a theme rather than a com-

against marauding Saudi tribes.38 He subjected the Bedouin to the rule of

What did unite the tribesmen of southern Palestine, TransJordan, and

­ hese courts ­were empowered to adjudicate as much business as pos­si­ble,

tribesmen’s “in­de­pen­dence”—­taken in its totality, it was a variant, rather

FCR substantively excluded the tribesmen from the jurisdiction of colo-

Map 4. ​Colonial ­Kenya, c. 1934.

As on the Afghan frontier, the un­regu­la­ted mobility of the frontier

The SDAO’s nearly identical replication of the FCR, on a geo­graph­i­

wage laborers in a colonial economy of vio­lence, but in position of priva-

T he edges of today’s global political and economic order—the world’s

The latent violence of the world’s limits exploded in dramatic fashion,

The increasingly powerful states of the time could conceivably deal

different names that are still in use today—reservations, native reserves,

authority.5 From the North-West Frontier of British India, to the Northern

state-centric order constructed at the time. And they continue to have

Map 1. The world, c. 1920. Circles indicate frontiers discussed.

by sinews into a discernable if not unitary whole, highlighting global cir

T he nineteenth-century world was a new world marked by rapid pro

enforce inimitability. The European imperial formations that sprouted in

their independence and authority through bureaucratic surveillance in the

revealed those edges to be blurred. State authority receded rather than

N aqeebullah Mehsud’s body was handed over to his family on Jan-

Map 2. North-West Frontier Province, British India, c. 1909.

To talk of tribal independence is, I cannot help thinking, a little mis-

Lansdowne’s characterization of the tribesmen’s independence as “quali-

imperial power could be channeled and to which limited powers could

hujras.46 Exclusion and banishment orders could include persons whom

while reinforcing it for other transgressions. Colonial stereotypes of

demands of British settlers elsewhere.62 While such concerns w ere para-

c ollective identities bounded by colonial understandings of culture. While

through other contemporary administrative practices, such as the recruit-

Figure 2.1. Sir Robert Groves Sandeman. Frontispiece of A. L. P. Tucker, Sir

Taken as a w hole, these practices of frontier governmentality rendered

British and Chinese spheres of influence.117 The Regulation was finally

agencies were in essence reservations.128 And such administrative arrange-

I n November 1923, shortly after Palestine had been made into a British

Map 3. British Empire, c. 1920.

“center-periphery,” which infused so much contemporary understanding

replaced with the Bedouin Control Ordinance (1942).21 These ordinances

as opposed to colonial subjects, who w ere economically dependent on,

hese courts were empowered to adjudicate as much business as possible,

tribesmen’s “independence”—taken in its totality, it was a variant, rather

Map 4. Colonial Kenya, c. 1934.

As on the Afghan frontier, the unregulated mobility of the frontier

The SDAO’s nearly identical replication of the FCR, on a geographi

wage laborers in a colonial economy of violence, but in position of priva-

old calumnies and misrepresentations of fact . . . [which led to] the

Afghanistan and South Africa stands as an exceptional example of the

Figure 4.2. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, c. 1873. Archivo General de la Nación

importantly the civilization they embodied—eventually won the day.51 But

proximity of urban life. Sarmiento wrote, “All civilization, w hether native,

to the natural advancement of history where they appeared. Theirs was

practices of administration, norms of governance, and violence of rule the

Nonetheless a remarkably coherent nexus of frontier governmentality si

Figure 5.1. Indian agent John P. Clum with Diablo and Eskiminzim, at San

Map 5. Arizona Territory, c. 1877.

convinced officials of their value.25 Unlike its short-lived neighbor, how-

Figure 5.2. San Carlos Agency buildings. Photograph by author.

Clyde Beauford, an ex-Confederate Virginian who had also served in the

one of the most important institutional structures of frontier governmen-

constitutional architecture. Foreign nations, the states of the union, and

the nineteenth c entury turned their perceived barbarism into a conse-

Map 6. Argentina, c. 1885.

e xpansion, including for strategies of management for native p eoples in the

difference once established, in pretense and practice, was a politically, ad-

of the periphery under the order of frontier governmentality by importing

productivity, and p eople. The insertion of Argentine state power would

e xpedition of 1879 resulted in the death of 1,313 armed indios, as well

was a human, as opposed to natural, phenomenon. Second, it made them

Figure 6.1. Cacique Manuel Namuncurá. No. 303589. Archivo General de la

Figure 6.2. Cacique Saygüeque. No. 289894. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc.

ppointed a lieutenant coronel with a monthly salary of 1,200 pesos and

Saygüeque’s claims to political participation were respected by both the

currents of racism, likewise the product of the time’s intellectual tumult.122

Many caciques were photographed over the course of their lives.127 As

Figure 6.3. Cacique Patagón Casimiro, c. 1866. No. 289897. Archivo General de la

Figure 6.4. La ocupación militar de Rio Negro, by Juan Manuel Blanes (1896).

with their continued recalcitrance, militated against direct capitalist ex-

Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), the Ar-

That history is not simply composed of incidents of a ctual violence,

Figure C.1. Morenci Copper Mine, Morenci, Arizona. Photograph by author.

of these spaces—actual and epistemic, state and social—compounds this