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Britain's Nineteenth-Century Indian Empire in the Kumaon Himalaya

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Britain's Nineteenth-Century Indian Empire in the Kumaon Himalaya Journal of Historical Geography 51 (2016) 88e98 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Historical Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg Confluent territories and overlapping sovereignties: Britain's nineteenth-century Indian empire in the Kumaon Himalaya Christoph Bergmann Heidelberg University, South Asia Institute, Department of Geography, Im Neuenheimer Feld 330, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany article info abstract Article history: This article provides a locally grounded understanding of how geographies of sovereignty became Received 22 September 2014 established and called into question on the external frontiers of British imperial expansion. The empirical Received in revised form case study focuses on the Bhotiyas, trans-Himalayan traders who reside in several high valleys of the 24 June 2015 Kumaon Himalaya in today's North Indian state of Uttarakhand. When the British East India Company Accepted 29 June 2015 annexed that region in 1815 it was recognized as a so-called Non-Regulation Province. Through a close examination of British interactions with Kumaon's traders, the paper will reveal the frictions that arose Keywords: from this exceptional legal status. This focus serves to address the broader question of how sovereign British empire fi Trans-Himalayan trade claims work through multiple and shifting articulations. The paper rst considers the establishment of Bhotiyas Kumaon as a Non-Regulation Province by attending to the strategies of British administrators in gaining Sovereignty the loyalty of its trans-Himalayan traders, particularly after the Dogras' invasion of western Tibet in 1841. Territoriality Subsequently, attention turns toward the negotiations between colonial administrators, Tibetan au- thorities and the Bhotiyas over taxation, which highlights British efforts to fit this mountainous pe- riphery into the empire's standard grid during the 1890s. The analysis considers a previous call to conceive High Asia as a continuous zone and an agentive site of political action by arguing that confluent territories and overlapping sovereignties are key to understanding imperial frontiers. As such the article contributes to scholarship that deals with the anomalous spaces of Britain's Indian empire, including both the jurisdictional and everyday politics in the margins. © 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). During its first great surge of territorial expansion between 1770 increasing British attention as gateways to Tibet after they were and 1830, the British East India Company made several attempts to conquered by the Gorkhas, a ruling power from Nepal, in 1790. One access the Tibetan plateau. Warren Hastings, the first governor of the early British agents exploring these two polities in 1812 general of India, set the ball rolling in 1774 when delegating his publicly denounced the Gorkhas as being an exploitative and private secretary, George Bogle, to lead an initial expedition from oppressive regime.3 He further highlighted the area's commercial Bengal to Shigatse.1 In 1783 Hastings built on the first mission's significance and his favourable experiences with its trans- success by appointing his cousin, lieutenant Samuel Turner, to Himalayan traders. In 1814 the British East India Company waged further develop relations with the political elites of this remote war on the Gorkhas, whose defeat was sealed with the Treaty of mountain polity.2 However, numerous obstacles, including active Segauli the following year (ratified in 1816).4 The western half of opposition from Tibetan aristocrats, frustrated any lasting access. the Garhwal kingdom was returned to the former ruling dynasty The central Himalayan kingdoms of Garhwal and Kumaon attracted that then staffed the newly established princely state of Tehri Garhwal. The Company, however, annexed the significantly larger part to the east, which was renamed as British Garhwal and E-mail address: [email protected]. Kumaon (hereafter referred to as Kumaon), and recognized as a so- 1 See C.R. Markham (Ed), Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa, London, 1876. 2 See S. Turner, An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, in Tibet; Containing a Narrative of a Journey through Bootan, and Part of Tibet. By Captain 3 W. Moorcroft, A journey to Lake Manasarovar in Undes, a province of Little Samuel Turner. To which are Added, Views Taken on the Spot, by Lieutenant Samuel Tibet, Asiatic Researches 12 (1818) 393. Davis; and Observations Botanical, Mineralogical, and Medical, by Mr. Robert Saunders, 4 See J. Pemble, Britain's Gurkha War: The Invasion of Nepal, 1814e16, London, London, 1800. 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2015.06.015 0305-7488/© 2015 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). C. Bergmann / Journal of Historical Geography 51 (2016) 88e98 89 called Non-Regulation Province. This legal status was maintained British major general witnessed these transactions personally and after the region's incorporation into the larger administrative unit thereafter initiated a quest for new government intervention aimed of the North-Western Provinces in 1836, whereby Kumaon became at enforcing the empire's territorial sovereignty in Kumaon.8 The subsumed under the overall jurisdiction of a lieutenant governor. traders were portrayed as both undermining British authority and Through a close examination of British interactions with abusing their position as British subjects. Furthermore, they were Kumaon's trans-Himalayan traders, this paper will reveal the fric- seen as preferring to accede to the sway of the barbarian Tibetan tions that arose from the exceptional legal status of the area as a rulers, with whom they conspired to oppose British plans for Non-Regulation Province. This serves to address the broader bringing the trans-Himalayan trade under the full control of the question of how sovereign claims work through everyday and empire. The Tibetan authorities and the traders capitalized on the multiple articulations on imperial frontiers. When the British East fact that British regulation would be hampered by the remoteness India Company moved into these remote and inaccessible (tribal) and harsh environmental conditions of the region, and they areas, first-hand experiences of local conditions confounded earlier therefore made a strong claim for the maintenance of their tradi- images of India as a uniform agrarian society.5 In some places, in tional arrangements. order to effectively deal with changing local contexts the colonial The British administration referred to the trans-Himalayan government suspended the full application of imperial law, com- traders in Kumaon as ‘Bhotiyas’, a term that was eventually plex bureaucratic procedures and separation of powers. Non- applied to a great variety of groups.9 Today, the Bhotiyas of Kumaon Regulation provinces such as Kumaon were administered not by reside in the four high valleys of Johar (or Gori), Darma, Chaudans the rule of law but rather ‘by discretion or executive interposition’.6 and Byans, situated within the Indian state of Uttarakhand (see In practical terms this meant that the commissioners of such Fig. 1). People from these valleys were actively involved in the provinces were much more powerful than their counterparts in the trans-Himalayan trade.10 They exchanged mainly sugar, grains and regulated areas. Whilst being expected to orient their rule toward manufactured wool products from the Lesser Himalaya for salt, the applicable acts and regulations of the colony, these government wool, animals and borax from the Tibetan plateau.11 Large flocks of officials flexibly interpreted executive orders to suit the realities on sheep and goats as well as yaks and yak-crossbreeds were used as the ground. Procedural simplicity and discretionary decisions pack animals. Using the example of these traders, this article con- created scope for both shaping and contesting British hegemony, tributes to a broader debate over the roles of frontiers and borders leading to an adaptive transformation of imperial power and au- as agentive sites of political action.12 In such regions, actors tailor thority. By tracing these adaptive transformations as they occurred varying and often also conflicting articulations of sovereignty in in nineteenth-century Kumaon, this article provides a locally order to stake a claim within changing spatialities of power.13 This grounded understanding of how geographies of sovereignty research perspective has recently gained new impetus from became established and called into question on the external fron- scholars pointing to the Himalaya as a continuous zone character- tiers of British imperial expansion. ized by long-term and intricate negotiations over territoriality and The empirical analysis proceeds in two parts. The first part sovereignty. scrutinizes the strategic efforts of British administrators to derive economic and political benefits from the East India Company's new Approaching territoriality and sovereignty in the Himalaya territorial gain. Due to Kumaon's exceptional legal status, British officers were relatively free to mould their rule. They conceived Many of the groups residing in the High Himalaya were, and to a suitable means to gain the loyalty of the region's
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