Incorporating north-western Afghanistan into the British empire: experiments in indirect rule through the making of an imperial frontier, 1884–87

Abstract

This article analyses the British-led demarcation of Afghanistan's north-western border in the Maimana region between 1884–7. Historians of Afghanistan have largely neglected the Afghan Boundary Commission as a minor episode in Amir Abdur Rahman Khan's process of internal reform and ‘modernisation’. This article nuances these approaches and reconsiders the role of boundary-making as an instrument for building empire at the level of local indigenous political organisation. It argues that the demarcation became an occasion for increasing British interference in Afghan affairs that aimed at establishing embryonic forms of colonial rule along Afghanistan's borderlands. Commissioners sought the collaboration of local intermediaries – Afghan officials and ethnic minorities – in ways that bypassed official relations with the court in Kabul. The Boundary Commission became instrumental in enabling the extension and consolidation of the government of Kabul's authority over previously semi-autonomous areas. In the long term, it became the blueprint for the demarcation of Afghanistan's northern boundaries in Turkestan, Badakhshan and the Pamirs.