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OBJECTS AND FRONTIERS IN
MODERN ASIA
Focusing on the geographies between the Mekong and the Indus, this book brings
objects to the centre of enquiry in the understanding of modern Asian frontiers. It
explores how a range of objects have historically been significant bearers and agents
of frontier making. For instance, how are objects connected to aspects of state making,
social change, everyday life, diplomacy, political and ecological worlds, capital, forms of
violence, resistances, circulations, and aesthetic expressions?
This book seeks to interrogate and understand the dynamism of frontiers from the
vantage point of objects such as salt, rubber, tea, guns, silk scarves, horses, and opium. It
attempts to explore objects as sites of encounter, mediation, or dislocation between the
social and the spatial. The book not only locates objects in the specificities of frontier
spaces, but it also looks at how they are produced, circulated, and come to be intricately
linked to a wide range of people, institutions, networks, and geographies. In the process,
it explores how objects traverse and come to inhabit multiple historical, cultural, and
geographical scales.
This book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in areas of history,
social and cultural anthropology, Asian studies, frontiers and borderland studies, cultural
studies, political and economic studies, and museum studies.
Lipokmar Dzüvichü is Assistant Professor at Special Centre for the Study of North
East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. His research work covers
themes on frontiers and borderlands, transport, and labour history, including history of
commodities and circulation, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century North East
Frontier of British India.
Manjeet Baruah is Assistant Professor at Special Centre for the Study of North East
India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. His research areas include history
of space and text, translation and borderland, and history and culture of colonial resource
regimes in North East India. His published works include Frontier Cultures: A Social
History of Assamese Literature (2012) and a work of translation, Remains of Spring: A Naga
Village in the No Man’s Land (2016).
OBJECTS AND
FRONTIERS IN
MODERN ASIA
Between the Mekong and the Indus
Edited by
Lipokmar Dzüvichü and Manjeet Baruah
WITH AN AFTERWORD
BY GUNNEL CEDERLÖF
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Lipokmar Dzüvichü and Manjeet
Baruah; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Lipokmar Dzüvichü and Manjeet Baruah to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dzuvichu, Lipokmar, editor. | Baruah, Manjeet, editor. |
Cederlof, Gunnel, author of afterword.
Title: Objects and frontiers in modern Asia : between the Mekong and
the Indus / edited by Lipokmar Dzuvichu and Manjeet Baruah ; with
an afterword by Gunnel Cederlof.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059417 | ISBN 9781138616073 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780367205065 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429261909
(e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Mekong River Region—Civilization. | Indus
River Region—Civilization. | Material culture—Mekong River
Region—History. | Material culture—Indus River Region—History. |
Borderlands—Mekong River Region—History. | Borderlands—Indus
River Region—History. | Mekong River Region—Geography. |
Indus River Region—Geography.
Classification: LCC DS523.2 .O25 2019 | DDC 959—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059417
ISBN: 978-1-138-61607-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-20506-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26190-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Opu, and in memory of Otsii, Atsa, and Apfutsa
Lipokmar Dzüvichü
In memory of Deuta
Manjeet Baruah
CONTENTS
List of illustrations ix
Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: objects of frontiers 1

PART I
Commodities, resource frontiers, and state making 19
1 Trans-Indus salt: objects, resistance, and violence in

the North-West Frontier of British India 21
Sameetah Agha
2 ‘Objects’ of appropriations: locating material efficacies of

rubber in the northeastern resource frontier of British
India, 1810–1906 43
Aparajita Majumdar
3 Tibetan materiality versus British ‘Ornamentalism’:

diplomacy, objects, and resistance in the imperial archive 68
Emma Martin
viii Contents
PART II
Networks, things, and violence 91
4 From highlands to lowlands: the Pu’er tea trading network

and ethnic-group interactions in the frontier of Yunnan,
1662–1796 93
Kunbing Xiao
5 Embracing the black and white gold: the shift and continuity
of the core objects in the tropical Yunnan borderlands 109
Diana Zhidan Duan
6 Guns, gifts, and guerrillas: knowledge and objects during

World War II in the Indo–Myanmar (Burma) frontier 132
Aditya Kiran Kakati
PART III
Regions, cultures, and connections 155
7 A spot of enlightenment: tea as a fuel for connectivity

in Himalayan Buddhist cultures 157
Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa
8 Objects in the border poetry of Northeast India and

Southwest China 174
Mark Bender
Afterword: the f low of objects at the political

edges: a postscript 199
Gunnel Cederlöf
Bibliography 206
Index 225
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
1.1 Map of the Salt Range 26
2.1 A Borgach, about 120 feet high, growing in the forests of
the northeastern tracts of British India 48
2.2 Photograph depicting the method of tapping a rubber tree in
the northeast 57
3.1 The 9th Panchen Lama (seated) with his officials 72
3.2 The 9th Panchen Lama hosts the Prince of Wales and Viceroy
Minto (W.F.T. O’Connor stands behind the Lama as translator)
at Hastings House, Calcutta 77
3.3 Example of one of a pair of gya ling (Tib. rgya ling) 78
3.4 Detail from the lower section of a thangka of ‘Temples and
Monasteries of Lhasa’ 80
3.5 The 9th Panchen Lama’s palanquin and bearers waiting for the
lama as he descends the stairs of Government House 82
3.6 Detail of the 9th Panchen Lama leaving Government House 83
4.1 The geographical location of Sipsongpanna on Yunnan’s
southern border 96
4.2 Yunnan ethnic vertical distribution diagram 98
4.3 Ethnic stratification in Sipsongpanna (Qing dynasty) 101
6.1 An old gun kept prominently on display in Khonoma
village, Nagaland 139
Tables
1.1 Indus Preventive Establishment 30
1.2 Statement showing trade in salt in 1882–83, as compared with
1891–92, by Captain Deane, 1 July 1892 33
x Illustrations
1.3 Destination of the trade from the Kohat Salt Mines for
the years 1890–91 and 1891–92 36
4.1 Elevation and corresponding ethnic group distribution
in Sipsongpanna’s six great tea mountains 97
CONTRIBUTORS
Sameetah Agha is Associate Professor of Modern World History at Pratt Insti-

tute in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Her teaching and research areas include:
imperialism and colonialism, and military history with an emphasis on Central
and South Asia, and Afghanistan. Her book on the Pukhtun Revolt of 1897 in the
North-West Frontier of British India titled The Limits of Empire is forthcoming.
Mark Bender is Professor of Chinese Literature and Folklore at The Ohio State
University, USA. His research interests include oral traditional performance arts
of China, ethnic minority literature in China, and folklore in Asia.
Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia is originally from west Sikkim and completed his PhD
in Buddhist Studies at the University of Delhi, India. He is currently working on
an environmental history of Sikkimese Buddhism.
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Sweden.

She has taught at Uppsala University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Sweden. Her research focuses on environmental, legal and colonial history.
Diana Zhidan Duan was raised in Dali, Yunnan Province of China. She focuses
on the borderlands of China and mainland Southeast Asia, particularly in indig-
enous societies and economy, cross-border communities, and environmental
problems. She currently serves as Assistant Professor in History at Brigham
Young University–Provo, USA.
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and

Asian Studies at Occidental College in California, USA. She is the author of
xii Contributors
The Social Life of Tibetan Biography (2014) and numerous articles on Himalayan
religion, history, and culture.
Aditya Kiran Kakati completed his doctoral thesis titled Living on the Edge: How
encounters with global war (WWII) re-made the Indo-Burma frontiers into bordered-worlds
at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, in
the International History Department, with a minor in Anthropology and Soci-
ology. He had earlier worked on the ethnographic project for his MA, titled
Eating Ethnic Enclaves: cultural encounters in liminal spaces of eating in the context of
migrations from the Eastern Himalayan region, in 2013.
Aparajita Majumdar is a doctoral candidate at the History Department in Cor-

nell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. She completed her MPhil in Modern
History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi in 2017. Her PhD project at Cornell uses historical anthropology to
study the ‘living root bridges’ of Meghalaya [India].
Emma Martin is Senior Curator at the National Museums Liverpool and Lec-
turer in Museology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses
on object-led histories of empire, and specifically the British–Tibetan encounter
during the early twentieth century.
Kunbing Xiao is Associate Professor, Southwest Minzu University, Chengdu,

and CGA-ARC Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU Shanghai and Fudan University,
China. Her research interests include historical anthropology, sensory anthro-
pology and the global history of tea trade.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea behind this book, Objects and Frontiers in Modern Asia, emerged in one of
our many conversations at Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU). In trying to put
this idea into a book volume, we were very fortunate to find scholars with simi-
lar interests and who have worked extensively in this field, specialising in vari-
ous geographies of modern Asia. As such, the book has been an outcome of an
exciting collaborative attempt comprising scholars located in various institutions
globally. Needless to say, the making of this book took longer than its earlier
planned schedule. We would especially like to thank the contributors for believ-
ing in the project and for participating in this interesting academic collaborative
work. Without the support of the contributors, this book would not have been
possible. We would also specially like to thank Gunnel Cederlöf for agreeing to
write the Afterword to the book.
We would also like to acknowledge the support of various individuals and
institutions that have contributed in various ways during the making of the book.
Over the years, Jawaharlal Nehru University has provided a stimulating intellec-
tual environment which has made interactions with colleagues and researchers
always engaging and beneficial. We would like to thank our colleagues and
researchers at the Special Centre for the Study of North East India, JNU, for
their intellectual support and engagements over the years. We would also spe-
cially like to thank Shoma Choudhury at Routledge for her constant support
throughout the making of this book. We would also like to thank the anony-
mous reviewers for their critical comments, which have greatly contributed in
enriching the development of the book.
Finally, our parents, families, and friends have been a source of constant sup-
port and encouragement in our various academic endeavours. We thank them
all for constantly encouraging us and contributing to our academic works in
various ways.
INTRODUCTION
Objects of frontiers
Existing studies have highlighted that objects and frontiers have historically
shared complex and dynamic relations across diverse geographies, polities, forms
of usage, and representations. For example, one such case is that of the Vrindavani
Vastra. In his study of the seventeenth-century ‘Vrindavani Vastra’ textile, Rich-
ard Blurton underlined an exciting sphere of circulating objects that journeyed
from the Brahmaputra valley of Assam to the Buddhist monastery at Gobshi in
Tibet. As part of the collectibles acquired in the colonial Younghusband Expe-
dition to Tibet (1903–04), the textile later found a place in the British Museum
in London in 1905 ( Blurton 2016: 44–65), as ‘woven in designs of monsters and
charms’ ( Blurton 2016: 53). In the course of these journeys across time, space, and
societies, the meaning that the textile acquired also continued to change.1 The his-
tory of the journey of the cloth also highlighted the changing relations between
the cloth and its spatial contexts. For example, one may pose the question of when
does the relation between the cloth and its social-spatial context begin to acquire
the character of ‘objects and frontiers.’ The precolonial archive in Assam did not
indicate that Assam, Tibet, Bhutan or their relations were conceptualised in terms
of ‘frontier.’2 In other words, was it the formation of imperial ‘frontiers’ of British
India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the very military expedition
itself under Francis Younghusband to ‘open up’ Tibet to trade and establish colo-
nial political presence, which now provided the cloth with a new layer of meaning,
namely that of objects acquired from the frontier? Tibet by then had emerged as
the new ‘frontier’ of the ‘Great Game,’ and reports of Russian intrigues over the
Himalayas, including the role of imperial China, had spurred the British govern-
ment to strategically push for urgent measures to bring Tibet under its sphere of
inf luence (Lamb 1959: 46–65, 1964; Guyot-Rechard 2017: 31–57).
Further, circulations of objects were also linked to human agents. For exam-
ple, the specific person who was associated with the cloth’s acquisition was the
2 Lipokmar Dzüvichü and Manjeet Baruah
newspaper correspondent Perceval Landon. He was a member of the Expedition

and was tasked with not only reporting on the Expedition, but also with col-
lecting materials for the British Museum (Carrington 2003: 92). His association
with the history of the cloth and its characterisation added another interesting
historical aspect to the process. It showed how the Raj encompassed a range of
people, professionals, classes, and intermediaries, both from the metropole and
the imperial ‘peripheries,’ and the role they played in the construction of mul-
tiple, and often nuanced, relations between objects and formulations of space.
In fact, these constructs of relation then found their way into numerous repre-
sentations. For instance, the depth and peculiarity of such relations were evi-
dent in none other than Rudyard Kipling’s obituary poem for Landon ( Kipling
1927 ), in which Landon was projected as the friend who used to narrate to him
exotic ‘tales of far magic unrolled’ and showed to him its fabled objects ( Blurton
2016: 56). Earlier, in 1905, Landon himself had written of the Tibetan collec-
tions as,
These pictures often leave much to be desired on the score of propriety. It

is one of the things which must be taken into consideration with regard to
Lamaism that decency forms no part of it whatever. Immoral the Tibetan
religion certainly is not, but to Western eyes its manifestations often
assume the strangest shape.
(Landon 1905: 205)
Thus, perhaps it was such prevailing imageries mediated through various indi-
viduals and institutions that provided the cloth with multiple meanings and
representations. Besides, as recent studies have further noted, objects, though
‘looted’ during the Expedition, were nevertheless framed within the discourses
of ‘moral empire,’ or of imperial mapping of unmapped frontiers that allowed
bringing such areas into the sphere of knowledge (Carrington 2003). Yet, as such
studies have also pointed out, these discourses were merely the myths to disguise
the violent imperial ‘scramble’ for territory, surveillance, and objects.
The example of the Vrindavani Vastra not only illustrates how objects have
long and rich historical lives with layered significances, but also how they share
complex relations with both ideas and productions of space, such as frontiers. A
focus on objects such as the Vrindavani Vastra also shows the entangled role of
various institutions, actors, and networks in the circulation of objects from the
imperial fringes to the metropole. In fact, in the course of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, various other objects of significance, as well as of every-
day use, which circulated to the imperial metropoles can be historically traced
to various geographies in modern Asia that were being produced during these
periods as ‘frontiers.’ But interestingly, access to these objects not only took
imperial states and their agents to the frontiers, but also introduced societies and
polities in the frontiers to the imperial state through various circuits and con-
duits of exchange. A range of objects from other wider geographic locations and
Introduction 3
exchange networks also circulated among societies and polities in the frontier,
and more especially along with the coming of empire. In the process, objects
have historically constituted and shaped the socio-cultural, economic, ecologi-
cal, and political worlds of states, societies, and frontier spaces of modern Asia.
As such, they can also creatively contribute ‘to develop intersecting narratives of
the past, some of them local and comparative, other cross-cultural, transnational,
and global.’3 Objects are further linked to processes of violence, state making,
mobilities, forms of knowledge, practices of exploration and collecting, everyday
life, production of space, commodities, etc. For example, some of the objects that
are examined in this volume include, salt, rubber, tea, guns, silk scarves, horses,
opium, etc. In this regard, this volume is an attempt at exploring some of the
ways in which objects connect histories of geographies, states, people, and their
range of experiences, and how in the process they come to play a crucial role in
formulating and defining ideas of frontiers.
But then how does one understand frontiers? How are they produced and
sustained? The idea of frontiers has historically constituted important elements
of state making or empire building. This has been an important characteristic
of the modern Asian frontiers. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the production of frontier spaces was shaped by a variety of processes, such as
imperial expansion; relations of power; knowledge production practices such
as travels, surveys, mapping, explorations, forms of writings, violence, imperial
rivalries and policies, diplomacy, war, treaties, migration, search for resources,
strategic boundaries, and ideas of space, etc.4 It was in the unfolding of these
complex processes and interactions that one can locate the making of ‘modern’
frontiers in Asia.5 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the geographi-
cal spaces across Asia, as such, saw the production of a range of frontiers, which
were closely linked with processes of empire making. For instance, frontier mak-
ing was a complex and significant enterprise for colonial empires over the geo-
graphical spaces characterised in recent scholarships as ‘Zomia’ or highland Asia
(van Schendel 2002: 647–668; Scott 2010). Such complex processes of frontier
making were also visible with regard to the North-West Frontier of British India,
ranging from ‘schemes to open up the Indus River for large-scale commercial
navigation’ in the first half of the nineteenth century to imperialism through
fiscal policies with regard to Afghanistan after the Second Anglo-Afghan war
(1878–80) (Hanifi 2004: 201). Various forms of societies and polities that char-
acterised these complex geographies, including their territories, were, however,
significantly reordered as a result of the encounter with the imperial state. These
geographies subsequently came to represent the periphery or limits of imperial
authority. In the process, the idea of frontiers came to signify ‘marginal’ spaces,
located at the edges of empires or imperial domains.
Frontiers are, however, not just one distinct physical space. In fact, there
are various types of frontiers, such as religious, cultural, linguistic, political,
natural, and artificial frontiers, which are often characterised by overlapping
social or political spaces ( Eaton 1993; van Schendel and Baud 1997: 211–241).
Frontiers are also not mere physical barriers in the politics of states or sites of
violent conf licts. On the contrary, they are spaces that are often character-
ised by complex interactions and cultural exchanges between various social
and political groups ( Ludden 2003: 1–54; Kreutzmann 2008: 201–219; Zutshi
2010: 594–608). This in turn has shaped the dynamic nature of social and
political relations in the frontiers as ‘marginal’ areas. It is also this dynamic
nature that makes frontiers f luid and ambiguous, thereby making definitions of
state boundaries f lawed or unworkable (van Schendel 2004; Tagliacozzo 2009).
Yet, interestingly, such notions of ambiguity have nevertheless allowed states to
justify the deployment of exceptional policies in frontier spaces. These various
approaches or perspectives have made important interventions in understand-
ing the complex nature of frontier making and the multiple ways in which
frontiers are historically produced, contested, or sustained. Thus, frontiers are
not static, essential spatial categories. They are produced at certain histori-
cal moments and therefore undergo temporal transformations. For example,
between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial frontiers such
as the Northeast frontier of British India, the Kachin Hills, Chittagong, the
Himalayan frontiers, the Yunnan frontiers, etc., underwent different phases of
frontier making in terms of changing state policies and regulations, competing
imperial interests, resource regimes, infrastructure processes, or responses of
the local societies and polities to such practices. Thus, frontiers are continu-
ously reshaped by the changing political contexts or undermined by a variety
of people who constantly move across the state-constructed frontiers in pursuit
of various interests and ideas of space ( Ishikawa 2010).
In contrast to these important studies, very few works have tried to explore
the significance of objects and their relations to frontiers. Nevertheless, there
exist important studies that have examined objects through the lens of mate-
rial culture, including their social or historical significances. For instance, in
his work on the material culture and exchange systems in the Pacific, Nicholas
Thomas has pointed out the ‘entangled’ nature of objects and how the value of
commodities are embedded in the forms of exchange rather than in the specific
objects themselves ( Thomas 1991). Maya Jasanoff, in her study of the imperial
collectors in late eighteenth-century India, pointed out as to how,
Viewing collecting as a practice stretching from individual figures to the

imperial state lets us join together two genres of imperial history: one
chief ly concerned with the macrohistorical, impersonal forces of econom-
ics and geopolitics; and another, newer literature investigating imperialism
through discourse, centred on culture, language and systems of knowledge
and power.
( Jasanoff 2004: 134)
Jasanoff further argues how such a view, ‘also helps bring out the nuances in the
relationship between Britain, continental Europe and empire across this period’
Introduction 5
(ibid.). In another important study on colonial collecting and display in the Anda-
man and Nicobar Islands, Claire Wintle argues how ‘the study of objects has the
potential to produce insights into the lives of those peoples who are excluded
from [the] modes of representation’ (Wintle 2013: 3; also see Pearce 2003). Win-
tle’s study points out how through the objects collected in the museum it is
possible to ‘gain insight into how indigenous groups reinvented their material
cultures both physically and conceptually for a foreign trading market’ (Wintle
2013: 8). Arjun Appadurai has pointed out that ‘things’ or commodities have
‘social life’ which is mediated through the various forms of social and histori-
cal contexts of exchange (Appadurai 1986). An important question that scholars
have tried to engage with has been, from where do objects draw their lives?
Are they drawn from the social world of the objects, or do objects themselves,
through their distinct natures, lend social character to the given context? For
example, scholars like Bruno Latour or Jane Bennett point out that objects need
to be considered as ‘actants’; that is, they are themselves sources of action and
can also provide meaning to the social world, rather than deriving their mean-
ings from it ( Latour 2005; Bennett 2010). Eric Muegller points out how in the
early twentieth century paper-based objects such as manuscripts, maps, sketches,
etc., as well as technological objects, such as the camera and phonograph, were
powerful actors or mediators in the politics of empire and botanical explorations
in Yunnan and Tibet. The nature and availability of these objects not only con-
ditioned the complex relations between the imperial plant hunters, local collec-
tors, colonial officials, ‘bandits’ and ‘warlords,’ and the rural societies of Yunnan
during the period, but that these objects/tools also gave socio-political meaning
to the very science of botanical explorations (Muegller 2011).
The range of these works has broadened our conceptual understanding on the
complex relationships between objects and societies and the processes through
which objects assume meaning and significance not only through the mediation
of various actors, sites, and institutions, but also through their own complex
agencies. In some of these studies, what also interestingly emerges is that many
of the objects of analysis are traced to various frontier geographies. This is an
important area of enquiry, which is often overlooked, and as such has not been
explored enough. In fact, apart from ‘exotic’ objects for colonial collection and
displays, there were also various objects of profit, such as forest and mineral
resources, which drew the attention of states to the frontiers (Longmuir 2000:
17–48; Lintner 2011). Thus, in the processes of expropriating frontier objects, the
relations of power between capital and state also came to play an important role.
Such lines of enquiry also bring one to the question of how relations between
objects and frontiers can provide a more nuanced understanding of the multiple
histories of modern Asia, especially since the nineteenth century.
Historically, frontier spaces have been witness to the circulation of a wide
range of objects. In turn, these objects have not only contributed to, but have also
mediated in processes of frontier making. The nature and meaning of objects that
have moved both within and across the frontiers have been complex and varied.
In fact, objects are often layered with multiple histories that transcend and reach
deep into the social, economic, and political relations. Further, objects have also
circulated through various means, such as barter, trade, pillage, gifts, expropria-
tion, etc. These objects could range from those of everyday use to those of social,
cultural, and political significance. In addition, objects such as plants and species
ferreted from frontier regions could also become significant and integral aspects
of the metropolitan landscapes. For instance, Eric Mueggler in his fascinating
study shows how plants and species collected from the Burma–Yunnan frontier
‘transformed the garden landscapes of the British Isles’ (Muegller 2011: 20). At
the same time, such processes in general also highlight questions such as those of
‘plant capitalism’ and its aesthetic practices (Arnold 2008: 917–921). This book
seeks to enquire into some of these aspects of relations between objects and the
frontiers between the Mekong and the Indus.
Through a range of studies and approaches, scholars have explored the impor-
tance of objects and their relations to societies in the frontier. For instance,
studies have underlined how objects are ‘culturally’ or ‘socially’ entangled or
embedded elements, and how objects have enduring significance for societies
and polities in the frontiers ( Blackburn 2003/2004: 15–60; also see Buragohain
2016).6 The desire for accessing objects of profit has also constituted important
impetus for imperial states to ‘tame’ wild frontiers, and in the process draw
these spaces within the frames of capital (Kar 2009: 131–150; Sharma 2011; Ellis,
Coulton and Mauger 2016). Further, the f low of ‘unwanted’ objects across fron-
tier spaces could also threaten state orders, whether imperial or post-colonial,
as well as become important sites for resisting state power ( Tagliacozzo 2009;
Chouvy 2009, 2013; Goodhand 2005: 191–216). Exploring the significant rela-
tions between objects and the making of frontiers has however remained an
understudied subject. In fact, it is only in recent times that scholars have begun
to explore the theme of frontiers and objects and the dynamic relations that pro-
vide meaning to both objects and their spatial contexts as an important subject
of enquiry (Zutshi 2009: 420–440; Dzüvichü, Forthcoming). A focus on the
objects and frontiers also shows how a range of objects circulated and were made
available both locally and globally through various networks. They were moved
along through different land, riverine, and oceanic routes. The movement of
these objects was in turn facilitated by both human and non-human transport
networks, such as labour regimes, elephants, ponies, bullocks, boats and steam-
ers, vehicles, ships, etc. One point that emerges from these studies is how objects,
rather than being mimetic repositories of socio-political, cultural, or economic
contexts, themselves play a dynamic role in the making of these processes in
their given spatial contexts. This then raises a number of questions, such as: How
can these processes be understood by situating them in the context of frontier
making, especially pertaining to the diverse frontiers between the Mekong and
the Indus? Do such relations between objects and forms of space allow for an
understanding of the complex processes of historical change that these frontiers
themselves experienced? Keeping these concerns in mind, one of the aims of
Introduction 7
this volume is to foreground the significance of objects in the wider historical

processes of spatial constructs.
This study argues that the frontiers and borderlands that straddle the diverse
geographies between the Mekong and the Indus, when viewed from the van-
tage position of objects themselves, allows one to revisit the dominant colo-
nial or nationalist scholarships on these regions, and their projections of society
and space. For example, if objects comprised an important point of encounter
between imperialism and the making of ‘modern’ imperial frontiers on the one
hand, and the societies historically inhabiting these regions and negotiating the
new experiences of frontiers on the other hand, then both the factors also par-
ticipated in providing the objects with networks and topographies of circulation
which transgressed their respective cartographic or social imaginations of space.
This continued into the post-colonial contexts of the new nation-states, too.
In practice, what it meant was a process in which the production and subver-
sion of borders existed simultaneously in order to navigate the logics of objects
in motion and use. Thereby, the networks and topographies of such circula-
tions became bearers of political and cultural meanings that both constituted
the nature of space as frontiers, whether imperial or those of the post-colonial
nation-states, and also subverted the construct of such spaces.
This peculiarity came to constitute an important dimension of the lived real-
ity of objects. Thus, for example, if objects could be deemed as ‘dangerous’ or
‘contraband’ on the one hand, at the same time their very modes of circula-
tion were perpetuated in order to construct and practice regimes of ‘frontiers’
and ‘borderlands’ in these regions. Formulations such as illegal–licit paradoxes
became attempts at both negotiating with as well as acknowledging such com-
plex crowded realities of these regions ( Tagliacozzo 2004: 354–377; also see, van
Schendel and Itty 2005). But what produces such peculiarity? Is it connected to
how relations develop or are historically constituted between given natures of
space and objects? Can some of these fascinating themes and concerns be further
explored, and in the process contribute towards a more nuanced analysis of the
centrality of frontiers and their material worlds in the very understanding of
modern Asia, and its global processes?
It needs to be pointed out here that the geographies located between the
Mekong and the Indus comprise a variety of societies, polities, and terrains often
far removed from each other, and each having undergone complex and distinct
historical experiences at different points of time. As such, the book also takes
into consideration the multiple trajectories of histories and geographies between
the Mekong and the Indus. Having said that, recent studies have explored how
the diverse geographies that straddle the frontiers and borderlands between the
Mekong and the Indus river systems can be seen as a series of interconnected
spaces (Saikia 1997, 2004; Christian 2000: 1–26; Tana 2002: 67–86; Yang 2004:
281–322; Chatterjee 2013; Ramirez 2014; also see, Guha 2015: 1–34). Focus-
sing broadly on the precolonial period, these studies have in fact noted that the
regions spanning from northern Thailand, through northern or coastal Burma,
southwestern China, Northeast India, the Himalayan borderlands of the Indus,

Nepal, Tibet, and down till the Bay of Bengal comprised an immense mapping
of precolonial geographical networks marked with circulation of people, objects,
ideas and myths, and range of practices, not to mention military invasions and
the mobilities that they engender. This mapping has been seen in terms of con-
cepts such as sacred geography, trade, migration or crossroads (ibid ). One of the
interesting dimensions of such mapping, as it emerges from the studies, was the
critical significance of different kinds of objects which materially marked these
spatial inter-connections.
However, especially since the nineteenth century, and until the twentieth
century, the nature of such mapping began to change due to the twin impact
of capital and colonial empire making. The framework that increasingly came
to be applied in this regard was that of frontier and borderland. A survey of
the colonial archive of the period highlights how these wide swathes of regions
between the Mekong and the Indus were seen as the frontiers and borderlands
which held the key to linking the expansion of imperial states and capital terri-
torially.7 It is true that the colonial archive acknowledged the distinctions among
these regions, though generally described them through broad brush strokes of
being ‘savage,’ ‘untamed,’ or ‘unknown.’ Yet, the archive also highlights on the
imperial ideas and practices aimed at interconnecting them through land routes
as well as a series of communication projects,8 but as part of a larger production
of ‘geography of capitalism.’9 Further, and ironically, it was the past of these
regions as part of older trade or migration geographies which was often invoked
to justify the aims of capital and empire while producing such new mapping in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.10
In such processes, objects occupied interesting roles in underlining the con-
structed nature of different spaces, as well as their interconnections. For example,
the steamer-barges, which were named Assam and Naga, and were commissioned
by the Assam Company (the first tea company of India) in 1842 for the purposes
of ‘opening’ up the colonial eastern ‘frontier’ of British India to the global com-
modity of tea, and interlinking it to the imperial metropole of Calcutta, devel-
oped into different trajectories in a few years’ time. Thus, between 1842 and
1844, the steamer-barges plied on the Brahmaputra. But by 1844, rather than
plying on the Brahmaputra or its tributaries in transporting goods, people, bul-
lion, and tea chests (i.e., dimensions of the tea world), they began to be deployed
in serving other imperial centres such as Calcutta and Allahabad on the Ganges,
carrying government or military officials, besides goods, and often becoming
the sites of litigation and negotiations between rival trading agencies and colo-
nial steamer companies, whether based in London or Calcutta (Antrobus 1957:
358–367).
This transition in their location showed how the context of empire and capi-
tal relocated their history from ‘opening’ up the eastern ‘frontiers’ bordering
Burma and China to the emerging commerce of ‘inland waterways’ in colonial
northern India. What the history of the steamer-barges highlights is how objects
Introduction 9
lived interesting variegated histories wherein they both inhabited as well as tran-
scended the confines of forms of spaces during the period. But what produced
such possibilities? One could explore whether, while the relationship between
imperialism and ‘geography of capitalism’ created the conditions of such possibil-
ities, was it their very nature as technological objects of commerce, governance,
and transport that navigated through real nature (i.e., rivers) which fulfilled the
conditions, thereby providing them the mobility across specific forms of space.
But in such a case, it also highlighted how by dint of being objects of use and
motion, they made visible the underlying rationales which produced multiple
forms of space, but territorially interlinked for the purposes of empire and capi-
tal. Further, was it also an illustration of how ‘frontiers’ and ‘borderlands’ were
not about being liminal spaces to state or capital, or a world unto itself, but part
of the very nature of the ‘modern’ space realised through reconfiguring of dif-
ferent geographies of the world?
One of the most visible forms of such realities actualised in a culminating scale
was the linking of the Chittagong coast and Assam to Yunnan through northern
Burma in terms of networks of routes and river transport, railways, roadways
(Ledo or Stilwell Road–Burma Road), oil pipelines, and finally airways (over
the ‘hump’ till Chungking in Sichuan) between 1942 and 1945.11 It represented
a point of convergence of capital, objects and resources, imperialism and its War,
and mobilising of numerous different societies inhabiting the area into a grid of
military–economic spatial order.12 Geographically speaking, it comprised the
trans-Brahmaputra valley (eventually connected to the Bay of Bengal through
Calcutta and Chittagong), the Kachin hills and the upper Irrawaddy areas, and
the corridors of the Yangtze, Mekong, and Salween rivers. What was interesting
of the entire exercise was that the grid thus produced interconnected regions
which were otherwise termed in colonial parlance as ‘frontiers’ and ‘border-
lands’ inhabiting their insular and isolated remoteness. Notably, this military–
economic spatial order of Bengal, Assam, Burma, and China emerging from
the War also bore resemblances to the precolonial contours of sacred, trade, or
migration geographies, though now recast in an entirely different meaning, and
accompanied by the force of dizzying violence of the War. Perhaps the irony of
this very underlying transformation came out inadvertently in the imperial plant
hunter Francis Kingdon-Ward’s remark during his botanical explorations in the
mountain of Sirhoi Kashong (Ukhrul, along Indo–Burma borders) immediately
after the War, when he wrote,
At least I had proved that Sirhoi was worth exploring for plants, both deco-
rative and otherwise. There were also the white f lowered Rhododendron
(of which I failed to get seed), and other shrubs. Is it surprising that when I
had finished searching for the graves of the airmen, and finding by the way
the corpses of many plants, I should wish to be present at the next resur-
rection, to see what they looked like?
(Kingdon-Ward 1952: 15)
Thus, one is left with a situation wherein with regard to these Asian frontiers
between the Mekong and the Indus, while the archives of the imperial states or
those of the emerging post-colonial nation-states were marked by the visibility
of objects, people, communication lines, and ideologies along these intercon-
nections, a range of discourses of the times on these regions yet thought of them
as ‘remote corners’ generally inhabited by scant populations of insular societ-
ies located along the borders of countries such as India, Burma, and China. In
turn, such contradictions often got read into the projections of the societies of
these regions through frameworks such as ‘disorder,’ ‘secession,’ ‘backward,’ etc.,
especially while reading and at the same time reducing how these societies were
negotiating with or appropriating these realities in their spatial formulations of
reality and resistances. Further, it is also at such junctures that objects also emerge
as important sites and medium of numerous forms of negotiations and appropria-
tions. For example, the material remains of the Second World War, comprising
an immense range, such as canned food, oil pipes, firearms, radio transmitters,
metal parts of different machines, motor vehicles, remains of crashed aeroplanes,
parachutes, etc., were appropriated by the multiple societies of these regions to
pursue diverse everyday practices, as well as different ideologies and practices of
social-political rebuilding. Then do such histories of relation between objects
and societies also illustrate the ‘dangerous’ material moments when peoples of
frontier regions attempted to resist or reformulate the ‘world orders’ or the post-
colonial ‘national orders’ of the times by precisely identifying the problems of
their location in such spaces? In the process, do such changing forms of inter-
connectedness in precolonial, colonial and post-colonial times also highlight
how mapping interconnectedness itself can be historicised in order to understand
the nature and meaning of change that relations between regions, societies, and
objects experienced at specific historical junctures?
The themes discussed above, however, are not a comprehensive review of
works, but are primarily aimed to highlight some of the broad contours of issues
and concerns that have engaged researchers working on frontiers in modern
Asia, and which are of relevance to this study. The realities of these geographical
orders produced between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to
reverberate even in the contemporary times. Boundaries and their f luidities, or
the production and subversion of frontiers that were part of the history of these
spatial constructs continue even today. And importantly, they continue to be
marked as it was until the earlier century by processes of circulation filled with
objects and people and comprising their lived realities. Further, such realities
continue to be shaped, as in the preceding centuries, by the makings of state, the
presence of capital and the practices and struggles of people in their understand-
ings of alternative forms of spatial orders.
The chapters in this volume not only engage with the general context of these
issues. Through specific examples, the chapters also aim to broaden the discus-
sion on incorporation of a range of objects and their relation to the frontiers in
modern Asia. Thus, objects ranging from everyday use to those such as means of
Introduction 11
diplomatic, economic, or relations of war are discussed in the volume. Further,

occurrences of objects in cultural imaginations and representations are also stud-
ied in the volume. In this regard, each of the chapters is distinct in terms of its
thematic focus and approach, and as such, conveys the views of the contributors
on their specific research areas. The book is divided into three parts: (1) ‘Com-
modities, Resource Frontiers, and State Making’; (2) ‘Networks, Things, and
Violence’; and (3) ‘Regions, Cultures, and Connections.’
In Part I, the chapters engage with the symbolic or practical place of objects in
state-making practices, as well as the role of objects in the production of the insti-
tutionalised peripheries. As such, they also lend interesting insights into under-
standing the complex relations that connect objects to a variety of processes,
ranging from aspects such as resource appropriation, global capital, politics of
resistance, and practices of diplomacy. For example, focussing on the trans-Indus
salt trade in British India, Sameetah Agha’s chapter, ‘Trans-Indus Salt: Objects,
Resistance and Violence in North-West Frontier of British India,’ highlights
how control over the trans-Indus salt mines and its salt trade significantly shaped
colonial state-making practices in the region. She also shows that socio-cultural
constructs of the ‘tribes’ in the region, which continue to have reverberations
even today, were part of discursive representations of the colonial state vis-à-vis
those which put up fierce resistance against the expanding imperial boundaries
and spheres. Aparajita Majumdar, in her chapter, ‘“Objects” of Appropriations:
Locating Material Efficacies of Rubber in the Northeastern Resource Frontier
of British India, 1810–1906,’ brings out how rubber transformed into an object
of capital and empire in the nineteenth century. A key point to which she draws
attention to is how the ecological context of the rubber trees was critical to its
nature of transformation as a commodity. Further, the chapter also highlights
how the relation between ecology and capital, manifest in rubber as commodity,
was closely linked to the production of spatial constructs, such as the imperial
‘frontier.’ In the chapter ‘Tibetan Materiality versus British ‘Ornamentalism’:
Diplomacy, Objects, and Resistance in the Imperial Archive,’ Emma Martin
illustrates not only how objects played an important role in the performance of
colonial political relations (such as ceremonies of diplomacies), but also directs
attention to the deeper questions of reading the colonial archive ethnographi-
cally. In this regard, she points out that the relations between objects and diplo-
macy illustrates the important part which performance of politics played in
imperial politics. But she notes that a focus on the objects themselves through
which the performance of power and etiquette was orchestrated indicates how
the archive itself came to be culturally constituted.
In Part II, the chapters illustrate how objects help in understanding histo-
ries of interactions, negotiations, and social transformations that unfolded at vari-
ous historical conjunctures. Covering geographies between the Yunnan and the
Indo-Myanmar frontiers, the chapters highlight the various networks through
which objects circulated among the societies and became embedded in the social-
cultural, economic, and political worlds. The chapters show how objects as
tools or instruments of culture are central to social transformations of frontiers.

They also examine how objects and polities in the frontiers are interrelated and
reproduce the characteristics of their given historical geography. In the process,
the chapters show how objects are closely linked to people, state, and societies,
including events, such as war, as well as to forms of violence. For example, in
her chapter, ‘From Highlands to Lowlands: The Pu’er Tea Trading Network and
Ethnic-Group Interactions in the Southern Yunnan Borderlands, 1662–1796,’
Kunbing Xiao analyses the making of the Pu’er tea trade in terms of the role
played by Han Chinese migrants, the Tai-Lue, and other ethnic minorities. She
argues that ‘the disparity among above-mentioned ethnic groups in the aspects
of environmental adoption, social structure, language, and religion, happened to
complement each other.’ This in turn produced conditions of socio-economic
geography wherein ‘highland and lowland ethnic groups must cooperate in order
to achieve the stability of the trade network of Pu’er tea.’ Diana Zhidan Duan,
in her chapter, ‘Embracing the Black and White Gold: The Shift and Continuity
of the Core Objects in the Tropical Yunnan Borderlands,’ focuses on the two
objects of opium and rubber. In her chapter, Duan ‘discusses the shift and conti-
nuity of the core objects that have accompanied the social and economic changes
of the indigenous populations along the tropical borderlands of Yunnan from the
late nineteenth century to the present.’ Exploring the distinction between ‘core
objects’ and ‘objects in mind,’ she points out the dynamic relation between the two
categories of objects, and how their study can highlight dimensions of the region
and its society, which stands in contrast to the general projection of the Yunnan
borderlands. In ‘Guns, Gifts, and Guerrillas: Knowledge and Objects During
World War II in the Indo–Myanmar (Burma) Frontier,’ Aditya Kiran Kakati’s
analysis of guns in the given spatial context emphasises how objects can become
important sites of negotiating relations of power between the imperial state and
the colonised societies. In this regard, it was both the nature of area and its ter-
rain, as well as the moment of the Second World War, which created conditions
of this negotiation. In the process, objects and their circulations became encoded
with multiple meanings of power and its extent, as well as the contestations
around it.
The chapters in Part III deal with the place of objects in utility or value sys-
tems of societies, and how the dynamic nature of social organisation in frontiers
can be concretely understood through the study of objects as cultural artefacts,
and their relation to the representation of frontiers. The chapters explore how on
the one hand, the circulatory processes of exchange embed objects with mean-
ings, while on the other hand objects through their mobility embed the circula-
tory processes themselves with spatial characteristics of frontiers. Further, besides
being bearers of identity and worldview, the chapters also show how objects play
a key role in understanding the shift in scales, both temporal and spatial, includ-
ing the imaginations of cultural geography, and the everyday relations between
societies and ecologies. Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa,
in their chapter, ‘A Spot of Enlightenment: Tea as a Fuel for Connectivity in
Introduction 13
Himalayan Buddhist Cultures,’ highlights the changing trajectories of historical

trade and caravan routes, and the place of objects in such changes. The histori-
cal Tea Horse Road connected southwestern China with the Himalayan worlds
of Tibet, Sikkim, and Nepal. What their chapter highlights is how as a result of
the cartographic interventions of the nation-states and the transformative role of
new modes of transport, the Tea Horse Road underwent major shifts of trade
and cultural relations in the second half of the twentieth century. Mark Bender,
in his chapter, ‘Objects in the Border Poetry of Northeast India and Southwest
China,’ explores how the materiality of things figure in the aesthetics of liter-
ary constructs. He points out that the relation between things and the literary
works underline how cultural imaginations are rooted in the materiality of life.
As a result, the various ruptures and disjuncture that societies undergo as part
transformations of ‘tradition’ into ‘modernity’ also enter into the complexity of
literary imaginations, such as in the case of poetry produced in societies spanning
from between Southwest China to Northeast India.
As indicated above, one of the points running through the chapters of the
book is that the study of objects is not only in terms of their conscious articula-
tion of the historical geography of frontiers, but also how one can delineate the
characteristics of frontier in the nature and role of objects, too. In the process,
the voice of an object is seen not only articulating its peculiarities, but also bear-
ing the inscription of the context of frontier. Thus, besides highlighting the
significance of the specific objects in the wider processes of historical and socio-
cultural developments, the chapters in the book also provide interesting insights
into the mapping of frontiers and borderlands. They bring out the multiple tra-
jectories of relations that cut across the regions, their societies, and imperial and
post-colonial state practices. We hope that this volume adds to the increasingly
expanding body of new studies on the frontiers and borderlands of modern Asia
in general, through a special focus on objects and frontiers between the Mekong
and the Indus.
Notes
1 For instance, between 1905 and 1992, the cloth was listed in the British Museum as part
of the ‘objects from Tibet.’ However, in 1992, museum curators in London pointed out
that the textile could be traced to Assam. As such, the meaning of the textile further
underwent the change from being the ‘ceiling cloth’ from Tibet to being the ‘Vrindavani
Vastra.’ See Blurton (2016: 53–55).
2 In the collection of Ahom chronicles put together by Suryya Kumar Bhuyan, which also
contained Kashinath Barua’s buranji chronicle, dated 1806, the relations are described as
between independent kingdoms. See Bhuyan (1990 [1932]: 147–148). For an analysis of
such relations with Burma, also see Saikia (1997: 173–218).
3 Findlen (2012: 6).
4 For example, Thomas Holdich, one of the most important imperial geographers, pro-
vided detailed accounts of imperial perspectives on frontier making. See Holdich (1916).
5 Scholars have pointed out that ‘frontiers,’ ‘borders,’ and ‘borderlands’ conceptually denote
different meanings and understandings. While frontiers generally refer to the ‘zones’ or
areas located at the edges of states or empires, borders refer to lines that separate one
political territory from another, and borderlands are primarily spaces which lie between
the state-demarcated territories. However, for the purposes of this study, we draw upon
Reed L. Wadley’s work, where the term ‘frontier’ is used ‘in its multiple means as (1) a
zone between states, (2) an area physically separate from state cores and, (3) a zone
between settled and unsettled.’ See Wadley (2001: 624); also see Prescott (2015 [1965],
2015 [1987]).
6 Buragohain’s account was a travelogue published in 1945 in Assamese. He was a trader
in cloth and utensils, and travelled extensively in Burma and Yunnan between 1933 and
1942 as a trader, besides collecting information on Tai-Ahom and Assamese manuscripts
which were in use, especially in Burma.
7 For example, see Buchanan-Hamilton (1963 [1809]), Chevalier (2008), Robinson (1841),
Young (1907: 152–180), and Dunford (1930: 272–293). CMP Dunford file 6 of 6,
LHCMA.
8 For example, see Cooper (1867–1868: 336–339, 1906: 19) and Holdich (1912: 379–392).
9 On ‘geography of capitalism,’ see Smith (2008 [1984]).
10 For a general argument on capital appropriating earlier processes to articulate itself, see
van Binsbergen and Geschiere (1985).
11 For example, see Maps: 102, 103, 105, 113, 121, The Burma Campaign 1943–1945,
Haughton, Misc. 37, KCLMA; Russell and Gardiner (1951); on how the War interest-
ingly connected men and vocabulary between colonial Northeast Frontier of India and the
Malay peninsula, see Lunt (1994: 96–100). Noel Edward Vivian Short files, KCLMA.
12 For example, see Handbook of Burma and Northeast India (Information Bulletin No. 16)
(handbook produced for American soldiers during the Second World War).
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Introduction 17
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PART I
Commodities, resource
frontiers, and state making
1
TRANS-INDUS SALT
Objects, resistance, and violence in the North-
West Frontier of British India
Sameetah Agha
In 1930, grasping a fistful of salt-rich mud, Gandhi declared: ‘With this, I am

shaking the foundations of the British Empire.’ While salt may have appeared
an incredulous pick to both colonial observers as well as nationalist peers at the
time, in retrospect Gandhi could not have picked a more powerful object. At
the time, The Statesman wrote: ‘It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that
will be the mood of most thinking Indians. There is something almost child-
ishly theatrical in challenging in this way, the salt monopoly of the Government’
(Gandhi 2007). The Congress leadership too had been ambivalent, with Motilal
and Jawaharlal Nehru being initially unpersuaded, and Gandhi’s ‘right arm,’
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was sceptical of salt, preferring a land revenue boycott
(Gandhi 2010). Unlike tea, sugar, or opium – the other more exotically dramatic
commodities of empire – salt, the poor man’s condiment, was a necessity. Gandhi
himself explained his choice by stating, ‘Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the
greatest necessity of life’ ( Wolpert 2001). However, long before the Satyagraha
the salt tax had already emerged as evidence of the injustice of the British Empire
in India and become an object of colonial Indian nationalist resistance.
Early Indian nationalists mounted one of the first critiques of colonialism by
focussing on the economics of empire.1 Recently Aditya Mukherjee has pointed
out that the achievement of Indian early nationalists in this respect is not appreci-
ated despite the monumental work produced by Prof. Bipan Chandra as early as
the 1960s (Mukherjee 2008). One of their critiques centred on taxation. Between
1880–1905 salt was the second most important source of revenue to the Govern-
ment of India (Chandra 1966: 534). It was also a monopoly.2 The oppressiveness
of salt taxation was raised powerfully by leading nationalist figures such as G.V.
Joshi and G.K. Gokhale. The colonial government in turn sought to refute these
charges and justify their position. These debates produced a substantial literature
22 Sameetah Agha
that provides a rich source on the role of salt and its taxation in the British Indian
Empire (Chandra 1966; Dutt 1904; Strachey and Strachey 1882).
––––––––––––––
A large proportion of what is called death by famine is really murder by salt tax.
R.D. Rusden, published in the Mahratta, 21 July 1889
The monopoly and taxation of salt was a major source of revenue for the East
India Company in India. In 1793 the Company derived a revenue of 800,000
pounds sterling from salt manufacture (Dutt 1904: 144). In 1806, the govern-
ment established an agency for the control and management of salt which led
to the doubling of its price becoming fixed at 70 rupees the garce.3 By 1844 the
wholesale price had risen to 180 rupees and soon after to 120 rupees. In 1853 in
a petition presented to the House of Commons the Madras Native Association
said that as a result of the high price
either the people go without salt altogether or substitute an unwholesome

article obtained from common earth impregnated with saline particles,
which they manufacture at the risk of punishment; the procurement of
salt other than that of the monopoly being prohibited under the penalty of
fine and corporal punishment, inf licted at the discretion of the Collector
or his Tahsildar.4
However in 1844, the revenue from salt had risen to 1,300,000 and by 1890 it
was 80,943,550 pounds sterling (Dutt 1904: 145, 524) The revenue on salt was
derived from a duty imposed on the manufacture of salt in India and from a duty
on salt imported from Europe or from the Native States in India. The last rate
imposed was 1.9 Rs per maund (varying unit of weight) in 1931 and remained
in effect until April 1947.
Salt was not a solitary monolithic object in India, and there was not one
uniform tax for the whole of British India.5 There were many sources of salt.
For example, Bengal and Assam got their salt supply from salt imported from
England. Madras and Bombay got their salt from the sea. The Native states of
Rajputana obtained their salt from lakes or springs with salt occurrences. Taxa-
tion on salt also varied. In Madras the duty was collected under a monopoly
in which salt was manufactured on behalf of the government, and sold at a
price which gave profit equivalent to the duty. In Bombay, on the other hand,
the duty was levied as an excise tax. In northern India the Punjab possessed
‘inexhaustible supplies of rock salt’ (Strachey and Strachey 1882: 216). Salt
duties levied in different provinces were arbitrary and varied from time to
time.6 While duty on salt imported by sea was fairly easy to obtain, the one on
salt within the Indian provinces required the creation and maintenance of an
inland customs line.
Trans-Indus salt 23
The customs preventive line was an actual material barrier, ‘2500 miles long,
consisting of thorny trees and bushes, stone walls and ditches . . . guarded by an
army of 12,000 officers’ (Dutt 1904: 524–525). Even while justifying colonial
economic policies, Strachey and Strachey described it as a ‘monstrous system to
which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilised
country’ (Strachey and Strachey 1882: 219).
It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny

trees and bushes, supplemented by stone walls and ditches, across which
no human being or beast of burden could pass without being subjected
to detention and search. . . . It may be easily imagined what great and
inevitable obstruction to trade, what gross abuses and oppression, what
annoyance and harassment to individuals, took place.
(Strachey and Strachey 1882: 220) 7
One of the salts that the customs line was enforced to restrict was trans-Indus salt,
rock salt that came from the mountains known as the Salt Range that lay beyond
the Indus line in the Punjab extending into a region known as the North-West
Frontier.8
––––––––––––––
In the territory of Sopeithes there is a mountain composed of fossil salt

sufficient for the whole of India.
Strabo, Greek geographer, 64 BC–24 CE 9
The ‘North-West Frontier’ was an imperial creation, its geography and terrain
represented and given form through British colonial expansion in the nineteenth
century. In 1898, amidst a heated debate in the House of Commons, Lord Rob-
erts (1898) declared,
A Frontier, more than 1,000 miles in length, with a belt of huge mountains
in its front, inhabited by thousands of warlike men, over whom neither we
nor any other Power had control, and with a wide impassible river in its
rear, seemed to me then, as it does now, an impossible Frontier.
Roberts’ view was characteristic of colonial representations of the region and

its inhabitants – an ‘intractable,’ ‘barren,’ ‘mountainous’ terrain peopled by
‘independent’ though ‘barbaric,’ ‘warring’ tribes in ‘a state of permanent rebel-
lion against the world.’10 In 1849 the British conquered Punjab and took posses-
sion of territories of the Sikh kingdom. The ‘North-West Frontier’ referred to
the mountainous borderland area beyond the Indus that lay between the previ-
ously Sikh-held and now British administered territories and the kingdom of
Kabul or Afghanistan. While the North-West Frontier has ‘no claim as a separate
24 Sameetah Agha
physiographic entity,’11 its status as a frontier, was a continual project in the mak-
ing that occurred largely within the context of imperial military expansion that
in turn was met by the fiercest colonial resistance to be found anywhere in the
British Empire.12 Between 1849 and 1947 the area was the scene of perpetual
violence and warfare – over a hundred punitive military expeditions known as
‘butcher and bolt’ or ‘burn and scuttle,’ named after the pattern of tactics the
colonial military employed, were sanctioned against the different tribes. Armed
colonial resistance was in great part responsible for the recurring orientalist
tropes and images of the tribes (especially the Pukhtuns, the largest demographic
group) as ‘barbaric,’ ‘bloodthirsty,’ ‘warring,’ and ‘recalcitrant.’13
The imagery and tropes invoked in conjuring the Frontier during the colonial
period was one in which objects and resources were not emphasised (other than
guns perhaps). The inhabitants were largely represented as predatory tribes that
raided out of a lust for violence or out of necessity as their barren hills were scarce
in resources.14 In 1897 the British were confronted with a formidable revolt.
Tribes combined and revolted along the length of the frontier, from Swat to
Waziristan. Military outposts were attacked and garrisons besieged. On 25 August
1897, the British lost the Khyber Pass, the great historic gateway to India, to the
attacking Afridi tribesmen. The fall of the Khyber was seen as the ‘blackest day’
in the history of empire on the frontier. On the eve of the attack the Afridis sent
a list of grievances to the colonial authorities. If the grievances were addressed,
the lashkar (attacking party) gathering for the attack would retreat. One of their
grievances was the increase of the salt tax.15
Although mentioned f leetingly in colonial and post-1947 historiography on
the 1897 revolt, the salt grievance has been glossed over and not considered as
worthy of investigation.16 However, the Afridi demand, asking for the salt duty
to be lowered, is notable in that it runs directly counter to the prevailing idea of
the colonial North-West Frontier as an area lacking in commodities and trade.
In probing this grievance this chapter brings into play the missing history of salt
in the colonial North-West Frontier and forces upon us a reorientation of the
perception of the region as largely a colonial battleground by invoking other
geographies – ones that are missing not only from colonial accounts but also
in post-1947 histories of the Frontier as well as in Indian nationalist narratives
around salt taxation.17
In ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Andre Gunder Frank prob-
lematises the notion of a ‘region.’ Furthering Lewis and Wigen’s identification
of regions as partly a ref lection of reality and in part ‘an arbitrary heuristic nota-
tional convenience’ he explains:
The bounding of the grouping depends on the purpose and changes from
time to time, sometimes very suddenly. The regional ‘unit’ or ‘group’ may
be an individual, a nuclear or an extended family, a village or town, a local
‘region,’ a ‘society,’ a ‘country,’ a ‘regional’ region (the circum-Mediterranean),
or a ‘world’ region (the Americas, West Asia, South-east Asia, the South
Trans-Indus salt 25
Pacific). The very mention of these examples illustrates how ill-defined

(indeed ill-definable) and f luid these ‘regional units’ are and how arbitrary
their identification is.
(Frank 1998: 61)
It is keeping in mind this arbitrariness and f luidity that I use ‘South Asia,’ ‘Cen-
tral Asia,’ or the ‘North-West Frontier’ in what follows.
One of the richest sources of salt in South Asia came from a range of hills
referred to as the Salt Range (see Figure 1.1). The range erupted from the Suley-
mani Mountains, crossed the Indus near Kalabagh, and terminated near the banks
of the Jhelum River. This rock salt could be found cropping out in all directions
or it lay near the ground surface ‘extending downwards in deep almost inex-
haustible veins’ ( Bruce 1863: 12). The Salt Range and the salt derived therefrom,
was differentiated into cis-Indus and trans-Indus, given that the range crossed
the Indus and extended on either side of the river.18 In 1863 Herbert Bruce
described the salt as being excavated in such a pure state that it required no prep-
aration beyond pounding it for direct consumption: ‘It is generally exported in
blocks of transparent brilliancy, and consistency, and sometimes has a light red-
dish or blueish hue, in consequence of the proximity of iron’ ( Bruce 1863: 12).
The trans-Indus salt could be distinguished from the cis-Indus by their peculiar
hue, the former being blueish and the latter reddish. On account of its purity,
Bruce pointed that ‘this salt is held in great esteem, especially amongst the Hin-
doos of the Punjab, and it is said that according to their belief, no other kind of
Salt should be consumed on certain days dedicated to religion’ ( Bruce 1863: 12).
While commenting that in some places in the North-Western Provinces there
was a slight prejudice against the Punjab salts ‘owing to an erroneous impression,
that it is productive of cutaneous disorders,’ he nevertheless went on to note that
this salt could be found in the bazars of Rohilcund and Goruckpore ( Bruce 1863:
12). In this chapter the focus is on the trans-Indus salt which was located in the
Kohat district in the North-West Frontier and thus was also referred to as Kohat
or even Bahadur Khel salt, the latter referring to the particular mine it came
from.19 The Bahadur Khel salt was distinguishable because of its soft texture and
its oblong shape (see below).
There were five trans-Indus salt mines where this salt was mined, all located
in the North-West Frontier in Kohat district – Jatta, Bahadur Khel, Malgin,
Kharak, and Nari. These mines had depot establishments where salt was exca-
vated, weighed, and issued. At Malgin, Jatta, and Nari the salt was blasted and
sold in shapeless lumps called kandola. At Kharak and Bahadur Khel where the
salt was softer it was cut out of the mine in oblong blocks weighing half a maund
each. These were referred to as tabbi or chakki and formed convenient loads for
pack animals ( Tucker 1884: 148). Prior to British annexation, the Sikhs made
no attempt to manage the mines and farmed them out to local chiefs to collect
what they could.20 ‘They were held by fierce mountaineers, the rashest specula-
tor would have no concern with them, and even the Seikh Government would
Kallar
Ara
Makerwal Kahar
Nilawahan
Gorge
Chambalwala
Dhak Pass Nala
Khewra
Isakhel Musakhel Nammal
Dandot iver
mR
Jhelu
Mianwali
Khushab
r
CHINA
Rive
Alluvium
us
AFGHANISTAN
Salt range Siwalik (Up. Tert.)
Ind
Lahore Tertiary (Pal-Eoc)
N
TA
IS
K
Paleozoic, Mesozoic
INDIA
PA
IRAN
Salt Range Fm. (Precamb.)
200 0 200 0 10 20 km
Arabian Sea Karachi
km
FIGURE 1.1 Map of the Salt Range. Redrawn from Sameeni (2009)
Trans-Indus salt 27
have had to collect the revenue by the force of the sword’ ( Bruce 1863: 13–14).
The mines were operated by inhabitants who lived in the areas surrounding the
mines who excavated, transported, and traded the salt. However, as noted below,
there were many different groups engaged in the trade, including the Powin-
dahs, who were nomadic traders. Apart from the Powindahs it is noteworthy that
most of the miners were also cultivators who lived and worked in the adjoining
fields. The trade-carriers paid excavators for their work directly and brought
the salt from the quarry to the depot on their own pack animals.21 In 1891–92
the following tribes, along with their corresponding numbers, were recorded as
engaged in the salt trade: Khattaks, 35,214; Ghilzais, 13,231; Waziri, 7,076; Pow-
indah, 6,355; Bangash, 4,272; Afridi, 4,000; Miscellaneous, 809. The carriage
employed included 85,675 camels, 94,346 bullocks, and 49,575 donkeys carrying
589,066 maunds of salt, the average load being 5 maunds per camel, 2 and a half
maund per bullock, and 1 maund per donkey.22 By any means tens of thousands
of people in the region were engaged in salt excavation and trade.
This rock salt, both trans- and cis-Indus, supplied the surrounding area from
Punjab to the North-West Frontier. Following the conquest of Punjab, the colo-
nial agents that were assigned to examine salt and its operations observed a far-
ranging and widespread trade in salt extending both into the Indian provinces
and westward into Afghanistan and beyond into Central Asia. According to
Herbert Bruce, this salt travelled considerable distances into the interior of the
North-Western Provinces and could be purchased in the bazars of Rohilcund at
as cheap a rate as the Rajpootana salts: ‘It may actually go farther, and come into
contact with the Salt of Cheshire (to which it is said closely to resemble) in the
bazars of Goruckpore’ ( Bruce 1863: 13).
The trans-border trade covered the surrounding area (this would include the
cis-Indus tracts and the settled districts) going into Afghanistan and onward into
Central Asia. Kohat salt was taken to Peshawar and onto Swat, Bajaur, and the
Yusufzai hills as well as to Kashkar and Ningrahar as far as Badakshan and by
the Kurram route to Kabul and Hazara. A depot was formed near Jallalabad in
Afghanistan where salt was purchased by Shinwaris and other tribes either for
their own consumption or for carrying it further on. The trade to Jallalabad was
carried on principally by the Afridis, the Khattaks being the chief carriers to the
Peshawar district and the Yusufzais hills. The Ghilzais were the main carriers to
Kurram making several trips and forming a store there and from thence they car-
ried it north into Hazara as well as to Kabul. In Hazara they exchanged the salt
for ghi.23 The Powindahs carried it to Western Afghanistan as far as Kandahar.
After the conquest of Punjab in 1849 the British set about trying to establish
control over the Kohat salt mines. However, from the very outset the tribes,
especially the Afridis fought to oppose British encroachment into their land and
their salt operations. The Adam Khel Afridis who inhabited the hills between
Peshawar and Kohat were described in an official government publication as
‘the most powerful and most numerous of the Afridi clans, with a great repu-
tation for bravery, and derive much importance from the command they hold
28 Sameetah Agha
over the Kohat pass, through which runs the shortest and best route from Kohat
to Peshawar.’24 It is also pointed out that their chief source of employment was
the salt trade, an article they supplied ‘not only to British subjects, but to all the
trans-border tribes north-east of Kohat . . . They have always been hostile to any
enhancement of the salt tax.’25 The rates of duty previous to British annexation
were very low, at least compared to the rest of India, and varied between 16
maunds per rupee at Jatta, Malgin, and Nari to 32 maunds per rupee at Bahadur
Khel ( Tucker 1884: 148). At annexation in 1849, these rates were suddenly raised
by Lieutenant Pollock to a uniform duty of 1 rupee per maund. At the same time,
a military road to Bahadur Khel was sanctioned, ‘it being absolutely necessary to
enable us to control the great salt mines at that place’ ( Tucker 1884: 49).
In 1850, in response, about a thousand Afridis from at least two different clans
gathered to attack a party of sappers employed in the construction of the mili-
tary road through Kohat killing 12 men and wounding 6 others. The object of
the attack, led by Daria Khan (described as a freebooter), was ‘to compel rever-
sion to the rates at which salt was formerly sold at the Kohat mines.’26 A puni-
tive expedition followed which destroyed Afridi villages, but despite that they
continued to fight back with British casualties of 19 killed and 74 wounded. As
would become the pattern, these ‘butcher-and-bolt’ or ‘burn-and-scuttle’ puni-
tive expeditions would destroy and burn villages and cut and seize crops and
cattle. In this instance four villages were burnt and destroyed: Akhor, Zargun
Khel, Khui, Sharaki, as well as three villages of Bosti Khel.27
As a result of Afridi resistance, Pollock’s rates were superseded by lowering
the rates to a duty of between 2 to 4 annas per Lahori maund of 100 seers but
British attempts to seize possession of the mines and establish control over the
area continued (Tucker 1884: 148). The Afridis also continued their opposition,
and the fighting went on for several more months until the British captured
Afridis residing in British territory, including women. The Commissioner of
Peshawar while advising on entering a treaty with the Afridis at the same time
drew attention to ‘the great importance of maintaining permanent possession of
the Kohat salt mines, and the advantages to be gained by having strong outposts
at these points; because an exclusion for six months of any tribe habitually fre-
quenting the mines must reduce them to submission or starvation.’28 The closing
of the pass, a brutal blow aimed at stopping the salt trade, was used as a conscious
tool to force tribes to enter into engagements or to comply with British terms.
Such engagements did not last and for the next several years Afridis continued
to oppose British presence and encroachment in their territories with ongoing
armed attacks resulting in violent military retaliations. It is important to note
that the issue of salt was intertwined with colonial encroachment into Kohat and
the accompanying military expeditions. Colonial authorities also resorted to fre-
quent blockades. In 1877 Captain Cavagnari went into the small village of Aimal
Chabutra and took 27 adult men as prisoners along with all the village cattle
(which amounted to 100 head of oxen) ‘having been taken as guarantees for the
tribesmen’s prompt compliance with the demands of Government.’29 Still the
Trans-Indus salt 29
Afridis continued to fight back which led to several major expeditions against
the Jowaki Afridis, a section of the Adam Khel Afridis, resulting in yet another
blockade.
British colonial policy and operations surrounding salt cannot be viewed apart
from considering this context of continuous violence and resistance. On the sub-
ject of salt revenue it is stated frequently in colonial documents that in contrast
to the rest of India, the question of salt in the Frontier was mainly a political one:
The wild mountaineers are the great Salt carriers, and from the possession
of these mines the British Government derives enormous political inf luence
over the surrounding tribes. The question of the levy of a Salt tax at these
mines, therefore, bears much more of a political, than of a financial aspect.
It may no doubt be argued, that one’s own subjects ought not to be heavily
taxed for the same article, the production of our territory, for which wild
foreigners are lightly taxed; but still there is no doubt, an equalization of
duty could only be brought about by the presence of an Army, by a ferment
amongst our borderers all along the Derajat, backed up as they would be
by the southern Affghan races, and sympathized with by our own subjects
in the Derajat. Under these circumstances, the British Government levies a
very light, indeed almost a nominal, duty of two annas at the Bahader Khail
mine, and four annas per maund (80 lbs.) at the other three mines; besides
allowing certain perquisites to the Khuttuck Chief.
(Bruce 1863: 14)
Prior to 1883 the duty upon Kohat salt ranged from 2 to 4 annas per Lahori or
Kohat maund (102 lbs.) at the five mines in use. In 1883, it was increased to a
uniform rate of 8 annas per Kohat maund. As a consequence, the British wanted
to prohibit the transit of Kohat salt from the right to the left bank of the Indus
and to do so they set in place a customs ‘preventive line’ from the northern
extremity of the Hazara district to the junction of the Indus with the Sutlej, in
order to prevent the salt from passing across the Indus and competing within the
cis-Indus districts with the higher-taxed salt produced from other sources. A
‘preventive establishment’ with guards and watch posts was set up from Attock
towards Leia.
The infamous customs line existed in its own version in the Frontier. Kohat
salt was contraband cis-Indus and while risky, smuggling became prevalent.
When the subject of increasing the duty on Kohat salt was raised in 1883,
and the price fixed at 8 annas, the Government of India was instructed to com-
municate with the Secretary of State before taking any steps to further enhance
the duty on Kohat salt.30 As discussed, both the salt tax and British control of
the mines was contested and opposed by the tribes, leading to ongoing violence.
However, in a classic case of subimperialism in 1896, the Government of India
issued orders to raise the duty to Rs. 2 without seeking approval of England
(see below). This increase surfaced as a topic that the Government of India was
TABLE 1.1 Indus Preventive Establishment
Beat Patrols Asstnt Patrols Kotgushts Mohurers Jemadars Duffadars Chuprassees Name Chowkees Miles
No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary
Hajee Shah 1 350 1 10 1 20 2 16 22 110 Huzroo 17 50

Chowkee Estabt 4 24 16 80
Ghazee 1 150 1 10 1 15 1 8 14 70
Saloo Bun 1 100 1 10 1 15 1 8 5 30 32 160 Jund 10 50
Jund 1 300 1 10 1 20 2 16 22 110
Shah Mohomed Wallee 1 100 1 10 1 15 1 8 12 60 Kalabagh 7 55
Meenwallee 1 150 1 10 1 20 2 16 20 100
Bukkur 1 300 1 10 1 20 2 16 22 110 Jal 6 65
Kulloor Kote 1 100 1 10 1 15 1 8 12 60 Rotuck 6 55
Leia 1 150 1 10 1 15 1 8 14 70
3 950 6 750 9 90 9 155 13 104 58 348 382 1910 46 275
Source: Proceedings of the GOI (National Archives of India).
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spot of grease where it was not wanted would spoil the effect aimed
at; and they should be boiled hard.
To simply colour the eggs they need only be dipped in water, then
placed in a decoction of logwood for the various shades of purple; of
cochineal for red, or boiled with onion peelings, or in an onion, for
amber, or coloured with spinach juice for green. But superior to these
simple colourings are Judson’s dyes, which may be obtained of any
colour, and can be used as paints on the shells as well as dyes.
The eggs are dipped in water before being put in the dye, to make
them take the colour evenly. If it is desired to keep part of the shell
white—for instance, to have a name or motto in white on a red
ground—proceed thus: When the egg is warm after boiling take a
small piece of mutton suet, which, being hard, you can cut to a point
almost like a pencil. With this draw or write what you wish on the
warm egg, which you can then place in the dye. The part greased
will not take the colour, but when dry the fat is easily removed, and
the white design can be left or filled in with another colour, or with a
little gold or silver paint. A pretty way is to grease a delicate piece of
moss, a fine fern leaf, or a skeleton leaf, to roll either round a warm
egg so as to leave a greasy print on it, and then put it in the colour;
but great care must be taken in handling the work not to blur the
design. An egg spotted with grease then put in a yellow dye, the
grease removed, and then a pale blue dye used, produces an effect
that would puzzle a naturalist. Brown and blue dyes answer, used in
the same way.
Eggs may be also simply treated by having small leaves or little bits
of moss bound on to them with various coloured wools, or ribbons
(not fast-coloured ones), before they are boiled, the wool or ribbons
being removed when they are dry again; the effect is often very
good, but there is great doubt about the results in this way of
colouring.
A neater and much better way than greasing the design, for those
who do not mind the trouble, is to dye the egg all over, and then to
scratch out the motto, or whatever is required white, with a penknife.
This is, of course, a much more difficult process, and requires great
care.
Eggs dyed pale blue, and a little cloud and sea with a tiny boat
painted on them, or dyed yellow and turned into a little sunset
picture, with a tree added, are very pretty. They can be done in oil or
water colours.
I have seen cupids and like subjects painted on them, but they are
quite unsuited for Easter eggs, which are not, and should not be
used as, adjuncts of Valentine’s day.
For more elaborate work, the eggs, having been boiled hard, can be
painted over with gold size, and then covered with gold, or any metal
leaf, which maybe again painted on with oil paints, or by using a
medium and body colours, with water colours.
A gilt egg, with a white lily on it, or a silvered one with a daffodil,
looks very pretty; violets and primroses, emblems of spring, are also
appropriate, while eggs with butterflies or small birds bearing
mottoes painted on them, are much appreciated by children. When
painted in water colours, the eggs can easily be varnished. On
Easter day I once saw the breakfast eggs which the cook had boiled,
some with red and some with blue dye in the water, sent to table in a
nest of green moss lined with a little white wool; the eggs were only
cooked the usual time, and were greatly relished by the younger
members of the family.
I would recommend the use of Easter eggs to those girls who take
Sunday-school classes; they are very good mediums for giving
precepts or words of advice; a judiciously chosen motto or text may
often do a great deal in helping a child or person to correct a fault,
and a motto is more attractive on an ornamental egg than in a book.
I remember a little German book called “Ostereier” (Easter eggs), in
which a charming account is given of an Easter festival, when motto
eggs were distributed to a number of children. Some of the rhymes
given are very pretty; they lose in translation, but are such as
“Goodness, not gold, wins love and trust,” “For meat and drink the
giver thank,” “A good conscience makes a soft pillow.”
Such sentences as these do for quite small children, but a short
verse from a hymn or a text can easily be written on an egg. They
look very well coloured pale blue or mottled green and blue, as
directed above, and the words written on after with red, or blue ink of
a darker colour, and a little ornamentation round. For school-children
water colours should not be used in painting the eggs, for the warm
and often moist hands of the recipients of these little gifts would
smear the paint.
We must now come to another kind of egg I have found much
appreciated, as it is eatable, though imitation only. It is prepared
thus: Procure some half egg shells which you can colour or not, as
you please, but you must cut the edges as smooth as you can with a
pair of small, sharp scissors; next take one pound of ground almonds
(they can be bought ready prepared), mix with the beaten whites of
three, or if small, four eggs, add a teaspoonful of orange flower
water, or a little more, if needed, make into a paste, and stir in one
pound of fine sifted loaf sugar, and work with a wooden spoon into a
smooth paste; next shake a little icing sugar into the half shells, and
fill them with the almond paste, scoop a piece out of the centre of
each half, and as you put the two halves together insert a preserved
apricot (dried) without a stone; if the apricots are too large use half
ones, but whether large or small they must be pressed into suitable
shapes before they are used, as they have to represent the yolks of
the eggs.
When the parts are joined together, a strip of tissue paper should be
fastened round the junction with white of egg, and then a ribbon or
ornamental paper put round and the shells decorated with a little
water colour paint. If preferred, the shells can be used as moulds
only, and removed as soon as the paste is dry, but if this is to be
done the two edges of the almond paste must be moistened with
white of egg before they are put together, or they would come apart
when the shells were removed.
The almond eggs must be put in a warm, dry place as soon as
made; a very cool oven will do to dry them.
If you remove the shells, cover the almond paste with icing sugar
that has been well worked with a little white of egg and lemon juice;
this is not an easy operation, but if the sugar is well worked before
using, it will cover the paste more neatly than if used quickly; if
sufficient smoothness is attained the sugar can be decorated
afterwards with some harmless colouring, such as saffron or
cochineal.
To make sugar eggs, mix one ounce of raw arrowroot with one
pound of icing sugar, add the beaten whites of three or four eggs,
according to size, and a teaspoonful of lemon juice; work the mixture
well; use the egg shells as moulds and proceed as with almond
paste, putting anything that is liked in the centre, and joining the
halves together with white of egg; dry thoroughly, in some place not
warm enough to melt the sugar, before you remove the shells. It is
easier to take the halves off if they are slightly oiled before the sugar
is sifted into them.
NOTES FOR APRIL.
It is very interesting in the spring to watch the gradual development
of a frog from the egg, through the tadpole stage of its existence, till
at last it assumes its final form.
The old frogs emerge from their winter hiding places in the mud,
early in the spring, and during March their eggs may be found
floating on almost every stagnant pond. A group of these eggs in
their early stages of development looks like a mass of clear white
jelly, containing numbers of black specks, each of which is really the
germ of the future tadpole.
In order to watch the development, a group of the eggs should be
taken and put in a shallow vessel of water, which, if kept in the
house, should have a bell-glass, or some other covering over it, to
keep out the dust.
The jelly-like mass which envelopes the future tadpole is so clear
that all its changes can be easily watched. First the head appears,
then a flat tail, and in course of time the nostrils, mouth, and large
eyes, till at length the completed tadpole bursts open its gelatinous
covering, and apparently not in the least embarrassed by its new
surroundings, begins swimming briskly about, looking for something
to eat. The time occupied in hatching varies in different countries,
according to the climate, from four days to a month. In England the
tadpole does not often appear till towards the end of April.
The following stages are even more interesting, especially for those
who can take advantage of the transparency of the parts to watch
the circulation of the blood through a microscope.
The body of the tadpole gradually gets broader, while the tail gets
thinner and thinner, till it finally disappears altogether; but before that
happens its place has been taken by two hind legs, which first
appear under the skin and then gradually push their way through.
The fore legs next appear, and so on through all the stages of
development, till in a longer or shorter time, according to the amount
of warmth, light, and food it can obtain, the complete frog appears.
But woe betide the unfortunate tadpole which, first of the shoal,
attains to the dignity of possessing limbs, for so ferocious are the
later ones, and so jealous of their precocious little brother, that they
almost always fall upon him, and, not content with killing, never rest
till every morsel of him is eaten. And unless several of the tadpoles
assume their final change about the same time, this proceeding is
repeated till their numbers are very considerably diminished, or, as
sometimes happens, till only one survivor is left, who, having helped
to eat all his brethren, instead of meeting with his deserts, is allowed
to live on in peace, till some day in the course of his walks abroad,
he, in his turn, is snapped up as a delicate morsel by some hungry
snake or waterfowl.
Insects and flowers are much more closely connected with one
another than we sometimes think.
Not only do many insects depend upon flowers for their food, but
many flowers also depend upon the visits of insects to carry their
pollen from one flower to another and so continue the life of their
species.
There are some flowers, however, whose pollen is carried by the
wind instead of by insects, and which are therefore an exception to
this general rule. These, not needing to attract insects, are small and
insignificant, with neither scent nor honey, but with a very large
quantity of pollen. They generally flower early in spring, before the
leaves are out, as these would catch the pollen as it is blown along
by the wind, and prevent it reaching the flowers for which it is
intended. Notice, for example, the flower of the oak, elm, ash, and
Scotch fir.
April is a busy month in the garden. Auriculas and polyanthuses in
bloom should be watered often, and shaded if the sun is very bright,
and sheltered when the weather is cold; tulips also must be
sheltered from severe cold, though they may safely be encouraged
to grow now.
Seeds of perennials and biennials for flowering next year should be
sown now, such as wallflowers, carnations, and pinks. Heartsease
for autumn flowering should also be sown, and cuttings taken from
old plants. Hardy annuals should be sown not later than the middle
of April. Give them good soil, and do not cover the seeds too deeply
with earth (some of the smallest kinds should only be sprinkled on
the top), and when they begin to shoot up thin out the young plants
vigorously; amateur gardeners almost always leave them too close
together, but the more room they have the better and stronger they
will grow.
If there is no greenhouse, or “heat,” half hardy annuals may be sown
out in the open garden towards the end of April, and if diligently
cared for they will grow well and thrive.
After a warm day, evergreens are benefited by syringing. Ivy that is
wished to grow close should be clipped all over; and grass should be
cut about once a week, and often rolled. It should not be allowed to
get long before cutting the first time, or it will be troublesome to get
into order again.
April is the month in which we welcome most of our spring bird
visitors. The nightingale and cuckoo have already come and begun
their song; the swallow and house-martin will arrive about the middle
of the month, and are soon busy making new nests, or patching up
old ones. The whitethroat appears towards the end of the month.
During the April showers the whole air seems full of song. Walking
through woods ringing with bird music, we are once more reminded
of the problem which so puzzled Daines Barrington. “Do the birds all
sing in one key? And if not, why do the songs harmonise instead of
producing unpleasant discords?” Perhaps it is the distance which
lends enchantment and softens the discords. No doubt if all the
songsters were in one room, the result would not be quite so happy.
Many eggs, larvæ and cocoons of butterflies and moths may be
found this month among heaps of dry leaves, on low bushes, or
trunks of trees. Grasses and rushes shelter several of the early
species, which are already flying about, and some rare insects may
be found now which cannot be obtained later in the season.
THE ROMANCE OF THE BANK OF
ENGLAND.
OR,
THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE

STREET.
By EMMA BREWER.
CHAPTER VI.
It is a true saying, that when mothers begin to talk of their children
they never know when to stop; and the children, who might
otherwise have found favour, are thereby made to appear as
uninteresting and vexatious bores.
I will try to avoid falling into this error, and only tell you enough to
enable you to understand the peculiarities of mine.
You may have noticed how great a variety exists in the characters
and dispositions of the members of every large family, and will not be
surprised to hear that the same individuality of character shows itself
in the family of Funds and Stocks.
In introducing you to the steadiest and most reliable of my children, I
feel that I am putting you in the way of deriving real advantage. If,
however, you prefer the less worthy, the more daring and
speculative, I shall feel that no blame attaches to me.
Have you ever remarked, in your round of visits among your friends,
that it is almost possible to tell the character of host and hostess by
the people you meet there, and even by the servants who wait upon
you—all seem to take the tone of the house? I notice this specially
among my children. For example, my “Three per Cent. Consols” and
my “New Three’s,” whom I select as specially suited to be your
friends, have the most courteous, kindly, sober and religious class of
visitors; on the faces of all, old and young, clergy and laity, there is
an expression of repose and security and “well-to-doism” which is
charming; while, on the other hand, the faces and manners of those
who visit some of my other children are so wild, so haggard, so
restless, that you cannot help wishing that some good fairy would
give them a soothing syrup, or else insist on their choosing safer
friends; but if you ever pay me a visit, and use your eyes, you will
see more of this than, as a mother, I can tell you.
Against one thing, however, I am, as your friend, bound to warn you.
Listen to no one who proposes to let you have money at a very
cheap rate, while at the same time he offers to pay you large interest
on it. More I cannot say at present.
Closely connected with me, and in my neighbourhood, stands a most
mysterious building, known as the Stock Exchange. Its chief
entrance is in Capel-court, Bartholomew-lane.
None may pass within its portals but those specially privileged, still I
may tell you something about it without breaking through any of the
barriers which the inhabitants have set up between the public and
themselves.
This Stock Exchange is an association of about two thousand
persons, all men, of course, who meet together in Capel-court, and
who agree to be governed by a committee of thirty, chosen from
among themselves.
To the outside world, all the members are known by the name of
“stockbrokers,” but inside the mysterious building they divide
themselves into two classes—“stockjobbers” and “stockbrokers.”
Whether they be one or the other, their lives, occupations, fortunes
and reputations are bound up with the Stocks and Funds. They live
for them and they live on them. They determine their value, they
study every shade of temper exhibited by the family, they decide
their rise and fall, they are their interpreters and mouthpieces, they
act also as their bodyguard: none can approach but through them.
These two classes, jobbers and brokers, have a distinct work, which
I will try to make clear to you.
To start with, the stockjobber does not deal with the public, but the
stockbroker does.
You see stocks and shares are marketable commodities; you can
buy them, sell them, or transfer them, and the stockjobber is, as it
were, the wholesale merchant, and the stockbroker the retail dealer.
Let me explain. If you required twenty yards of black silk, you would
probably go to Marshall and Snelgrove or to Peter Robinson for it.
You certainly would not think of going to a wholesale house in the
City for it; and if you did, the article would not be supplied to you in
this way—it is contrary to the etiquette of trade.
Just in the same manner, if you wanted to buy some stock, you
would go to a stockbroker for it, and not to a stockjobber—the
stockbroker occupying the same position as Marshall and Snelgrove,
while the stockjobber stands in the place of the wholesale house in
the City.
The stockjobber, or wholesale merchant, is always ready both to buy
and sell with the broker. If you give an order to the latter, he darts
into the Stock Exchange, and without disclosing the nature of his
order to the jobber, inquires of him the price of the particular stock
which you wish to deal in. The jobber names two prices: one at
which he is prepared to buy (the lowest price, of course), the other at
which he is willing to sell (the highest price).
Thus, if the price of Consols was given by him as 100¼ to 100½, it
would mean that if you wanted him to take some stock of you he
would give you £100 5s. for each £100 of stock; and that if you
desired to buy some stock of him, you must pay him £100 10s. for
each £100.
These prices are the limits which the jobber sets himself. He is often
ready to give more or to sell for less than the prices he at first
names, according to what is known as the state of the market.
The profits of the jobber and the broker are not of the same kind; the
jobber makes his money out of the difference between the price at
which he buys the stock of you and sells it to someone else.
The broker charges you a small percentage on the cost of the stock
by way of commission for his services in the matter; this does not
include stamp duty or fee, but otherwise he undertakes any
incidental service which may be necessary to give you the full
proprietorship of the stock.
Stockjobbers, or wholesale stock merchants, are, as you see, very
necessary, for brokers could not at all times accommodate their
customers; it might be that one would want to sell at a moment when
there was no one to buy; as it is, however, all is made easy by the
jobbers, who are at all times ready both to buy and sell, and to
almost any amount.
It does sometimes happen that they promise to sell more than they
possess, and then they have to borrow and pay for the use of it on
their clearing day, which takes place once a month for Consols and
similar securities, and once a fortnight for other stocks within the
Exchange. It would never do for members of the Stock Exchange to
fall short of their obligations.
The mystery that has always hung about this building has greatly
increased since it has been in combination with the Exchange
Telegraph Company of London, with all its scientific developments
and its electric currents. Between this bureau and the Stock
Exchange ghostly, silent messages pass the livelong day concerning
the health, the value, the rise and the fall of the various stocks and
funds, and in a few seconds these mysterious messages are wafted
through the length and breadth of the land.
I am a curious, inquisitive old lady, and as there were many points in
these mysterious proceedings I could not understand, I went to the
bureau a short time back, and begged Mr. Wilfred King, the
courteous and clever secretary of the company, to make them clear
to me.
I was very interested in what he said about the rapidity with which
the messages are transmitted. He assured me that the result of the
last Derby was known all over London before the horses had had
time to stop after they had passed the winning-post; and, again, that
during the last Parliamentary session the debates, by means of this
company, were known at the Crystal Palace before they reached the
smoking-room of the House of Commons.
As I stood watching the clever instrument pouring out silently and
persistently its yards of tape messages, I asked as a favour that Mr.
King would cut off a piece, that I might show it to you. You will see
that the language is conveyed by means of simple lines, over which
he was so kind as to write the letters so represented—
[1]
The following little sketch will give you some idea of the instrument
and its working:—
I should like you to know more of this wonderful place; but it belongs
to my life only inasmuch as it carries my messages so silently and
rapidly that people hundreds of miles away can do business with me
in the same hour, and the result is that many thousands of pounds
pass through my hands in a day, which might otherwise have
remained idle.
You will possibly feel surprised to hear that on an average six
millions of pounds[2] are daily passed in London, without a single
coin being used, and without any inconvenience or fatigue; whereas
such a sum as this, if paid in gold or silver, would necessitate the
carrying backward and forward over many miles some hundred tons
weight.
Like many other gigantic transactions, it is brought about in an
insignificant building in a court leading out of Lombard-street, and
therefore close to my residence.
It is not a mysterious place like the Stock Exchange, but its power of
working is so wonderful as to be quite beyond the power of woman
to take in.
It transfers more money in one week than the whole quantity of gold
coin in the kingdom amounts to; and not the least wonderful thing
about it is that the entire work is performed by about thirty well
trained clerks, in the most exact, regular, and simple manner.
The place I am speaking of is the Bankers’ Clearing House—not to
be confounded with that in the Stock Exchange. It was established in
1775 by bankers who desired a central place where they might
conduct their clearing, or balancing, and their needs led them to the
invention of a simple and ingenious method of economising the use
of money. Almost all their payments are in the form of cheques upon
bankers.
The system of clearing is quite as important in money matters as
division of labour is in manufactures, and deserves a much more
thorough explanation than I can give here; and my only excuse for
mentioning it at all is to show you how wonderfully different my
position is now, strengthened as it is by the development of science,
knowledge, and experience, from what it was in my early days.
While my transactions have increased a thousandfold, money,
labour, and time have in an equal degree been economised.
I thought myself very rich formerly with a fortune of £1,200,000, and I
considered that I and my household had a great deal to do in the
management of it, and the work which fell to my lot. Dear me! I can
call back the picture of even a hundred and twenty years ago. My
own house was so small that passers-by could scarcely recognise it;
the population of London was only half a million, and there was but
one bridge over the Thames connecting my side of the City with
Southwark; and as to that mysterious building, the Stock Exchange,
it did not exist. You know, also, for I have told you, that my directors
only employed fifty-four secretaries and clerks, and that their united
salaries did not exceed £4,350. The contrast between then and now
is marvellous even to me.
Only look at it. The proprietors’ capital is now fourteen millions and a
half instead of £1,200,000; I am the Banker of the Government; I
receive the Public Revenue; I pay the National Debt; I receive and
register transfers of stock from one public creditor to another, and I
make the quarterly payment of the dividends. I have undertaken also
the management of the Indian Debt, as well as the Funded Debt of
the Metropolitan Board of Works. What do you think of that for a
woman old as I am in years? You must own that, notwithstanding my
age, I am young and vigorous in thought, in action, and in
organisation, otherwise how could I get through my work as I do?
“GHOSTLY, SILENT MESSAGES.”
My profits, too, are, when compared with those in my young days,
enormous. You wanted to know, if I remember rightly, how I lived,
and how I obtained the money to pay you your dividends; and
whether, in this respect, I was worthy of your trust.
Well, I will tell you a few of the ways in which I make money. I obtain
large sums by discounting Exchequer Bills; then there is the interest
upon the capital stock in the hands of the Government; I receive,
also, an allowance for managing the Public Debt. Up to 1786 I used
to get £562 10s. for every million; it was then reduced to £450 a
million; and since 1808 I get £300 per million up to 600 millions, and
£150 per million beyond—a nice little sum for you to work out.
A further source of income is interest on loans, on mortgages, profit
on purchase of bullion, and many other small matters. I am careful,
you see, not to have all my eggs in one basket.
For help in all this work I employ between eight and nine hundred
officers and servants, whose salaries exceed £210,000 a year.
I think I am a good mistress. I am sure I do my best to take care of
all my people, and I am acquainted with every one of them, even
with those who perform what is called menial service (I don’t like that
word; every service is honourable, if well performed); but I do
confess that I am extremely strict and particular and I am intolerant
of mistakes, from whatever cause they arise, because they dim the
lustre of my honour.
I think on the whole I have reason to be proud of my servants.
Indeed, I have a firm belief that no lady in the land is served better or
more faithfully.
I think you will like to hear a little about the way I manage my people.
First of all, I make every increase of salary to depend upon
punctuality in the morning, knowing as I do its importance. I am
equally particular that those living within the house shall keep good
hours at night.
Then I do not mind giving occasional leave of absence, if urgently
required; but I don’t allow anyone to take what is called “French
leave” without paying a fine for each day’s absence.
When my people get too old for service, I like to feel that they will not
suffer want; so I give them a pension in proportion to the salary they
are receiving at the time they retire. I spend about £40,000 in this
way—a spending which has nothing but pleasure in it for me.
I started a library some time ago for the younger members of my
household, by giving them a large room and £500 for books. It has
since been kept going by themselves, each subscriber paying eight
shillings a year. Between three and eight on certain days in the week
you may see numbers of them making their way thither for reading
and recreation. Those who prefer it may have books to take home.
One of my representatives is always present during these hours, just
to show our interest in their recreation.
The kind feeling, however, is not at all one-sided, as I have had
frequent opportunities of judging. Times of trouble, panic, and
sickness never fail to show me the love and devotion of my people,
and that they have not hesitated to sacrifice their lives for my safety
is a matter of history.
During the hours of the night, when I take my well-earned sleep, I am
watched over by my faithful servants, who take it in turn, two at the
time, to keep watch, in which loving duty they are assisted by a
company of Foot Guards.
So you see on the whole I am a happy woman, a very busy one, and
I think a safe one for you to trust.
(To be continued.)
OUR TOUR IN NORTH ITALY.
By TWO LONDON BACHELORS.
ST. GIORGIO, MAGGIORE.
Our longing expectations were fulfilled, and we were vouchsafed a
lovely evening for our entrance into Venice. By the time the train
reached Mæstre all traces of the storm had disappeared, the sky
was dark blue, and glittered with innumerable stars and a full moon
—just such an ideal night as one would choose for getting one’s first
impressions of the most poetical city in the world.
From Padua to Mæstre there is nothing remarkable; the same
seemingly eternal plain has to be traversed; but as the train draws
near to the last-named city one begins to realise that one is really
approaching the Queen of the Adriatic.
At Mæstre we began to feel the sea breezes, and as the train rushed
on to St. Giuliana we caught glimpses of the far-off lights of Venice
reflected in the water. And now commences the vast bridge which
takes the train over the lagune. This bridge is between three and four
miles in length, and contains 222 arches.
Our excitement was great when we reached the lagune, and the
train seemed actually rushing through the water.
At first the buildings of the distant city looked like huge black rocks,
though the hundreds of lights reflected in the water told one of the
approach to habitation. But as we drew near, the churches, towers,
campanili, and palaces became almost distinguishable, telling out
black against the starlit sky, and seemingly rising from the middle of
the sea—an exquisitely poetical scene, with which no one could be
disappointed.
Of course, we can understand that approaching Venice by day is
quite another matter. Then the shallowness of the lagune (the water
is sometimes not more than three feet deep) is realised; then all the
ruin, shabby detail, bad restoration, and bizarre Gothic work of the
city are seen at a glance. The beautiful moonlight night, however,
told us of none of these defects, but emphasised the strange poetry
of this singular city, with its wonderful history and associations, built
in the middle of the sea.
The approach to Venice by gondola in former times must have been
even more romantic, as the puffing and the screeching of a steam-
engine brings one’s mind back to the nineteenth century. Though, at
the same time, rushing across the lagune in a railway-train at night
produces a somewhat remarkable sensation.
The train took about nine minutes to cross the bridge, and then
glided quietly into the railway station at Venice. There were only
about half a dozen passengers besides ourselves, and there was

Objects and Frontiers in Modern Asia Between The Mekong and The Indus 1st Edition Lipokmar Dzüvichü Editor Manjeet Baruah Editor

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Objects and Frontiers in Modern Asia Between The Mekong and The Indus 1st Edition Lipokmar Dzüvichü Editor Manjeet Baruah Editor

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Objects and Frontiers in Modern Asia

Between the Mekong and the Indus 1st

Chess Explained The c3 Sicilian 1st Edition Sam Collins

Starting Out The c3 Sicilian 1st Edition John Emms

The Paper Issue 83 1st Edition Origamiusa

The American Revolution 1774 83 2nd Edition Daniel

English Grammar Exercises with answers Part 4 Your

Patriot vs Loyalist American Revolution 1775 83 Combat

Early Modern Things Objects and their Histories 1500

British Light Infantryman vs Patriot Rifleman American

Introduction: objects of frontiers 1

1 Trans-Indus salt: objects, resistance, and violence in

2 ‘Objects’ of appropriations: locating material efficacies of

3 Tibetan materiality versus British ‘Ornamentalism’:

4 From highlands to lowlands: the Pu’er tea trading network

6 Guns, gifts, and guerrillas: knowledge and objects during

7 A spot of enlightenment: tea as a fuel for connectivity

8 Objects in the border poetry of Northeast India and

Afterword: the f low of objects at the political

Sameetah Agha is Associate Professor of Modern World History at Pratt Insti-

Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Sweden.

Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and

Aparajita Majumdar is a doctoral candidate at the History Department in Cor-

Kunbing Xiao is Associate Professor, Southwest Minzu University, Chengdu,

Lipokmar Dzüvichü and Manjeet Baruah

newspaper correspondent Perceval Landon. He was a member of the Expedition

These pictures often leave much to be desired on the score of propriety. It

Viewing collecting as a practice stretching from individual figures to the

this volume is to foreground the significance of objects in the wider historical

southwestern China, Northeast India, the Himalayan borderlands of the Indus,

diplomatic, economic, or relations of war are discussed in the volume. Further,

tools or instruments of culture are central to social transformations of frontiers.

Himalayan Buddhist Cultures,’ highlights the changing trajectories of historical

In 1930, grasping a fistful of salt-rich mud, Gandhi declared: ‘With this, I am

either the people go without salt altogether or substitute an unwholesome

It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny

In the territory of Sopeithes there is a mountain composed of fossil salt

Roberts’ view was characteristic of colonial representations of the region and

Pacific). The very mention of these examples illustrates how ill-defined

No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary No Salary

Hajee Shah 1 350 1 10 1 20 2 16 22 110 Huzroo 17 50

THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE

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