The Frontier Tribal Belt: Genesis and Purpose Under the Raj - Hardcover

Bangash, Salman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199403414 ISBN 13: 9780199403417

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2016

Synopsis

This book deals with one of the most complicated frontier quandaries ever faced by the British Empire in India, as the British Raj attempted either to control or accommodate the Pakhtuns of the North West Frontier, because the British colonial interest clashed with the centuries-old tribal formation. The Tribal Belt was one of the most ungovernable, perilous, and hazardous regions among the British Empires many frontiers spread across the globe. For centuries, the tribes defied all those who wanted to extricate and dislodge them from their strategic position straddling the natural gateways leading from Turkistan (Central Asia) into the Indian subcontinent. For the British, tribal structure and organization, and their socio-political and religious dynamics, were something quite new, challenging, and exigent. The tribes that populated the area were left outside the British administrative structures of settled India, and instead ruled them with a peculiar and unprecedented tribal administrative structure which fulfilled their imperial interests. The book discusses in detail the political, administrative, and social intricacies of the Tribal belt under British rule.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Salman Bangash is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, University of Peshawar. He has been teaching in the History department since 1998 and received his PhD from the Area Study Centre situated at the university. The courses that he teaches include British Rule in India and The North West Frontier Region. He has written on various topics in numerous research journals published both nationally and internationally.

Review

"Throughout his history Salman Bangash successfully details how global British imperial concerns with Russia and more regional concerns with Afghanistan generated ongoing policy debates about defending British India...In The Frontier Tribal Belt, Salman Bangash offers a critical, Peshawar-based perspective on British imperial attitudes and policies, including the imagining and construction of a 'tribal' world that then required control to serve the needs of a global empire."--H-Net

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0199403414
• ISBN 13: 9780199403417
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 380