Ruling the savage periphery frontier governance and the making of the modern state 9780674246140, 0674246144, 9780674246157, 0674246152, 9780674246164, 0674246160

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ruling the savage periphery

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State

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be n ja m i n d. hopk i ns

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2020

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 Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ a First printing Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth Jacket art: Duncan1890/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images 9780674246140 (EPUB) 9780674246157 (MOBI) 9780674246164 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Hopkins, B. D., 1978– Title: Ruling the savage periphery : frontier governance and the making of the modern state / Benjamin D. Hopkins. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : Harvard University Press, 2020. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019041799 | ISBN 9780674980709 (cloth) | ISBN 9780674246140 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands—­Political aspects. | Imperialism. | Indigenous ­peoples—­Government relations. | Frontier and pioneer life. Classification: LCC JC323 .H65 2020 | DDC 323.11—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2019041799

 To Eliana, Tobias, and Olivia You are the suns of my day, the moons of my night, the loves of my life. —Papi

Contents

Introduction: The Edges of Authority 1 1. Frontier Governmentality

13

2. Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

27

3. The Imperial Life of the Frontier Crimes Regulation

61

4. The Colonial Specter of “Savagery”

91

5. Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in Amer­ic­ a’s Desert Southwest

112

6. Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert and the Limits of Frontier Governmentality

153

Conclusion: A Long History of Vio­lence 192 Notes 209 Archives Consulted

265

Acknowl­edgments

267

Index 271

Introduction The Edges of Authority

T

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

1

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

The latent vio­lence of the world’s limits exploded in dramatic fashion, and sadly not for the first, nor likely the last time. But ­these attacks are bound by more than the so-­called War on Terror. The geography of vio­ lence they pre­sent is neither accidental nor coincidental. Rather, it is connected by deep historical roots. All three episodes occurred on what w ­ ere previously the frontiers of imperial systems and ­today are the peripheries of states and the modern global order. It is the liminal character of ­these spaces, and, more importantly, the p ­ eople inhabiting them, that has made them systemically vulnerable to the bloodletting so gruesomely put on display. ­Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria w ­ ere all impor­tant linkages in Britain’s global empire. But not all the spaces within ­those linkages ­were of equal importance to that empire. The spaces subject to t­ hese recent atrocities sat astride the imperial limits. Indeed, it was the advent of the British Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth c­ entury that rendered t­hese spaces frontiers. It was ­here, along ­these edges, that Britain’s colonial enterprise, and the successor states it gave rise to, defined themselves—­not only spatially, but also conceptually. For the way the empire and its constituent colonial parts conceived and wielded power along t­hese frontiers had a profound effect on how they did so elsewhere. The practices of frontier rule that the British imperial juggernaut authored, maintained, and replicated w ­ ere part of a global paradigm attending the rise of the modern state-­based international order in the closing de­cades of the nineteenth ­century. British imperial practices ­were decidedly more imperial than British. Their administrative doppelgangers could be found in other con­temporary Eu­ro­pean empires, as well as the neo-­European states of the Amer­i­cas, such as the United States and Argentina, which ­were at the same time constructing the foundations of their rule and authority along their expanding limits. Though not formally empires, at least in their own estimations, the actions of t­hese states ­were substantively imperial. In structuring their own systems of frontier rule, ­these neo-­European, neo-­imperial states evinced a decidedly colonial face, at least to ­those subject to such systems. This book tells a story, one likely familiar in its contours if not its contents, about the way states defined and governed their frontiers and the indigenous ­people inhabiting them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In many ways, it is a history of the global periphery—­both place and ­peoples. As the modern state system filled in the map through conquest and colonization, its constituent parts time and again encoun2

Introduction

tered seemingly stateless ­peoples inhabiting “wild” lands along their limits. The ­peoples ­were invariably “savage,” in contrast to the “civilized” states that encountered and, in many instances, exterminated them. They w ­ ere “tribal”—­non-­sedentary and bound by ties of kinship and timeless precepts of “custom” and “tradition,” which governed them collectively. Further, they w ­ ere inherently violent. But their vio­lence lacked e­ ither method or meaning, making it seem dangerously irrational. To state officials they presented an undifferentiated mass marked by cruelty, barbarity, and ignorance. As such, they ­were seen as a threat to the civilized order of the expanding state-­based socie­ties of the day. The lands such p ­ eople inhabited ­were equally characterized as dangerous and “savage.” In nearly all the cases examined in the following pages, the p ­ eoples subject to the regime of rule along the frontiers of the global order shared the distinction of occupying lands marginal in the eyes of the imperial exchequer or national trea­sury. That marginality lay rooted in the fact that ­these lands ­were relatively unproductive of settled agriculture. Officials viewed them as ecologically barren. They failed to produce tax receipts sufficient to support regular administration. ­These lands ­were too poor to pay for themselves, or more precisely for their own governance. They ­ were thus nothing more than fiscal sinks—­ bottomless money pits draining the state’s ­limited resources. It was not worth the state’s investment to erect the normal architecture of administration on such parsimonious lands. Nor was the extermination of the inhabitants of such lands—­violent and “savage” as they supposedly ­were—­worth the costs ­either in terms of blood or trea­sure. Why waste resources to conquer resourceless wastelands and eradicate recalcitrant “barbarians”? How, then, ­were states to deal with t­hese “savage” ­people inhabiting “savage” lands? How ­were the limits to be governed? Or, more precisely, what strategies and tactics did states develop and deploy over time to govern ­these spaces and their unruly inhabitants? This is the central question animating this work. What is arresting is that despite the geographic distance and cultural difference between sites of governance and subjects of rule, the states of the late nineteenth c­ entury turned to a nearly identical model of governance. ­Whether they were Apaches or Afghans, Zulus, Somalis, or Mapuche, the p ­ eoples of the periphery w ­ ere ruled in substantively the same way. While details differed from place to place, a striking continuity of power, both in its structure and deployment, clearly reveals itself. This book documents this seemingly universal phenomenon of frontier rule. 3

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

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

Introduction

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

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

authority.5 From the North-­West Frontier of British India, to the Northern Frontier Province of colonial ­Kenya, to the San Carlos Apache reservation in southern Arizona, to the “Pais de las Manzanas” at the edge of the Argentine Pampas, one finds the near simultaneous construction of a system of frontier administration on a cosmopolitan canvas. While some instances stand as clear reproductions of administrative practices honed elsewhere and brought to bear by the mobile c­ areers of imperial servants, ­others evince a seemingly autochthonous origin in both conception and execution. Yet in all, the frontier governmentality that emerged and embedded itself along states’ limits—­through administrative transmission or original authorship—­retained and shared the same four centrally defining ele­ments: indirect rule, sovereign pluralism, imperial objecthood, and economic dependence. Expanding empires and nation-­states constructed and entrenched a regime of rule along their frontiers that was both strikingly similar and remarkably consistent across divides of distance and culture. The inhabitants of ­these spaces ­were at the edges, or rather beyond the edges of “civilization” with which empires and con­temporary states justified themselves. The states neither had the appetite nor made the pretense of ruling the ­peoples of the periphery directly. Instead, employing colonially sanctioned “customs” and “traditions,” the states exerted their authority indirectly. As a consequence, the tribesmen ­were portrayed as “sovereign” if not “in­de­pen­dent” by colonial officials, though they ­were in fact neither. This rhetorical exercise excluded them from the colonial sphere. Not subjects of the Queen’s law, nor ­those of the republic, they ­were nonetheless objects of imperial action. ­These frontier dwellers lay beyond the sovereign purview of the colonial state, though they nonetheless remained trapped within the suzerain one of the imperial sphere. And although judicially excluded from the colonial regime, the tribesmen ­were rendered eco­nom­ically dependent on it. Invariably, t­ hese forms of frontier rule ­were considered exceptional and temporary administrative expedients necessary to deal with less advanced ­peoples not yet suited to the l­egal complexities of regular administration. They ­were often thought of, then and since, as passing aberrations—­ glitches in the triumphal pro­ cession of state formation. But nothing could be more removed from the truth. Rather than the unintended detritus of modern po­liti­cal development—­a step in the progressive advancement of ­peoples—­these systems ­were the consciously intended outcome. They ­were a central part of the blueprint, a foundational ele­ment to the 6

Introduction

state-­centric order constructed at the time. And they continue to have lasting impacts ­today. The imperial pasts of ­Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria have an ensanguined and pressing legacy on the postcolonial pre­sents of the ­people populating their peripheries. While in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the stateless p ­ eoples of the periphery, at the edges of governmental power, ­were discussed in terms of “savagery” and “barbarism,” the updated lexicography of the early twenty-­first ­century is that of “failing” or “fragile” states.6 Viewing the periphery through the lens of frontier governmentality offers a markedly dif­fer­ent vantage than the ways t­hese spaces are generally characterized. ­Others have depicted the frontier as ­either “states of exception” or as places to practice “the art of not being governed.”7 As a subject of inquiry, frontiers are thought to constitute a liminal case on the margins of normalcy, in­ter­est­ing ­either for their aberrance or for what they do not tell us about the state order. But precisely the opposite holds. Frontier governmentality argues that the frontier is far from exceptional. Rather, it constitutes an integral, and in truth pedestrian, part of state design. The frontier underlines the fragmented and varied character of the state-­based order. Likewise, frontier governmentality contests the notion that the ­people of the periphery practice some art of not being governed. Instead, it demonstrates yet another way that states govern t­ hose they abjure from their direct gaze and administration. The p ­ eople subject to forms of frontier governmentality are the ­people of the proverbial hills—­ those who by choice or circumstance are removed from the confines of normal state administration. While some romanticize the hills, by the late nineteenth ­century they ­were not retreats and redoubts of freedom, but prisons and sites of enforced exile.8 Expanding states transformed t­hese hills not through conquest and assimilation, but rather through containment and encapsulation. Far from not being governed, the p ­ eoples of the hills and peripheries ­were very much ruled, through state sanctioned “customs” and “traditions.” This was another form of subjugation and governance rather than the absence of it. Though states may have governed the p ­ eoples of the periphery through their own “customs” and “traditions,” such regimes of authority ­were a consequence of state weakness rather than strength. States ­were neither omnipresent nor omniscient along their peripheries—in ambition or in real­ity. Their presence was both geo­graph­i­cally and temporally episodic at best. Frontier governmentality is what states did when they could muster neither the ­will nor the resources to affect their presence in a more penetrative or 7

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

permanent manner. This, then, was not a case of dominance without hegemony, but rather of the ephemerality of authority.9 Recognizing such, although this regime of rule may have minimized po­liti­cal and fiscal expenditure, it was by no means without costs. Frontier governmentality, like much of the colonial regime, was a regime of rule predicated on difference. Such rule of difference necessitated the particularization of both colonial and frontier populations. They w ­ ere to be divided and governed by their distinct social identities, which ­were bounded by their communal customs and traditions. For states to effect a rule of difference along their limits, they needed to be able to erect, maintain, and police that difference. Not all states of the nineteenth-­century world, or indeed t­oday, could convincingly do so. Thus while frontier governmentality may reflect state weakness where the state abjures its sovereign authority, that weakness is relative. The story of frontier governmentality is first and foremost a history of the state, and in par­tic­u­lar the state of colonial regimes. Though indigenous ­people play a central role, it is a history of what states did to ­those indigenous ­peoples rather than how ­those ­people escaped, resisted, or ultimately succumbed to the state. In a way, this history arguably replicates epistemically the vio­lence perpetrated by the state on t­hese ­people physically—­a vio­lence of domination that silences their historical voice. That is certainly not the intention ­here. Rather, this work is offered as a critical consideration of the ways states composed and constructed themselves through the practices of governance they employed. And as a reflection on the lasting effects of such systems and practices. By looking at what the state did to the p ­ eoples of the periphery, we are in fact examining what the state did to itself. The story that emerges, while one of dominance, subjugation, and vio­lence, is also one of complexity. For what it reveals is a history of state construction and governance predicated not on the erection of a universal order—­a flat po­liti­cal topography—­but rather on the intentional structuring of a layered po­liti­cal real­ity that included some and excluded ­others by design. To effect that design, frontier governmentality had to be enacted and performed by the apparatuses and personnel of the imperial state. The everyday practice of frontier governmentality was played on a global stage by a cast of characters who enter and exit, some with dazzling cupidity and avarice, ­others with a deeply held conviction about the righ­teousness of Eu­ro­pean imperialism. While many of the places and ­people may seem wholly disconnected from one another, they are deeply bound together 8

CHILI

PERU

BRAZIL

British French Guiana Guiana Dutch Guiana

ARGENTINA

URUGUAY

PARAGUAY

BOLIVIA

VENEZUELA

COLOMBIA

ECUADOR

PANAMA

Puerto Rico

DOMINICAN REP.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

LIBERA

Sierra Leone

Gambia Portuguese Guinea

Rio De Oro

Gold Coast

Egypt NEJD

Bahrain Qatar

Kuwait

PERSIA

Kenya

Nyasaland

Italian Somaliland

SOUTH AFRICA

Basutoland

Swaziland

Madagascar Southern Rhodesia Portuguese BechuanaEast Africa Land

Northern Rhodesia

U

I I

E

T A

Goa

AFGHANISTAN

S

Oman

S

V

Eritrea Yemen Aden French Somaliland British ABYSSINIA Somaliland

Tanganyika Territory

Uganda

O

S R

Georgia Azerbaijan Armenia

Syria Lebanon Iraq Palestine TransJordan

AngloEgyptian Sudan

Belgian Congo

Angola

Fre

South-west Africa

Rio Muni

Cameroon

Nigeria

French West Africa

Libya

GREECE

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

PA C I F I C OCEAN

HAITI

NICARAGUA

HONDURAS

British Jamaica Honduras

CUBA

COSTA RICA

EL SALVADOR

GUATEMALA

MEXICO

Algeria

TUNISIA

TURKEY

CZECHOSLOVAKIA UKRAINE AUSTRIA HUNGARY SWITZ. ROMANIA ITALY BULGARIA ALBANIA IA

Spanish Morocco French Morocco

PORTUGAL

SPAIN

FRANCE

GERMANY

V

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Newfoundland

NETH. BELGIUM

ESTONIA

FINLAND

LATVIA LITUANIA EAST PRUSSIA BELORUSSIA POLAND

A

SL

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DOMINION OF CANADA

DENMARK

SWEDEN

O

l Afric a

GREAT BRITAIN

NORWAY

G

h Equ atoria

Iceland

U AZ

nc

Alaska

Y

HIJ

French Indo-china

Philippine Islands

OCEAN

PACIFIC

JAPAN

KOREA

NEW ZEALAND

AUSTRALIA

Portuguese Timor

Dutch East Indies

Malay States

SIAM

REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Singapore

Burma

Bhutan

INDIAN OCEAN

INDIAN EMPIRE

Nepal

TIBET

MONGOLIA

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

by sinews into a discernable if not unitary ­whole, highlighting global cir­ cuits of ideas, administrative practices, and personnel. At the core of the story of frontier governmentality sit two central characters—­one a law and the other a man. The former is the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), the l­egal code used by the British to govern their Afghan frontier. The latter is Sir Robert Groves Sandeman, the first head of the Baluchistan Agency of British India. Together, t­hese two personify, as well as arguably document, the origins and rise of frontier governmentality globally during the last three de­cades of the nineteenth c­ entury and into the opening years of the twentieth ­century. The book begins in the borderlands between British India and what would ­later become Af­ghan­is­ tan. The issues of territorial demarcation, practical governance, and economic penetration w ­ ere particularly pressing ­here. By the 1870s, the British had over twenty years of direct administrative experience and an even longer history of encounter h ­ ere, beginning with the First Afghan War (1839–1843). It was along this frontier, which was not demarcated in theory u ­ ntil the Durand Agreement of 1893 and in practice u ­ ntil much ­later, that the British developed and deployed their system of frontier governmentality in full. This system was embodied by a draconian ­legal regime known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation, initially promulgated in 1872. The Regulation created a system of governance relying on indirect rule and encapsulating frontier tribesmen in what ­were, in effect, native reserves, though it neither used that language nor explic­itly proclaimed that vision. The outworking of the Regulation over time made the inherent suppositions of the law clear in their po­liti­cal and administrative implications. The FCR proved an imperial template subsequently exported around Britain’s burgeoning global empire. It was first duplicated within British India, where it was quickly copied and enforced along the Raj’s northeast frontier in the highlands bordering Burma during the 1890s. Its last instance of imperial reproduction was in ­Kenya’s Northern Frontier Province in 1934. In the interval between, the law, as well as the substance of its administrative structure, was constructed time and again along a widely dispersed array of frontiers globally. In South Africa in the late 1870s and the early 1880s, Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of the Cape Colony, applied the lessons learned from his days as Commissioner of Sindh along the Afghan frontier in British India to his dealings with the Zulus, with disastrous results. He was preceded in ­these efforts by Theo­philus Shepstone in Natal, who eventually produced the Natal Code. Twenty years 10

Introduction

l­ater, at the turn of the twentieth ­century, Frederick Lugard, the alleged architect of indirect rule in Africa in the eyes of subsequent generations of imperial administrators, cribbed his notes from his days in Peshawar in the 1870s and 1880s to construct a system of frontier governmentality in northern Nigeria. The British Indian Empire’s involvement in the First World War on behalf of the King Emperor brought the FCR, originally designed for the par­tic­u­lar prob­lem of the Pathan tribesmen in the Hindu Kush, to the marshlands of the Basra vilayet taken from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. From ­there, it traveled the deserts of the ­Middle East, settling, in modified form, in the Negev of mandatory Palestine and TransJordan. Through the ­careers of vari­ous imperial officials, the FCR had an imperial ­career of its own. Yet the ideas of indirect rule, and, more importantly, the practices of frontier governmentality, ­were not the singular purview of the British ­Empire. Nor w ­ ere the under­lying norms and values that provided the intellectual foundation on which ­these governing practices rested. A number of con­temporary thinkers—­scholars, administrators, and scholar administrators—­held a common view of the “savagery” of the p ­ eoples of the periphery and how their “savage” state not only justified but also necessitated their subjugation and rule. Men like Sir Bartle Frere in Britain, Frederick Jackson Turner in the United States, and Domingo Sarmiento in Argentina collectively authored and maintained an intellectual edifice on which the rule of frontier governmentality was built. Their transnational intellectual milieu points to the fact that the rationale for and practice of frontier governmentality proved a regime of rule with global reach. In Argentina, the republic’s expansion into the Pampas and Patagonia at the end of the 1870s and through the mid-1880s—­known as the conquista del desierto (conquest of the desert)—­was precipitated by the same impulses concurrently driving the British into Af­ ghan­ i­ stan.10 With the former’s success, they tried to put in place forms of rule strikingly similar to ­those embodied by the FCR. At the same moment, the United States—in one of its many wars of expansion along its rolling continental frontier—­created a reservation system for the Apache in the Arizona ­territory that embodied the ele­ments of frontier governmentality. This was clearly a global phenomenon linking geo­graph­i­cally far-­removed corners of the world inhabited by p ­ eoples who, though individually quite distinct, collectively constituted an archetype of frontier dwellers who had to be dealt with in a similar fashion by the expanding state order of the nineteenth ­century. 11

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

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

12

N1n Frontier Governmentality

T

he nineteenth-­century world was a new world marked by rapid pro­ gress in technology, communications, and transport. It was also marked by po­liti­cal upheaval, the likes of which the world had never seen before. But what distinguished this c­ entury from ­those that came before, or indeed a­ fter, was that it was the first truly global ­century.1 While linkages between the world’s distant lands had been forged previously, only ­after 1800 did ­those linkages serve to tightly bind far-­removed corners into a loosely united, if not unitary global arena. In that arena, the changes that ­shaped one locale rippled out across the world to affect, often in unforeseen ways, faraway lands inhabited by vastly dif­fer­ent ­peoples. Yet the impulse of the nineteenth ­century was one of both sameness and difference. Whereas the eigh­teenth c­ entury, for Eu­ro­pe­ans at least, was about knowing the places and p ­ eoples of the world (the Enlightenment world) the nineteenth c­ entury proved to be about ruling them (the imperial world). But such rule was expensive. To economize and expedite it, standard practices of administration, which lasted beyond the often short ­careers of colonial servants, ­were increasingly put in place and embedded in the foundations of the colonial enterprise. The story of frontier governmentality is a story about the authoring, propagation, and reproduction of just such a practice, or rather regime of rule. Before one considers how the frontier was ruled, however, one must consider what was ruled. What did “frontier” mean in the nineteenth-­ century imperial world? Frontiers appear as a self-­definitional category requiring no formal elucidation. Rather, like obscenity, one knows a frontier 13

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when one sees it. Yet such reasoning is in many ways teleological. Frontiers are not objective realities, but rather social constructs. As such, the very act of observation is in fact an act of definition—­a kind of social version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty princi­ple. To most, frontiers are at the limits of polities—­markers of authorities and bounds of belonging that have existed since the dawn of history itself. ­There have always been “ins” and “outs,” with frontiers delimiting the line between the two. Yet in the nineteenth ­century, they assumed a distinct, if not altogether dif­fer­ent meaning commensurate with the altogether dif­fer­ent polities they demar­ ere an outward expression of the state-­based empires cated.2 They w ­Eu­ro­pe­ans constructed the world over. Much ink, as well as blood, has been spilled trying to define the “ideal” frontier.3 Though often thought of as a discrete place, most frequently on the extremity of the relevant po­liti­cal or administrative entity, frontiers are a par­tic­u­lar type of space. The frontier is an ideational space marked by specific manifestations of state power and po­liti­cal authority. In this space, the state defines the limit of both its claims to, as well as actualization of authority over, ­people and territory. Just as ­those claims, and states’ abilities to assert and realize them, entail a wide spectrum of possibilities, so too do frontiers assume a wide array of expressions. Some frontiers manifest themselves as hard lines, drawn on a map and theoretically enforced on the ground. ­These are thought of as borders, or more precisely modern borders.4 Other frontiers articulate themselves as zones, where state claims and power recede through space. ­These are thought of as borderlands.5 Frontiers are not only spatial and territorial artifacts, but temporal ones as well. They are not static, but rather dynamic, changing location and meaning, as well as character over time. For example, the frontier of the American West through the nineteenth ­century was marked by its constant movement, while the frontier between British India and Af­ghan­i­ stan evinced a remarkable geo­graph­i­cal fixity ­after the British assumption of power at mid-­century. The significance of both, in the con­temporary and historical imagination, changed with the changing nature of the states claiming and enforcing t­hese respective frontiers. The conquest of the American West, along with the narrative of the American national proj­ect, led to the “closing” of the American frontier by the end of the nineteenth ­century.6 In contrast, the arrival of British imperial power along the Afghan frontier in 1849 simply served to codify this space as dif­fer­ent and apart. The American frontier and its closure represented the supposedly 14

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universalizing face of the nation-­state while the British Indian frontier epitomized the particularizing one of the imperial state. Such renderings of ­these frontiers—of regimes of sameness and difference—­are distorted by time. How they are remembered t­oday is not how they w ­ ere ­either conceived or experienced at the time.7 That dissonance—­between then and now—­has impor­tant and lasting implications not only for frontiers themselves, but also for the states that enforced them and for the p ­ eoples enclosed by them. The time-­bound character of frontiers is thus as impor­ tant to recognize as their spatial locations. The mobility and variety of the frontier as place makes it an unstable and unreliable category of space.8 It is more productive to think of frontiers as conceptual rather than physical spaces, a move that allows for their location to be at one and the same time multiple as well as mobile.9 Consequently, rather than identifying specific places as “frontiers,” it is more useful to identify the par­tic­u­lar practices constituting frontiers. Thinking of the frontier as practice has radical implications as it moves the interrogative gaze away from the external bounds of the state to the internal body as a realm of frontier possibility. If the frontier marks the limits of both the claims and actualizations of state authority, the absence (intentional or other­wise) of such authority within the state itself—­native American reservations, Indian princely states, African tribal reserves—­creates frontiers. Indeed, for many states of the modern world, the most impor­ tant and extensive frontiers demarcate their interior, rather than their exterior. The relationship between the frontier and the state is a mutually affective one. The state may claim and enforce the frontier, but the act of ­doing so irrevocably alters the state itself. The frontier does not have an in­de­pen­dent, self-­evident, or “objective” real­ity, but rather has to be enacted in both space and time by governing agents. The frontier has to be made and maintained through constant, repeated, and publicly vis­i­ble acts. It must be both inscribed and performed. Such per­for­mances are acts of sovereignty—­the assertion by the state of its ultimate authority.10 Some of ­these acts can have the fiction of permanence, such as a boundary marker or border wall. Some of them can personify the frontier, such as the surveillance of a border guard or customs officer. It is through ­these acts, ­these practices, that the frontier is performed and thus realized. While one may say this is true of government in general, the frontier is constructed through a par­tic­u­lar constellation of practices best understood as frontier governmentality. 15

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Frontier governmentality is composed of two distinct phenomena that when combined give rise to a unique spatialized and time-­bound practice. Whereas “frontier” denotes a sense of the place, “governmentality” locates it in time. One of the necessary conditions for the advent of governmentality was the emergence of po­liti­cal economy as a central arena for governments’ aspirations to control.11 The development of capitalism and the modern state system not only took place concurrently, but also sprang from the same root. The rise of po­liti­cal economy as both a practice of governance and discourse during the nineteenth c­ entury, a function of the global expansion of capitalism, was intimately tied to the pro­ cesses of state formation. As the economy became an arena for action by the state, it opened a new realm of regulation by which the state could control its subjects-­cum-­citizens, through regimes of taxation, regulation, and work.12 The state could intervene directly into the individual lives of its subjects by policing economic intercourse between them, something previously outside both its abilities and ambitions. The rise of statistical sciences and development of economics as an academic field during the nineteenth ­century changed all that. Smith’s ideas of comparative advantage and Ricardo’s theory of rent combined with the enumerative capabilities of bureaucratizing administrations to make it imperative for the state to intervene directly in the spheres of commerce, finance, and economics, even if only to ensure the market’s unhindered functioning. Another arena for state action was born, along with another field of social-­cum-­political life upon which it could place its administrative imprimatur. The expansion of capitalism and state power ­were thus intimately linked. Yet the logic of global capitalism created specific opportunities and forms for its expression, which varied by time and place. Along the frontier, they facilitated the expansion of capitalism into the spaces of “savagery” through a distinctive regime of state administration. In the main that regime was one of negative action—­namely what the state did not do in the economic realm of the frontier, as opposed to what it constructively did do. As such, the story of frontier governmentality—of the rule of the periphery—is in part a story about the expansion of global capitalism in the late nineteenth ­century and its integration, or abnegation, of the limits of the state-­based international order. Governmentality then, as opposed to governance, is a temporal signifier, an aspect of the modern state whose ambitions and abilities to intervene, regulate, and control the lives of the populations over which it rules are both qualitatively and quantitatively dif­fer­ent than the state forms 16

Frontier Governmentality

­ receding it. The term speaks to the invasive architecture of order asp sembled by states to regiment everyday life. The technological changes of the nineteenth ­century, in par­tic­u­lar the rise of statistics and quantification of government, radically expanded the state’s intrusion into individuals’ lives.13 Arguably, the most impor­tant and famous practice of governmentality, at least in the colonial world, was the census. The emergence of the individual, as opposed to collectivities as the target of governance, required a fundamental rewriting of the compact on which po­liti­cal order rested. Successful state control of individuals rather than groups was predicated on the ability of the state to deploy technologies of rule over individuated subjects. This marked a significant expansion of state abilities and ambitions. The idea of governmentality captures ­these developments, firmly placing its subject m ­ atter in the modern world wrought by the changes of the nineteenth ­century. But empires ­were not simply about bringing new technologies to bear on foreign lands. Rather, imperial enterprises integrated local practice with classical learning to develop a regime along the frontier akin to, yet fundamentally dif­fer­ent than, past praxis. For the British administrators along the Afghan frontier, this meant combining the lessons of their classical education with Mughal and even Sikh methods.14 Mountstuart Elphinstone, the first British ambassador to the kingdom of Kabul and author of modern understandings of Af­ghan­i­stan and its frontiers, read Tacitus’s Germania on his pro­gress to the court in Peshawar.15 Though in many ways Elphinstone’s An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815) resembled the writings of his Roman precursor, both in descriptive and prescriptive manner regarding frontier ­peoples, they served fundamentally dif­fer­ent state forms in fundamentally dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal epochs.16 Though the systems of frontier rule developed in and deployed by the Roman and British empires, respectively, may have been intellectual kin, they w ­ ere at best far-­removed relations. The frontier governance of any number of premodern or even early modern empires—­from the Romans to the Mughals, from the Tang dynasty to the Ottomans—­resembled that of nineteenth-­ century Eu­ro­pean global empires. But it was nonetheless distinct from the frontier governmentality ushered in by the nineteenth-­century global po­liti­cal and economic order. Frontier governmentality entailed a common set of governing norms, administrative practices, and l­egal regimes that together constituted a discrete form of rule unique to frontier spaces. What made it unique to ­these spaces was a combination of the fleeting reach of state authority as well 17

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

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

Frontier Governmentality

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

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

Frontier Governmentality

colonial juridical sphere, the state exercised a rule of difference through discrete, individuated forms of rule deployed over dif­fer­ent subject populations, ­these ­were by and large l­imited to the civil l­egal sphere, most especially in ­matters of personal law. Communities ­were ruled by their individual civil codes, such as the Muslim personal law statutes of British India or the Hindu Code of postcolonial India.27 Criminal law, such as the Indian Penal Code, was universal. The subjection of the colonial population to that universal law was both a marker of the colonial state’s sovereign aspirations, as well as justification of its rule—­namely equality before the law.28 Colonial governmentality thus worked on a register of civil difference and criminal sameness.29 Frontier governmentality, in contrast, excluded frontier inhabitants from the colonial ­legal sphere altogether, save in certain l­imited cases, and in so ­doing abjured the colonial state’s sovereign claims.30 The law, which provided the rhetorical justification for imperial rule, met its limits along the frontier, t­here disaggregating between judicial subjects and po­liti­cal objects.31 While frontier dwellers w ­ ere legally disenfranchised by and at least rhetorically in­de­pen­dent of the colonial state, they nonetheless remained po­liti­cally and eco­nom­ically beholden to the imperial one. Dependence, in par­tic­ul­ar economic dependence, marked the final foundational feature of frontier governmentality. In terms of their po­liti­cal relationship with the imperial state, this meant the in­de­pen­dence of ­these ­people was highly circumscribed and contingent. Eco­nom­ically, they ­were rendered dependent on the imperial economy, the tentacles of which reached well beyond the physical confines of the colonial state. Their economic subjugation facilitated the disciplining of frontier inhabitants. This dependence was accomplished through administrative practices such as policing, the expansion of economic intercourse tied to burgeoning patterns of global trade, and the recruitment of bodies into ­labor practices and migratory cir­cuits. ­These practices ensured the relationship between the imperial economy and the “in­de­pen­dent” ­peoples of the frontier was heavi­ly weighted in the former’s f­ avor. Drawn into an economic order wrought by imperialism, they w ­ ere nonetheless denied the ­limited po­liti­cal enfranchisement of colonialism. The economic dependence of frontier p ­ eoples was most con­spic­u­ous in a distinctive and exploitive l­abor regime. ­There ­were two central ele­ ments to this regime: first, a military ­labor market closely tied to policing frontier ­peoples; and second, migratory ­labor flows that cycled frontier bodies into productive ends. The military ­labor market operated by directly 21

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recruiting the men of the frontier into the military forces of the colonial state—as regular troops, as scouts, and as paramilitary units. George Crook’s Apache scouts, the Bedouins of John Glubb’s Desert Patrol, and the Pashtuns of the Punjab Field Force all played central roles in colonial force along its extremities. Relatedly, men ­were recruited into “tribal militias,” which w ­ ere deployed to police the indigenous communities of the frontier from which they ­were recruited. In ­either capacity—­the military or policing one—­these men had their l­abor of vio­lence turned into wage work. The colonial state paid them, and that pay made its way back to the frontier through remittances within kinship networks. Such injections of cash along the frontier monetized the local economy, in turn more closely integrating it with the enveloping imperial one. It had the secondary effect of monitoring the tribesmen while si­mul­ta­neously monetizing them.32 They ­were thus subjected to surveillance at the same time they ­were subjugated to the imperial economy. The second major ele­ment of the frontier ­labor regime, and remittances, was migration. As the frontier economy monetized, it was also impoverished. Frontier dwellers w ­ ere thus forced to pursue strategies to ­counter that impoverishment. With the economy of plunder—­“raiding”— no longer an option, wage l­abor stood as the colonially conditioned alternative.33 Such ­labor would obviously be preferable in the military ­labor market discussed above, but only a small percentage of men could avail themselves of it. ­Others ­were forced to enter cir­cuits of ­labor migration within the colonial or even broader imperial sphere. Consequently, the newly transformed economic man of the frontier could be found at work far away from home. His dependence, and that of his f­ amily, on the imperial economic sphere was thus complete, while at the same time his integration into the colonial po­liti­cal and judicial sphere remained barred. This is not to say the spaces subject to frontier governmentality ­were transformed into ­labor reserves. While this may have been true in individual cases over time, such as the so-­called Bantustans of South Africa, as a general rule the p ­ eoples of the periphery inhabiting ­these spaces did not make a docile ­labor force. Indeed, in many of the areas where such spaces existed, cheap l­abor was imported from elsewhere. In South Africa, Indian coolie ­labor was brought in as they w ­ ere easier to control; in the Desert Southwest of the United States, Mexicans proved more reliable, pliable, and numerous as a workforce than the recalcitrant Apache and other reservation Indians. Nonetheless, the ­peoples of the periphery ­were forced into migratory ­labor cir­cuits in a dependent position on the 22

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

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

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

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

26

N2n Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

N

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

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Waziristan in 2009, Naqeebullah joined the uncounted exodus of frontier tribesmen and ­women rendered “internally displaced persons” since 2004 by a series of military offensives in the FATA. ­These tribesmen, excluded from the Pakistani body politic while residing in the FATA through the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), found themselves subject to continued exclusion, mistreatment, and discrimination once out of ­those areas. This deleterious triumvirate forms the core complaint of the Tahafuz Movement, which demands not the special treatment of Pashtun like Naqeebullah, but rather their treatment as normal Pakistani citizens. In par­tic­u­lar, the movement wants an end to the collective punishment of Pashtuns in the tribal areas, a pernicious mainstay in the governing arsenal of the FATA. In demanding the application of the constitutional protections available to all Pakistanis, and by implication the abrogation of the “special” treatment Pashtuns have been the object of, the Tahafuz Movement is forwarding an innocuously radical agenda that has the potential to threaten the foundations of the Pakistani state. For that postcolonial state, like its colonial pre­de­ces­sor, has never been predicated on the uniform rule of law but rather on the particularized rule of difference. Historically, no place was more dif­fer­ent than the frontier, and no ­people more par­tic­u­lar than the Pashtun. To govern that difference, the British created a special l­egal code known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which applied to all Pashtuns as well as the inhabitants of the frontier districts included in the notification published in the government gazette.4 The FCR encapsulated the tribesmen of the frontier in their own colonially sanctioned customs and traditions. It cut them off from the regular administrative apparatus of the colonial regime, forcing ­those subject to it into a ­legal eddy from which ­there was no recourse or escape. The FCR was the l­egal manifestation of frontier governmentality along the limits of British India. The British characterized the FCR as a culturally conditioned administrative solution to the prob­lem of the Pashtun. That prob­lem, in the eyes of frontier authorities, was that the Pashtuns ­were “savage” tribesmen constitutionally unsuited to civilization inherent in the complex intricacies of colonial law. As postcolonial Pakistan inherited that prob­lem, it kept faith with the colonial solution ­until the constitutional abrogation of the regime in 2018.5 That solution rendered the Pashtun as neither colonial subjects nor postcolonial citizens. Rather, they ­were constructed and maintained as imperial objects who could be acted upon by the colonial and then postcolonial state—­often violently—­with no meaningful judicial relief. The 28

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

50 miles

0 0

100 km

Malakand Agency

N O RT H - W E ST Kabul A F G H A N I S TA N

Kurram Agency

Khyber Agency

Peshawar

FRONTIER

BRITISH

North Waziristan Agency

INDIA

PROVINCE

Ind u

s R.

South Waziristan Agency

BALUCHISTAN

Ra v

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

29

iR

.

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promise of colonial justice, however ephemeral, was intentionally foreclosed to the Pashtun who instead ­were characterized as “in­de­pen­dent tribes” inhabiting the liminal lands of the tribal agencies. ­These agencies lay beyond the edge of civilization in the settled districts of British India and before the international boundary with Af­ghan­i­stan that was constituted by the Durand Line. It is precisely this legacy—­the legacy of frontier governmentality—­more than the traditions of police vio­lence in Karachi since the 1980s, which is responsible for Naqeebullah Mehsud’s death.

nNnNnN The liminal lands of British India’s North-­West Frontier, more specifically ­those which t­ oday mark the border between Pakistan and Af­ghan­i­ stan, ­were considered by colonial authorities as a “savage,” violent, and chaotic space since well before the arrival of British administration in 1849. Many still consider it such ­today, repeating colonial tropes and cementing them in the popu­lar imagination.6 Delimiting an ecologically and ethnographically diverse region ­running nearly 1,200 miles, the frontier ranges from the high Pamirs and Hindu Kush along its far northern reaches to the dry desert ridges in the southern marches of Baluchistan. The mountainous topography impoverished the p ­ eoples of this periphery, forcing them to develop multiple coping strategies, including transhumance, nomadism, and settled agriculture on the valley floors. The hills had the dual effect of dividing the p ­ eoples of the region both from one another, as well as from the lowland rulers who claimed authority over them. This in turn made frontier inhabitants po­ liti­ cally recalcitrant to rule by plainsmen. When combined with the land’s relative poverty, the frontier proved an administrative money pit—­a fiscal sink in terms of governing costs. The highland realm included diverse congeries of socie­ties composing equally diverse constellations of po­liti­cal communities, ranging from feudatory princely states to “in­de­pen­dent” tribal groups.7 Most prominent among the frontier’s inhabitants w ­ ere the Pashtuns who populated its northern reaches. They proved obstinate for the governing authorities of the north Indian plains. The prob­lem of the Pashtuns was a long-­standing one first for Mughal, then Sikh, and ultimately British colonial authorities. So prominent ­were the Pashtuns in the British colonial imagination that in constructing their conceptual understandings of the frontier they largely “Pathanized” this space, demonstrating l­ittle recognition of the complexity of the frontier’s ethnic patchwork.8 That complexity included the Baluch, who inhabited the southern reaches of the frontier. As colo30

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

nial authority seeped into their realms in the latter half of the nineteenth ­century, the Raj acknowledged the difference between the Pashtuns and Baluch, often constructing the image of each in opposition to the other. The Pashtuns w ­ ere supposedly republican in spirit and anarchical in social solidarity, making them difficult to control. In contrast, the Baluch embraced a social hierarchy that made it pos­si­ble to rule them through their khans, maliks, and chiefs.9 ­Today, both the Pashtun and the Baluch are subject to continued discrimination by the Pakistani state.10 British administration of India’s North-­West Frontier was predicated not only on a par­ tic­ u­ lar understanding of its inhabitants—­ there ­ were other “tribal” and “savage” ­peoples within the bounds of British India—­but also on an inimitable conception of this space. Rather than a clear line—­a border—­dividing in­de­pen­dent and sovereign states, the frontier presented a zone. In this zone, imperial pretensions to power, not to mention the daily exercise on which they rested, unevenly manifested themselves. ­There was a certain point, somewhere along the ridges surrounding the vari­ous passes into the Afghan kingdom, where the administrative power of the Raj definitively ended.11 Conversely, its full might was exercised in the plains populated by settled agricultural populations who ­were easily taxed. As one administrator put it, “The fact is, that the territory in possession of the British Government runs up to the very foot of the hills which have, for obvious reasons of con­ve­nience, been called the frontier.”12 Between t­hese settled districts and the ridgeline, which in 1893 became the border between Af­ghan­is­ tan and British India, lay the “tribal areas.” ­These w ­ ere inhabited by “in­de­pen­dent” tribes whom the British at times claimed authority over, but not control. The British thus created a bifurcated frontier, with an administrative one marking the end of colonial control, and a po­liti­cal one marking the end of imperial rule. The space between ­these bound­aries was an imperial space, and its inhabitants ­were imperial objects rather than colonial subjects like the Indians of the South Asian plains.13 The dynamic and often convoluted relationship between imperial and colonial was put in stark relief along the frontier. The colonial state was one embedded within the imperial proj­ect. Nonetheless, the two ­were distinct. The former both represented and was embodied by the administrative structure of rule. The latter entailed the po­liti­cal pretensions to power. The imperial realm included the colonial one in its totality, yet extended beyond it to include areas of informal control as well as influence. The frontier between British India and the Afghan lands was one space where 31

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the relationship, or rather distinction between the two, became clear. The colonial state ended with its regular administrative structure at the foot of the hills. From ­there the imperial realm assumed its full form, with claims of po­liti­cal paramountcy, which lacked the bureaucratic l­ egal scaffolding marking the lowland colonial realm. Formal colonial practice gave way h ­ ere to informal imperial custom; control found itself supplanted by influence. ­These ­were the tribal areas. What distinguished the tribal areas from other anomalies within the British Indian po­liti­cal topography was their location. Beyond the edge of colonial authority, they sat uncomfortably between British India on the one hand and the lands becoming Af­ghan­i­stan on the other. The former, though entailing a diverse range of po­liti­cal possibilities, was ultimately a colonial state subject to the paramount authority of the British government. The latter was rather less defined. It was neither a protectorate nor a de­pen­dency of British India, but nor was it a fully formed, in­de­pen­dent state in the Eu­ro­pean understanding of the term.14 Rather, it was an in­de­ pen­dent indigenous polity at times subject to, and at ­others resistant of, the influence of neighboring British India. What this meant for the tribal areas was that in many ways they ­were neither fish nor fowl. They ­were not a buffer between two European-­like states, nor between two indigenous polities. Rather they ­were a liminal space that sat astride the colonial and the not-­colonial world. It was this liminality—at the edges of authority—­which distinguished them from other seemingly similarly constituted spaces in British India. And in that liminality lay both opportunity and peril for the colonial state and the inhabitants of this realm. The language of liminality employed by the Raj was the rhetorical pretense of the tribemen’s “in­de­pen­dence,” one colonial officials ­were superficially at pains to honor. At the same time, however, it insisted on the bounds of that in­de­pen­dence. Addressing the issue in Parliament, Lord Lansdowne, then Secretary of State for War and himself previously Viceroy of India (1888–1894), insisted that To talk of tribal in­de­pen­dence is, I cannot help thinking, a ­little misleading. ­There can be no complete in­de­pen­dence in the case of a ­people that has not the power of transferring its allegiance in any direction it pleases. We know that that power is not given to ­these Frontier tribes, and I think, therefore, it is better, perhaps, not to speak of them as in­de­pen­dent. That condition of qualified in­de­pen­ dence [italics mine] is a very common one all through the borders 32

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

of India, not only on the western, but also on the eastern side, on the borders of Burmah and Siam.15 Lansdowne’s characterization of the tribesmen’s in­de­pen­dence as “qualified” did not go uncontested ­either in the House of Lords or along the Afghan frontier. Lord Ripon, himself a former Viceroy (1880–1884), characterized Lansdowne’s construction of in­de­pen­dence as a mere “shadow,” at odds both with the tribes’ and the Raj’s understandings of it.16 Likewise, Lord Northbrook, another former Viceroy (1872–1876), quoted the Earl of Kimberley’s characterization that the Durand Convention of 1893, which agreed on the border between British India and Af­ghan­i­stan, “did not affect [the tribes’] in­de­pen­dence.” Northbrook insisted Kimberley’s opinion to be dispositive as he had been the Secretary of State for India at the time of the agreement.17 Further, no less a frontier authority than Robert Sandeman, the eponymous founder of the so-­called Sandeman system and the personification of frontier governmentality along the North-­West Frontier, was referenced by both Lansdowne and his parliamentary opponents. Northbrook approvingly quoted Sandeman’s opposition to attempts to govern the frontier inhabitants: “I should consider it am ­ istake to make any attempt to include within our control the fringe of in­de­pen­dent tribes which lie between ourselves and Af­ghan­i­stan proper.”18 Three weeks before the debate in the Lords, the Commons had addressed the same issue, with the same confusion attending. The Liberal opposition, introducing an amendment to the Queen’s speech, denounced the government’s actions along the frontier, including the transgression of tribal territories and disregard of their in­de­pen­dence.19 While Lord Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, acknowledged his use of the term “in­de­pen­dent” in reference to the frontier tribesmen, like his ministerial counterpart Lord Lansdowne he dissimulated its meaning. When asked directly if he denied the tribesmen’s in­de­pen­dence, he responded, “Yes, I deny in­de­pen­dence. I deny it ­because it is capable of indefinite explanation.” In this vein, he chastised the Liberals, arguing that “when the Leader of the Opposition and the Front Opposition Bench w ­ ere asked to define the meaning of the word ‘in­de­pen­dent’ in regard to Ireland, they admitted it was altogether beyond them.” Yet for the eve­ning’s debate they had introduced a motion regarding the in­de­pen­dent tribes wherein “the definition of the word hereafter w ­ ill govern—is to govern—­the ­whole of our frontier regulations.” Acknowledging his use of the term, Lord Hamilton noted that “it is perfectly true that the word ‘in­de­pen­dence’ occurs 33

RULING THE SAVAGE PERIPHERY

in my dispatches more than once, but it is always explained by the words with which it is associated.”20 But Lord Hamilton’s words did l­ittle to ­either sway the opposition or quell the debate regarding the meaning of in­de­pen­dence. Sir W. Lawson, MP for Cumberland and Cockermouth, responded that “­these tribes are in­de­pen­dent, they ­were in­de­pen­dent, and I believe they ­will continue to be in­de­pen­dent; and when we talk about the Frontier War we must always remember this, Mr. Speaker, that ­these wars and raids are being carried on beyond the Frontier. It is not a Frontier war; it is a war beyond the Frontier.”21 The lack of Parliamentary consensus, or rather uncertainty about the meaning for the tribesmen’s in­de­pen­dence is telling. Clearly, in the eyes of imperial authorities it was a rhetorical sail that could be unfurled and honored, or conversely tacked and ignored as po­liti­cal and strategic winds necessitated. The tone and tenor of the debate, repeatedly invoking ideas of tribal in­de­pen­dence, “savagery,” and the onerous costs, as well as cultural impropriety of regular administration enforced among the tribesmen, reflected the confused calculus of the imperial imagination. Each side sought po­liti­cal advantage in their characterization of tribal in­de­pen­dence. Yet neither seemed to consider fully the lasting implications of such a discussion across Britain’s empire of law—be it along the Afghan frontier or along the limits of Her Majesty’s African colonies.22 For although the topic of the day, brought to the Houses’ attentions by recent “fanatical uprisings” along the North-­West Frontier, may have been specific to the Pashtuns, the content of the debate most certainly was not.23 ­These ­were not the only “savage,” “in­de­pen­dent” tribesmen living along the periphery of the empire. Their in­de­pen­dence, and the construction and treatment of such, was replicated in similarly situated spaces around its limits. The fact that in­de­pen­dence was the currency of power along the frontier, even if “qualified,” has impor­tant ramifications. For while Lord Lansdowne might have seen in­de­pen­dence as divisible, this was not an opinion shared by the empire’s ­legal minds of the late nineteenth ­century, most importantly Sir Henry Maine. One of the leading ­legal theorists of the empire during the nineteenth ­century, Maine wrote and lectured extensively about the evolutionary development of jurisprudence, publishing his most famous work Ancient Law in 1861. His ideas and public stature brought him to India in 1862 where he served as the ­legal member of the Viceroy’s council for the remainder of the de­cade.24 During that period, following the massive 1857 uprising against British rule in India, he strenuously argued for the conservation of “traditional society,” which he saw 34

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

as the bedrock of social order and stability in the colonial realm.25 With regard to the question of sovereignty, in one of his most consequential opinions, the Kathiawar Case of 1864, Maine insisted that though sovereignty may be divisible, in­de­pen­dence was most decidedly not. Maine wrote that “although the expression ‘partial in­de­pen­dence’ may be popularly used, it is technically incorrect.”26 While Lansdowne’s pronouncement of “qualified in­de­pen­dence” could be viewed as simply the legally imprecise vernacular of Parliamentary debate, the administrators of British India knew better. And knowing better, they continued to refer to the tribes of the North-­West Frontier as “in­de­pen­dent.” The tribesmen’s “in­de­pen­dence” stood in stark contrast to the other “hill polities” to which they could be compared, namely the princely states.27 Numbering over 550 and covering roughly a third of British India at in­de­pen­dence in 1947, the princes ­were tied to the Raj, and thence the British Crown, through formal treaty relationships.28 ­These relationships ­were the foundation on which the British Indian government built a po­ liti­cal order of layered sovereign arrangements where the Raj stood as the proverbial primus inter pares among an assemblage of po­liti­cal relations.29 While de facto the Raj’s ultimate, overriding authority was never in doubt, paramountcy meant that in places on the Indian subcontinent de jure it was attenuated in ­favor of local practice and personnel. The Raj abjured its sovereignty for paramountcy, allowing native princes the right to rule within their fiefdoms while claiming exclusive rights over foreign relations, defense, and communications.30 In many ways, the Raj’s sovereign prerogatives along the North-­West Frontier resembled its assertion of paramountcy vis-­à-­vis the princely states. Yet while British authority over the princely states was recognized both de jure and de facto—­ unlike the frontier tribesmen, the princely states w ­ ere never referred to as “independent”—it was contested in both senses along the frontier. The tribal areas constituting the frontier w ­ ere dif­fer­ent—­both constitutionally and conceptually. While ­there has been outstanding work detailing the diversity of imperial anomalies and the consequently “lumpy” and layered character of imperial sovereignty, ­these studies obscure the distinction of the frontier realm.31 Whereas many of ­these studies focus on indigenous polities, relatively few consider the governance of indigenous p ­ eoples in the absence of such legible polities.32 In the princely states, especially in the epoch of “traditional society” marking the Raj’s governance post-1857, the Government of India found a legible, if inferior polity ­under the rule of a single office of authority—­the prince—­through which 35

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imperial power could be channeled and to which l­imited powers could be delegated. Such del­e­ga­tion rested on ideas of divisible sovereignty marking imperial governance as articulated by Maine. The tribal areas ­were altogether dif­fer­ent, not simply in degree but rather in kind. The Raj had no treaty relationship with recognized princes ­here.33 Consequently it did not indulge in the pretense of delegating authority to a constitutionally recognized constituent sovereign. Instead, it maintained the pretense that the tribes inhabiting this realm w ­ ere “in­de­pen­dent,” demonstrating the Raj’s marked ambivalence in its assertions of power h ­ ere. The rhetorical differentiation of t­hese spaces—­sovereign princely states and in­de­pen­dent frontier tribes—is reflected not only by the language used to describe each but also by the amount of ­legal and bureaucratic attention (as opposed to violent military attention) they respectively garnered. The princely states w ­ ere collectively the object of intense l­egal considerations among both administrators and l­egal theorists.34 Henry Maine and C. L. Tupper w ­ ere just two of the many colonial officials-­cum-­public intellectuals who dedicated significant attention to the place of princely states within the Indian Empire’s l­ egal topography. And some of the most impor­tant ­legal treatises of imperial rule during this period w ­ ere dedicated 35 in significant part to the position of the princely states. They w ­ ere less so the object of military intervention. Armed interventions into princely states ­were a rare occurrence, and almost unheard of post-1857. In contrast, the tribal areas earned no similar l­egal attention, but rather ­were the almost annual object of military expedition. The 1898 Parliamentary debate marks one of the few moments when the l­egal and po­liti­cal significance of the frontier tribes’ “in­de­pen­dence” was explic­itly considered. For an empire that prided itself on its attention to the law and its implications, this is a striking disparity. The frontier and its inhabitants stood outside the colonial state—­ physically and administratively—­but nonetheless within the imperial sphere. British governance of the frontier both reflected and constituted ­these realities for the space and its p ­ eoples. While initially, the establishment of British control and self-­confidence by the latter part of the nineteenth c­ entury facilitated the extension of institutions of rule utilized in other parts of peninsular India, their shortcomings along the frontier quickly became apparent. The objects of such rule, namely, the p ­ eople inhabiting barren spaces on the periphery of empire, w ­ ere invariably “tribal” and thus “savage.” Colonial officials viewed them as neither interested in nor ready for “civilization,” which was delivered through 36

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

the precepts and exercise of the law. The former was the currency with which the colonial state justified its rule, the latter the means by which it enforced that rule. More impor­tant than the tribesmen’s ill-­preparedness to be tutored in civilization by the colonial state was the need to protect them from the corrupting influences of colonial society, namely the dangerous potential for politicization latent in colonial modernity. A new administrative response was required for the par­tic­u­lar challenges of the frontier.

nNnNnN To govern this seemingly ungovernable space and rule ­ these unruly ­peoples of the periphery, the FCR was promulgated in 1872 by extraordinary executive authority granted the Viceroy.36 ­Under the FCR, the inhabitants of this frontier ­were to be governed by their own “traditions,” au­then­tic cultural practices considered such by the state. The Regulation effectively separated the tribesmen from the colonial body politic, creating a space of judicial reservation ­later po­liti­cally formalized with the advent of the frontier’s tribal agencies from 1878 onward.37 This fashioning of administration to local circumstances—­ruling colonial subjects indirectly through indigenous institutions—­was driven by a number of ­factors. Continual pressures for imperial austerity marking colonial governance meant that ruling indirectly was more often than not a euphemism for ruling on the cheap. Imperial hegemony could be projected through local leaders rather than the expensive apparatus of the colonial state. Further, administrators believed such indirect rule more effective as it mediated colonial control through local institutions and personnel legitimate in the eyes of indigenous socie­ties. Colonial authorities thus economized and embedded rule along the imperial frontier by foregoing the extension of regular administration. The FCR purported to answer the unique challenges of administering the frontier. Reissued twice, the steel frame of the Raj was reinforced with ­legal girders in 1887 and 1901 as the new versions of the Regulation became both more detailed and draconian while its general thrust remained essentially unchanged. The most impor­tant ele­ment of the Regulation was its creation of an alternative judiciary for tribesmen, one essentially and intentionally sealed from the colonial judiciary.38 Deputy Commissioners (DCs) could refer tribesmen accused of murder or “other heinous offence[s]” to adjudication by elders, according to “Pathan or Biloch usage” on the grounds of insufficient evidence for conviction in colonial courts or that ordinary procedures would prove inexpedient.39 The 1887 37

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

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

hujras.46 Exclusion and banishment ­orders could include persons whom the DC deemed “dangerous fanatics.”47 Such “fanatics” w ­ ere not the only ones subject to banishment. The 1872 Regulation exiled tribesmen from British territory if they threatened to pursue a blood feud.48 The 1887 Regulation went further, allowing the DC to intervene directly into tribal society. Any disputes “likely to cause a blood-­feud” could be referred ­either to a Council of Elders or a colonial court to prevent its outbreak.49 Specifically targeting Pashtuns, this blood-­ feud jurisdiction reflected the colonial state’s belief that “the criterion of tribal unity resides . . . ​in the obligations of blood revenge.”50 Blood feuds ­were the currency and marker of the tribesmen’s collective “savagery,” and as such they resonated beyond the bounds of British India’s North-­West Frontier.51 Colonial officials si­mul­ta­neously bemoaned and valorized the vio­lence of such feuds, insisting them to be “a source of pride and glory and an adjunct to the respectability of decent families.”52 In the eyes of the colonial state, the inevitable consequence of blood feuds in frontier society was murder, which had reached seemingly epidemic levels. The annual reports on the administration of justice along the frontier devoted considerable space to the number of murders throughout frontier districts. Most frustrating to frontier officers was not simply the vio­lence itself, but also their impotence to judicially address it. Murder rates climbed unabated. The evidentiary standards of colonial courts ensured that successful prosecutions proved difficult, with as few as one in six convicted.53 The Pashtuns’ valuation of vio­lence, and killing in par­tic­ul­ar when perpetrated in pursuance of a blood feud, made gathering incriminating testimony—­the key evidence used in colonial courts—­ virtually impossible.54 Punishments meted out on ­those actually convicted, which were limited to fines in the 1872 version, had l­ittle deterrent effect.55 The 1887 and 1901 versions enhanced the punishments the DC and the Council of Elders could impose, additionally allowing whipping and transportation.56 While the FCR in the main was explicit about the institutions of tribal justice and punishments, it remained ­silent as to what exactly constituted an offense.57 Most offenses ­were ­those of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1861. But such use of the IPC contradicted the Regulation’s ostensible deference to “Pathan and Baloch usage.” ­There was one notable derogation from the IPC—­the FCR’s treatment of adultery.58 Paradoxically, the procedure and punishment for adultery was brought into the colonial courts, while other crimes ­were excluded from them. In ­doing so, the Regulation si­mul­ta­neously abrogated ideas of collective punishment for adultery, 39

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

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

demands of British settlers elsewhere.62 While such concerns w ­ ere paramount in the empire’s colonies of settlement, where the rights and liberties of En­glishmen needed to be protected from the avarice of state officials, they also had traction in the colonies on the other side of the global color line, though for dif­ fer­ ent reasons. While the authors of the Frontier Crimes Regulation had no concern about stepping on the liberties of the Pashtun and Baluch frontiersmen, they ­were concerned at the prospect of overreach by zealous frontier officers. ­These men saw themselves as a breed apart, unencumbered by the stultifying strictures of the governing practices and norms of the plains. The colonial state had good reason to be wary. Collectively, frontier administrators had a potted history, which at its most extreme led to invasions of neighboring Af­ghan­i­stan.63 More insidious though was the intimacy of frontier officers with their charges, creating fears of at the very least cultural, if not racial miscegenation, the likes of which produced Sir Robert Warburton.64 While frontier officials cultivated a cult of personal administration, such ran deeply at odds with the requirements of an increasingly institutionalized, bureaucratic, and regulation-­bound administrative state. The “man on the spot” could exist in this world, but only as long as he was constrained and properly knew his place. The reports ­were the mechanism by which the administration policed him, binding him through paper and the archive it produced to the constraints of ostensibly law-­bound colonial rule that, though creating space for individual discretion, severely circumscribed it within clearly delimited bounds. The paper Raj asserted its authority over the personal Raj. This move fit the narrative that colonial governance replaced the irrational personal dictates of oriental despots with the rational institutional channels of colonial bureaucrats. The FCR was as much about domesticating colonial servants along the edges of authority and beyond the immediate reach of their superiors as it was about encapsulating the Afghans. The latter w ­ ere enclosed in and policed by the colonially sanctioned traditions; the former by their reporting requirements and the imperial archives constructed by such reports. By the late nineteenth c­ entury, the detailed reports regularly submitted by DCs on the workings of the FCR ­were collated into the annual “Reports on the Administration of Criminal Justice.” ­These included standardized ­tables enumerating the number of cases disposed of, in what venue, with what result, ­under what sections of relevant law, and with the number of litigants involved. Nearly all included a “statement of offences reported, and of persons tried, committed and acquitted for each class of offence in 41

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the Punjab during the year” and it detailed the returns u ­ nder no less than thirteen separate headings.65 The reports further listed the number of cases adjudicated u ­ nder the FCR, ­those referred to jirgahs and the conviction rate ­under such proceedings, as well as the level of fines imposed by ­these “traditional” bodies of tribal adjudicature. The level of detail ­these reports required elicited complaints from at least one District Magistrate, who grumbled to his superiors, Iw ­ ill only say that it is impossible for the officer who is Collector, District Judge, and District Magistrate as well as Deputy Commissioner, to work the new Regulation satisfactorily. . . . ​Frontier cases, reports, and so called Po­liti­cal work which appears in no return, takes up much time, which in other districts could be devoted to ordinary Magisterial work.66 The administrator’s list of offices, concentrating as it did nearly all governing functions in the hands of one individual, made a mockery of colonial pretensions to the rule of law. Through the paper trail, the FCR sought to reign over the “men on the spot” as much as it sought to rule over ­those objects of the law. Yet the rec­ords themselves reveal a striking paradox of colonial administration along the frontier. The Council of Elders was not required to document proceedings or judgments. And t­hose proceedings, in the eyes of frontier administrators, w ­ ere riven with irregularities and shortcomings. The District Magistrate of Kohat denounced the jirgahs’ regular resort to trial by oath, whereby the accused, “with or without comparagators,” simply swore his innocence, leading to a nearly 50 ­percent acquittal rate in his district.67 In reviewing the workings of the law, H. M. Plowden complained that the jirgahs followed “no formal rec­ord of evidence and no ­legal rules of evidence.” The lack of such rec­ords virtually ensured the impossibility of appeal from the decision of such bodies.68 Yet they also confirmed colonial tropes of “savagery” and lack of civilization in that the tribesmen’s traditional mechanisms of justice remained illiterate spaces. As such, they necessarily remained unjust, a point stressed by Plowden’s observation regarding the impossibility of appeal. It was left to the colonial state, in the form of the District Magistrate (who was also the Deputy Commissioner), to bring the word, and thus the law, to this “savage” space through reporting. The colonial rule of law was therefore constituted by its own rec­ord. While the reports and their rec­ord of crime and punishment offer one entrée into the colonial archive and rule of law, they are not the only one. 42

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

The other major generator of paper was the issue of whom the FCR ­applied to. The jurisdictional reach—­who fell within the ambit of the Regulation—­and how that reach was articulated offers perhaps the most revelatory of the contradictions of the colonial and postcolonial proj­ect. And that reach, though initially outlined in the Regulation itself and expanded through notification in the gazetteer, was ultimately, though rarely, contested in court. The Regulation’s application to tribal areas was based on inhabitants’ ethnic identity rather than the state’s claims over territory.69 The Raj abjured a territorial claim to jurisdiction along the frontier, which would undermine its insistence that ­these ­were indeed “in­de­pen­dent” tribal areas, instead extending its reach to all tribesmen. The Regulation was applied in its totality to all “Pathans and Baluchis,” including t­ hose in the tribal areas, as well as “such other classes as the Local Government, with the previous sanction of the Governor-­General in Council, may, by notification in the official Gazette, declare subject thereto.”70 According to the Regulation, “The word ‘class . . .’ includes any persons who may collectively be described in a notification . . . ​as persons subject to all or any of the provisions of this Regulations.”71 This presented an imperial tautology in its purest form. The Regulation could, on extension, be applied to notified classes, ­those classes being constituted by such notification. Later notifications extended the supposedly self-­ evident limits of ­“Pathan and Baluch” classes to include “tenants, servants, clansmen, or retainers of any kind” as well as “all persons . . . ​accused of being jointly concerned in the commission or abetment of an offence with persons of the preceding classes.”72 Notably, the additional classes enumerated by the notification ­were differentiated by their economic activity. The equivalence ­here between occupation and class-­cum-­social status mirrored a similar intellectual exercise vis­i­ble in other examples of administrative categorization, most prominently the Punjab and all-­India censuses. It points t­ oward the creation of the po­liti­cal economy as a space of governmentality in which “tribal” identities ­were inscribed. Ultimately, the Raj applied the FCR to virtually the entire population of the frontier, in British, “in­de­pen­dent,” and Afghan territories. This presented an inversion of extraterritorial jurisdiction whereby the British ­Indian state claimed the right to regulate and try the subjects of another state, as well as subjects of no state (the “in­de­pen­dent tribes”) residing outside British territory. The claim of jurisdiction over both Afghans and members of in­de­pen­dent tribes reflected the attitude of the Raj t­ oward ­these spaces as po­liti­cal entities. Unlike the princely states within its domains, 43

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

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

c­ ollective identities bounded by colonial understandings of culture. While the bordering of the frontier ultimately assumed a territorial expression, it was a consequence rather than a cause. That cause was tribal identity bounded by “custom and tradition.” Ambiguity regarding the Regulation’s supposedly self-­evident reach proved a source of significant intervention by the colonial judiciary. Challenging its jurisdiction was almost the only ave­nue into colonial courts, as once a party fell within the net of the FCR, it had virtually no escape. This in part accounts for the relative paucity of court cases regarding the FCR. At the same time, it puts on display the creative agency ­those subject to the Regulation employed to loosen its grasp and challenge the colonial state. Of the few cases regarding the Frontier Crimes Regulation that made it to the colonial courts, nearly all dealt with the issue of jurisdiction.77 Much to the chagrin of frontier administrators and colonial authorities more generally, the colonial judiciary had a tendency to scrutinize the Regulation’s l­egal wordsmithing, arguably too closely. For instance, in Latif Wali Khan v. Empress, the Chief Court of Peshawar held that sections of the revised 1887 Regulation promulgated that year could not apply in blanket form to all Pashtuns and Baluch tribesmen without special notification by the Punjab government.78 While this elicited howls of protest from the government generally and frontier officers particularly, they begrudgingly acknowledged the court’s reading to be technically correct. And therein lay the rub. For the British Empire claimed itself to be an empire of law, and as such an empire subject to the limits of the law, regardless of their administrative incon­ve­nience. While the Peshawar Chief Court’s ruling was meddlesome, it was nowhere near as potentially destabilizing of frontier rule and the colonial order as Empress v. Muhammad Umar Khan et al. The issue before the court was ­whether convictions ­under §17 of the FCR of 1887, which removed proceedings from the Sessions Court and placed them in a jirgah, could stand despite the lack of a formal notification regarding the revised ­ eople Regulation.79 And indeed the court found that they could not. P could only be held accountable for breaking laws they ­were presumed to have been informed of through notification. This ruling had potentially dire consequences if brought to its logical conclusion as it invalidated all jirgah convictions, including ­those for murder, ­under this section of the law between March and November 1887. The po­liti­cal Raj found itself subject to the vicissitudes of the judicial Raj. While the ruling initially led to a g­ reat deal of handwringing among colonial officials, the m ­ atter was 45

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quickly put to rest when the executive satisfied the requirements of the judiciary by publishing a notification that retroactively applied to the period in question. In honoring the letter of the law, the Raj breached its spirit by bureaucratically backdating its applicability. While in many ways a routine example of the hy­poc­risy of colonial rule, it illustrates the importance of l­egal form to the Raj. Though the scales of justice w ­ ere forever tipped in its f­avor, the colonial state nonetheless paid heed to the rhe­toric of its blind fairness.80 In addition to cases regarding the FCR’s jurisdiction and notification, the law’s treatment of adultery, which it automatically channeled to colonial courts, produced some even more dangerous rulings as far as the colonial state was concerned. Though few adultery cases ever reached the colonial courts, one that did was Bhola Ram v. Emperor, where a Hindu resident of Muzzafargah District was accused of adultery.81 The case applied the FCR, a culturally conditioned response to governing the Frontier’s Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen, to Hindus “ordinarily resident of ­those districts.” In extending the Regulation to a Hindu in a case of adultery, a section of the FCR specifically targeting Pashtun ideas of masculinity and honor, the Raj imploded the categories of difference on which it constructed its rule. Yet Bhola Ram’s under­lying premise—­that Hindus could be rendered Pashtuns through long exposure to tribal norms—­was by no means unique, nor indeed novel. Over a quarter c­ entury ­earlier, A. H. Benton, a Sessions judge in Peshawar, addressed this very issue, stating “most of the inhabitants [of the frontier] are Pathanised sufficiently to render it desirable that the Regulation should apply to them. This is the case even with Hindus, some of whom have their blood feuds and commit murders just like Pathans.”82 Benton’s musings, when paired with Bhola Ram, clearly demonstrated that though the FCR was a culturally conditioned answer to the prob­lem of the Pashtun, the colonial judiciary did not re­spect the limits of ethnic exclusivity. Even the seemingly permanent, impenetrable, and self-­evident “classes” of Pashtun and Baluch identities w ­ ere subject to l­egal loopholes of the state’s own making. Inhabitants of the frontier could be “Pathanized”—­rendered “savage”—­through long exposure to the air of the hills. But whereas the judiciary did not let the distinctions of social groupings stand in the way of the administration of the law, it did require that ­those subject to the Regulation’s reach be notified of it. Colonial administrators ­were themselves cognizant of the imprecise bound­aries of Pashtun identity, despite their reliance on it as a discrete 46

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

and firm ­legal category. ­There was ongoing debate about how to define both “Pathan” as well as “Baluch.” One suggestion was to consider all speakers of Pashto as Pashtuns.83 The 1903 Administration Report of the North-­West Frontier Province characterized “Pathan” as a social category based on property, a criterion that stood in stark contrast to the racial classification employed in the All-­India Census a mere two years prior.84 Although cognizant of the permeability of the category of Pashtun, officials expressed l­ittle if any concern regarding its use as a jurisdictional head of the Regulation. Instead, they noted the absence of such an ethnic classification would push the Regulation’s reach onto a territorially delimited jurisdiction, which would have pernicious effects. In a report regarding revisions of the 1872 Regulation, Plowden noted with alarm the unintended, though wholly predictable, consequences of resting the Regulation’s jurisdiction solely on a territorial footing. He cited two cases that had fallen ­under the 1872 Regulation he considered quite inappropriate. The first was the wife of a Gurkha soldier accused of adultery against whom the court applied the FCR as “local law.” The second regarded a “Bengali babu [who] had instigated the attempt to assassinate Major Wintle.” Referred to a jirgah, presumably for lack of evidence, on the grounds he resided in the covered territories, the babu found himself convicted and fined Rs. 10 lakhs. Considering his attempt on the life of a British officer, this was a less-­than-­ideal outcome in the eyes of Plowden and other colonial officials who would have rather seen him convicted in a colonial court and presumably hanged. Plowden wrote wryly that “it is difficult to affirm that the framers of the Regulation contemplated the trial of a total stranger, such as an Eu­ro­pean or a Bengali, by a Pashtun Jirgah.”85 It was precisely to avoid such outcomes in ­future that A. H. Benton and the justice in Bhola Ram abjured a territorial claim to jurisdiction, instead opting for an ethnic one based on the belief that all frontier inhabitants could be “Pathanized.” Strikingly though, their ethnic jurisprudence produced the very result Plowden warned against. Colonial subjects themselves understood the opportunities the porousness of supposedly fixed ethnic identities opened to them for exploiting judicial cracks in the colonial façade. The FCR’s focus on be­hav­iors supposedly unique to the tribal and “savage” Pashtuns worked in in­ter­est­ing ways when in the hands of resourceful litigants. Whereas Bhola Ram found himself subject to the strictures of the Regulation, despite his Hindu faith, for the transgression of sexual mores, the parties to Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan discovered that the Regulation offered them alternative 47

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judicial venues through which to pursue their claims.86 Though clearly Muslims, one can only guess if e­ ither, or both, of the Khan parties w ­ ere Pashtuns as the court report is s­ ilent on this point. Regardless, in the course of civil litigation, one of the parties, when faced with an adverse ruling in the colonial courts, declared the issue at hand was not a property dispute, but rather a blood feud. By invoking such sanguinary language, which fell squarely within the remit of the Regulation, the disadvantaged litigant was able to access a new l­ egal forum—­the jirgah—in which to pursue his claim. He used the prejudices of the colonial state, codified in law, to his advantage. This despite the fact that regardless of the men’s ethnic identity, the properties at issue—­some houses—­sat in the city of Multan, the main municipality of the Dera Ghazi Khan district. Multan was no village backwater, nor part of the remote tribal lands in the hills that the FCR was initially designed to regulate. Rather, it was one of the main commercial entrepôts along the river Indus. By creating an alternate and enclosed l­egal sphere in which to encapsulate the tribesmen, the colonial state had given at least a few of them access to multiple jurisdictions, which if sufficiently savvy, they could turn to their own advantage. The jurisdictional openings occasioned by the use of ethnic categories of “Pathan” and “Baluch” reflected an inherent instability in the foundations of colonial difference. The colonial regime was predicated, at least theoretically, on impermeable social categories policed by the state. For the ethnographic state to work, the distinct identities by which it divided and ruled the populace needed to be both clearly demarcated and permanent in character. ­After all, according to that state, such differences ­were not the construct of colonial administrators, but rather the recognition of eternal social realities predating the advent of British authority on the subcontinent. For the good of the state and society, the colonial administration needed to re­spect such categories through their inclusion in the imperial architecture. Even in instances, and t­here ­were many, when the colonial state changed the categories of classification, ­these reflected the state’s imperfect knowledge of Indian society, which was continually improved by the ceaseless documentation of that society through the arms of the ethnographic state.87 In contrast, Benton’s supposition that Hindus could be “Pathanized” acknowledged that social identity was subject to the pressures of social environment, and could thus change accordingly. Benton, in other words, implied a world of social fluidity rather than fixity, a position firmly at odds with the administrative zeitgeist and needs of the Raj. 48

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

If followed to its logical conclusion, Benton’s holding had the potential to undermine the ­whole imperial edifice. The British Raj in par­tic­u­lar, and the colonial enterprise more generally, relied on the state’s administrative abilities to identify, group, and rule subject ­peoples as members of discrete communal collectives that w ­ ere at the same time both self-­evident and hermetically sealed. The Raj went to ­great lengths to perfect its ability to properly capture and cata­logue ­these collectives, with each incarnation of decennial census between 1871 and 1901 significantly revising its classificatory schema. Yet Benton’s logic implied this was all for naught, for, in his mind at least, long exposure to the cultural practices and social pressures of surrounding populations could enable, if not enforce, assimilation. In other words, cultural difference could be learned, a­ dopted, and affected rather than being an inherent part of personhood within a larger community. If frontier Hindus could be made Pashtuns, why could Bengalis not be Anglicized, or, even more dangerous for imperial prestige, En­glishmen (or worse w ­ omen) be Indianized? This was exactly the potentiality Plowden forewarned, and which Benton’s jurisprudence portended. The horror and danger to colonial rule was self-­evident. Thus while Benton’s position recognized social realities as they ­were, his utterance of such transgressed lines of authority not to be crossed. While posing an existential threat to colonial rule in the abstract, more immediately Benton’s extension of the FCR to a Hindu on the basis of his person rather than place pointed to a fundamental tension in the law’s jurisdictional reach. The Regulation’s ethnically based personal jurisdiction, applying to all “Pathans and Baluch,” was separate from its territorial jurisdiction, which was delimited by the Raj through notification. If all residents of the frontier areas—­settled and unsettled agencies—­were subject to the Regulation, then the personal jurisdiction seemed redundant. Conversely, if all inhabitants of this space ­were “Pathans” (or Baluch), at least behaviorally, pursuing blood feuds as the litigants in the Drehan Khan case claimed to have done, then the territorial jurisdiction head of the Regulation was unnecessary. Benton’s holding made a mockery of the supposedly discrete communal and ethnic identities by which p ­ eople lived, and could be identified by the colonial state. As such, it implicitly undermined the FCR as a particularist piece of legislation culturally conditioned to deal with the prob­lem of the Pashtun. If anyone could be a Pashtun, or more properly “Pathanized,” then why the need for a ­legal regime supposedly conditioned to their cultural and social peculiarities? It is no won­der the FCR erected such a bar for entry into colonial court, making 49

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it a rarity indeed. For it was precisely in this space where the inherent contradictions of the Regulation, and by extension the colonial enterprise, could be put fully on display. If the cultural specificity of the Pashtuns was not the driving force ­behind the Regulation, then what was? While many of the Regulation’s proponents, most vocal among them George Elsmie, a judge of the Chief Court in Peshawar and head of the committee that drafted the revised 1887 version of the Regulation, insisted that the FCR was a culturally conditioned response to the prob­lem of the Pashtun, specifically the issue of frontier vio­lence and murder, the history of the Regulation points elsewhere.88 Contrary to the arguments of colonial officials, the origins of the FCR lay not in the dysfunctional operations of the colonial judiciary, but rather in taxation—­the most basic operation of any state, colonial or other­wise. The original version of the FCR was an outgrowth of the Hazara Settlement Rules of 1870. ­Those rules, themselves based on the Agror Valley Act III of 1870, foreshadowed the employment of jirgahs: Where a person is accused of murder or other heinous offence, and proof is not forthcoming, but the parties agree to abide by the Pathan usage of awarding money compensation for injuries, the Deputy Commissioner may cause the case to be de­cided according to such usage, and cause such decision to be carried into effect as if it ­were a sentence of a Court.89 ­ here was considerable debate within the Government of India about T ­these rules, which ­were enacted by the Government of the Punjab. Not only was ­there a question as to ­whether the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab had the l­egal authority to make such rules, but also the Viceroy Lord Mayo, as well as other central administrators, felt the rules to be overly draconian.90 Yet the origins of ­these rules lay not in the need for a culturally conditioned governance of the frontier, nor in the requirements of curtailing the violent dispositions of the Pashtun tribesmen. Rather, they lay in the need to clearly delineate property owner­ship. The  Agror Valley Act, like the Hazara Settlement Rules and the ­later Hazara Settlement Report, which was authored by E. G. Wace, a disciple of Henry Maine, established the l­egal lines of owner­ship as part of the colonial state’s attempts to create a colonial rule of property along the frontier.91 The FCR was thus a criminal regulation whose origins lay in property rules.92 50

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

The focus on property had a dual function for the colonial state. Property owner­ship as mediated through law was a mark of civilization. And ­under a Mainian understanding of the progressive l­egal development of history, more advanced socie­ties—­civilized socie­ties—­enjoyed individual as opposed to collective owner­ship.93 Moreover, lines of property owner­ ship both facilitated and reflected the penetration of global capitalism in this space. Through the Hazara Settlement Rules, and subsequently the FCR, the state attempted to regulate and govern the lives of its subjects, or in this case its objects, through economic activity. That economic activity—­mainly crop production and animal husbandry—­was socially mediated through relations of production and in par­tic­u­lar owner­ship. Indeed, it was the Raj’s confusion about the latter, especially the institution of vesh—­a form of communal owner­ship marked by the “periodical repartition on ancestral shares”—­which led to the treatment of frontier Pashtuns as a collective being and identity.94 Nonetheless, the ­legal regime put in place along the frontier was an attempt by the colonial state to channel economic intercourse, structure social relations, and institutionalize state authority. The sequencing of ­these laws followed the pattern established elsewhere in British India, where the IPC was preceded by the three revenue settlements employed by the East India Com­pany.95 The Hazara Settlement Rules and the FCR represented a continuation of the same arrangement. The former defined the colonial state’s understanding of local ­concepts, practices, and institutions of property. It then sought to assign rights over such defined property to colonial subjects who lived on the frontier. Once established, ­those rights required the protection of the colonial state, e­ ither epistemically through the judicial system, or physically through colonial policing. The FCR institutionalized both. In terms of epistemic vio­lence, the FCR subjected disputes with the potential for bloodshed to colonially mediated arbitration in the form of jirgahs. In terms of ­actual vio­lence, it codified the practices of collective punishment that marked cross-­border governance prior to its inception. The attempt to clearly delineate property rights in the Hazara Settlement Rules, and the use of that delineation as the foundation of criminal law in the FCR, was part of a larger colonial proj­ect that sought to integrate and subjugate ­those within the sphere of the colonial economy to the rule of a new global economic order. By creating judicial linkages, and exclusions as the FCR did, ­these laws bound the frontier tribesmen to the colonial economic sphere. This was more directly and explic­itly undertaken 51

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through other con­temporary administrative practices, such as the recruitment of frontier tribesmen into tribal militias to police the frontier.96 Additionally, like their pre­ de­ ces­ sors, the Sikhs and the Mughals, the British relied heavi­ly on subsidies to frontier tribes to maintain order, a practice that created its own inequitable economy of power.97 The recruitment of Pashtuns into imperial cir­cuits of ­labor, both around British India and throughout the empire, integrated the frontiersmen into the ­burgeoning global economy which Britain sat atop.98 Arguably the most impor­tant ­labor practice put in place along the frontier was the extension and structuring of the military l­ abor market in this space. While frontier dwellers had long provided their ­labor of vio­lence throughout the Indian subcontinent, the colonial state sought to capture and channel that l­abor. And the man to do it was Sir Robert Groves Sandeman, who put in place the system carry­ing his name along the Baluch frontier, though it affected the entire length of British India’s northwestern limit.99 The Sandeman system was predicated on recruiting the tribesmen to police themselves in the form of tribal levies and militia. In return, they would largely be left to their own devices, ­under the watchful personal oversight of a frontier officer well versed in the tribesmen’s ways. Sandeman sought to enlist the tribesmen in their own subjugation and, in so ­doing, entwine their interests and fate with that of the colonial state.100 Some colonial administrators went so far as to characterize their ser­vice in the vari­ous frontier militias and bodies of scouts as akin to a feudal obligation.101 But ­there was a decidedly cap­i­tal­ist strain to Sandeman’s design. Sandeman recruited frontier dwellers into tribal militias that policed the area’s inhabitants—­their kinsmen and tribesmen. And he paid them for their ­labors.102 In one fell swoop he both monetized and monitored them. And in so ­doing, he fundamentally subdued them to the rule of the colonial state as well as subjugated them to the demands of the colonial economy. If the FCR institutionalized frontier governmentality, Sandeman personified it. Whereas the FCR took a cultural approach to frontier rule, Sandeman took a personal one. He famously declared that “to be successful on this frontier [Baluchistan] a man has to deal with the hearts and minds of the ­people, and not only with their fears.”103 While the FCR was authored to deal with the prob­lem of the Pashtuns in the north, Sandeman field-­tested the system that would ­later bear his name farther south among the Baluch. This paternalistic system paired cultural competency with colonial vio­lence cheaply enforced by the tribesmen themselves. San52

Governing British India’s Unruly Frontier

Figure 2.1. ​Sir Robert Groves Sandeman. Frontispiece of A. L. P. Tucker, Sir Robert G. Sandeman, K.C.S.I.: Peaceful Conqueror of Baluchistan. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921.

deman’s system was often contrasted with the Punjab system of administration, a differentiation that had more basis in active imperial imaginations than the daily real­ity and expressions of power on the ground. Sandeman constructed his system of frontier rule simultaneous with the first advent of the FCR in the Punjab. And, when made the Agent of the Governor General in Baluchistan in 1877, he extended the Regulation ­there as well. The extension of the FCR to Baluchistan and Sandeman’s tribal militias along the entirety of the frontier marked the maturation of frontier governmentality along British India’s northwestern limit. Collectively, t­ hese practices led to significant injections of cash into the frontier economy over time. In so d ­ oing, they fundamentally reshaped frontier society as economic relations between the tribesmen themselves, 53

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not to mention with the colonial state and the colonial subjects in the settled districts, became increasingly monetized. Yet it was not only monetization that mattered. New forms of credit emerged and became embedded ­here, wielded by new economic actors, in par­tic­u­lar Hindu bania merchants acting as moneylenders.104 The emergence of t­hese new forms of credit and introduction of a new class of rentiers to the frontier displaced existing patterns of exchange. Authoring a new credit and po­liti­cal economy of the realm caused significant social and economic dislocations, leading to greater re­sis­tance against the colonial apparatus of control, as well as instability within the tribes themselves.105 It was also central to frontier governmentality as it subjected the tribesmen to the new realm of regulation and governance, namely the po­liti­cal economy.106 The combination of colonial legislation and administrative practice—­​ the FCR and Sandeman’s tribal militia system, respectively—­had a defining effect on the social and economic fortunes of the frontier’s inhabitants. The FCR effectively excluded the tribesmen from the spaces of the colonial state. Blockades, codified by the Regulation, physically barred them from entering the settled districts. At the same time, the elevation of jirgahs as a tribal court system excluded them from access to the colonial judiciary. The tribal militia system drew its recruits into the colonial economy by monetizing their l­abor, as did the subsidy policies that injected cash into tribal economies through local maliks and khans. Yet, si­mul­ta­ neously, the restrictions the FCR placed on them meant t­ hese newly minted economic objects of empire could not fully participate in the colonial economic sphere. They w ­ ere thus rendered dependent on the colonial economy while at the same time being largely excluded from it. The pernicious effects of this exclusion and de­pen­dency ­were doubly damning as many of the tribesmen living beyond the administrative frontier of the settled districts had agricultural lands in t­hose districts. The blockades severed the frontiersmen not only from colonial markets, but more importantly from their own agricultural lands.107 Colonial administrators ­were well aware of this, and they believed it made blockades all the more effective. In the words of one administrator, “coercion is discriminating mercy, which the instructions of government inculcate.”108 Colonial administrative techniques put the economic squeeze on the frontier tribesmen, immiserating them to compel compliance. Such practices of governance, as well as the theories of economy and vio­lence under­lying them, w ­ ere a core aspect of frontier governmentality. In the end, however, it simply encouraged their further recalcitrance against frontier administration. 54

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Taken as a w ­ hole, ­these practices of frontier governmentality rendered the tribesmen a new and dif­fer­ent type of specimen. Not fully colonial subjects like other South Asians inhabiting the British-­administered areas of India or even the princely states, they ­were imperial objects. While the colonial arena was awash with a miscellany of juridical subjects, themselves reflecting the variegated l­egal and po­liti­cal terrain of colonial rule, they ­were all ultimately legally justiciable beings ­under the rule of the Crown.109 The tribesmen subject to the FCR ­were dif­fer­ent. They ­were “in­de­pen­dent,” and that in­de­pen­dence had both po­liti­cal and ­legal ramifications. While they shared ­legal legibility in the sense they could be recognized in court and by the law—­just as any foreigner may be recognized as subject, in a ­limited sense, to the law—­the tribesmen’s distinction lay in their liminality. They ­were subject to the law, not subjects of the law. In the main the tribesmen w ­ ere denied access to the venue where other colonial subjects contested their claims as subjects of the Crown, namely the courts. Rather than being constituted as fully legible colonial subjects, they ­were rendered partially legible imperial objects. Though objects of l­egal and po­liti­cal action by the colonial state, that same abjured any responsibility to protect ­these ­people as they ­were “in­de­pen­dent.” They ­were made reliant on the colonial sphere through a multiplicity of linkages spawned by colonial law, administrative practice, and economic policy. However, ­those linkages acted unidirectionally. Eco­nom­ically dependent upon, though physically blocked from, the colonial sphere, they occupied a peripheral space the colonial state conceived as the “frontier.” ­These ­were ­people who w ­ ere acted upon. The Crown owed them nothing, and stressed this position by maintaining the conceptual, po­liti­cal, and ­legal fiction of their “in­de­pen­dence.”

nNnNnN The “in­de­pen­dent” tribesmen of British India’s North-­West Frontier ­were not the only imperial objects of the South Asian realm. For all the talk of the FCR being a culturally conditioned answer to the perennial prob­lem of the Pashtun along the North-­West Frontier, it quickly proved an administrative template for frontier rule applied to other similarly situated spaces. The Regulation had an impor­tant imperial life, with multiple manifestations throughout Britain’s global empire, and it continues to have a significant postcolonial afterlife.110 Within British India, its first replication was in the Baluchistan Agency, where it was initially promulgated in 1876 and then again in 1890.111 ­There, combined with Sandeman’s personalized 55

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

56

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British and Chinese spheres of influence.117 The Regulation was fi­nally copied verbatim for the Kachin Hills in 1895 and then the Chin Hills the following year.118 ­These regulations ­were buttressed by the Burma Frontier Tribes Regulation (No. II of 1896), which allowed for the blockade and collective punishment of frontier tribals, as well as for the use of preventative detention against potential troublemakers.119 All three ele­ments ­were directly lifted from the FCR, by this time in its second administrative incarnation. Despite the distance, to frontier officials—­who themselves rarely travelled between the two edges of imperial authority—­the administrative princi­ples ­were the same. Courtenay Ilbert, then ­legal member of the Viceroy’s council, noted as much, writing that “the circumstances of Burmese and Pathan crime differ materially, but if some of the experimental proposals made in the Punjab Regulation work well, they may be worth trying in Upper Burma.”120 Penned in 1886, his words proved prescient. The replication of the system of frontier governmentality along the Raj’s North-­East Frontier was the culmination of a longer history of administrative duplication, which joined this imperial extremity with its northwestern counterpart.121 Just as the Raj copied its l­egal and personnel framework for administration of the “savage” tribes, so too did it replicate the convoluted pro­cess that ultimately produced this outcome. The prob­lem of the uncivilized barbarians inhabiting the hills, lurking just beyond the extension of regular administration, was compounded by the bureaucratic prob­lem of divided administration.122 The highlands ­these supposed “savages” occupied ­were at the limits of three colonial administrative units—­Bengal, Burma, and Assam. Further, and perhaps more importantly, they bordered foreign polities. For the state to domesticate and civilize ­these wildlings, it first had to tame its unwieldy bureaucratic arms.123 Just as the FCR was partially about disciplining the frontier “men on the spot” of the colonial state, so too ­were the Hill Regulations of the northeast about taming the imperial administrative apparatus. Order was to be made in the hills—­civilizational as well as bureaucratic. ­There was a debate among colonial authorities if administration of the hills should be the responsibility of Bengal, Burma, or Assam. A conference convened in Calcutta in 1892 de­cided in ­favor of a single responsible party for administrative efficiency, but this decision’s implementation was deferred.124 This debate about split administration, complete with a dedicated conference to clarify lines of authority, mirrored the bureaucratic fights ravaging the North-­West Frontier.125

57

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

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agencies ­were in essence reservations.128 And such administrative arrangements could be found at the limits of Japan’s imperial expansion into Taiwan, ­under Republican authorities in southwest China, and at the edges of the pampas and Patagonia in Argentina.129 Nor w ­ ere ­these spaces “states of exception.” Conceiving them as such presupposed a norm from which they derogated—­something they should have been but for the “political-­juridical removal of l­egal protections and affordances that would other­wise be available to them.”130 That norm is modern sovereignty, carry­ing with it the package of po­ liti­cal goods the modern state form is associated with—­most importantly a universal ­legal order applied equally to all subjects. The reservation spaces of the frontier did not exhibit ­these traits. But nor did the colonial order more generally.131 The frontier realms represented not a departure from some idealized sovereign norm, but instead a constituent part of the colonial order that was marked by a multiplicity of ­legal statuses (and thus protections), po­liti­cal ­orders, and administrative structures.132 The frontier agencies and reservations ­were simply one of many such arrangements both contained in and constituting the colonial regime. They did not diverge from the norm, but rather comprised a radically dif­fer­ent one—­one premised in governance through difference rather than the governance of difference.

nNnNnN The FCR’s imperial life has had a lasting postcolonial afterlife. The Regulation was repealed only in 2018 through a constitutional amendment in Pakistan. It has yet to be seen how fully and faithfully that repeal ­will be honored and implemented. The FATA along the Afghan border, composed of the former tribal agencies of the Raj, ­will merge with the Khyber-­ Pakhtunkhwa Province.133 The FCR’s creation of ­peoples as objects has carried over into the postcolonial setting of the Pakistani state far too long, creating a difficult legacy to undo. A number of critics, chief among them the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, charge that a significant part of the prob­lem of the frontier is Pakistan’s continued treatment of the ­people of ­these areas as second-­class citizens, with l­imited rights and restricted access to the normal judicial and administrative apparatus of the Pakistani state.134 The fact that it has taken more than seventy years for Pakistan to repeal this colonial holdover indicates its inability, as well as its unwillingness, to extend its formal administration to the area.135 The vio­ lence of the last few years, combined with the low esteem in which many 59

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of the tribesmen hold the Pakistani state, does not bode well for a peaceful integration of ­these areas in the near ­future. The demands of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement amount to nothing less than an undoing of the legacy of frontier governmentality in Pakistan. By claiming their rights as Pakistani citizens, the movement threatens to reveal the truth in plain sight, namely that the state of Pakistan is a postcolonial one with the emphasis decidedly on the “colonial” part.136 Far from fitting the expectations of modern states, liberal demo­cratic or other­wise—­expectations that include the universal application of the law and the hierarchal and exclusive character of sovereignty—by design the Pakistani state is something dif­fer­ent. Pakistan could be seen as a holdover from a dif­fer­ent time; a malformed nation-­state that never successfully grew out of its colonial childhood. Yet it could also be recognized as maintaining the bedrock of the imperial foundations that lay at the heart of the modern international system. E ­ ither way, Pakistan’s fundamental difference is most clearly illustrated on its limits and the continued exercise and legacy of frontier governmentality. And its success or failure at addressing that legacy, and delivering justice for Naqeebullah Mehsud, is a harbinger of the ­future fate of frontier ­peoples.

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N3n The Imperial Life of the Frontier Crimes Regulation

I

n November 1923, shortly ­after Palestine had been made into a British mandate, the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, wrote to his superiors in London requesting the approval of an extraordinary l­ egal mea­ sure to deal with the menace of tribal unrest in the Southern District.1 The proposed mea­sure, though only lasting one year in the first instance, would enforce collective responsibility and collective punishment on the inhabitants of the southern and central hill country. The High Commissioner stated that section 5 of the mea­sure was designed specifically to deal with the issue of tribal blood feuds, a bane of colonial administration when dealing with tribal ­peoples.2 Samuel noted the provenance of ordinance, citing a similar regulation in force in Iraq, another British mandate where the danger of tribal disorder seemed to be omnipresent. But the Iraqi law on which Samuel based his own proposed ordinance did not have its genesis in the marshlands of southern Iraq. Rather, it was born along British India’s North-­West Frontier. For the Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation proclaimed by the Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) “D” occupying Mesopotamia in the summer of 1916 was itself nothing more than a slightly modified version of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901.3 Iraq and Palestine ­were only two of the many destinations where the FCR traveled along imperial administrative cir­cuits. Within Britain’s global empire, the Regulation was formally replicated on British India’s North-­ East Frontier, in colonial K ­ enya, as well as in mandatory Iraq and Palestine. Substantively, the ideas and practices of frontier governmentality that 61

British Honduras

British Guiana

League of Nation Mandate

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Gold Coast

GREAT BRITAIN

AT L A N T I C OCEAN

Sierra Leone

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AT L A N T I C OCEAN

Map 3. ​British Empire, c. 1920.

PAC I F I C OCEAN

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Uganda Kenya

AngloEgyptian Sudan

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British Somaliland

Oman

Qatar

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Bahrain

Iraq TransJordan Kuwait

Northern Nyasaland Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia South-west Africa BechuanaLand Swaziland

Nigeria

Egypt

Palestine Nepal

Malay States Singapore

Burma

Bhutan

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INDIAN EMPIRE

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AUSTRALIA

Terr. Of Papua

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Imperial Life of Frontier Crimes Regulation

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

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“center-periphery,” which infused so much con­temporary understanding of empire, as well as much subsequent scholarship. Places such as the Afghan frontier w ­ ere considered imperial hinterlands, and ­were exoticized as such. But the FCR’s imperial c­ areer demonstrates that the “periphery” was a space of administrative innovation as well as an incubator of replicable regimes of rule with global resonance. This was no space of exception subjected to a state of exception. Rather, it was a space where regulatory regimes could be tried and tested with minimal oversight and even less concern. The “frontier” was the laboratory of governance and administration, which Benthamite utilitarians once envisaged all of British India to be.4 But unlike that e­ arlier, though never realized, vision of a space for social and institutional experimentation, the frontier did in fact become a testing ground for forms of imperial rule. Once perfected ­there, the formula of authority was transferred to and replicated in likewise permissive environments—­scaled up to meet the needs of Britain’s worldwide imperial enterprise. As this chapter shows, the FCR became the Empire’s standard operating procedure along much of its outlying rim. Thus far from being a singularly unique “backwater,” the Afghan frontier was a space where governance manifested its cutting edge.

nNnNnN While the North-­West Frontier of British India was the key laboratory of imperial power along the periphery, it was hardly the only one. The forms of governmentality authored, perfected, and exported from h ­ ere ­were adjusted as they ­were deployed on other “tribal” frontiers of empire to meet the requirements of the ser­vice and exigencies of local circumstance. ­These other frontier peripheries thus themselves became administrative incubators, creating feedback loops affecting the development of imperial governance globally. Indeed, it was along ­these frontiers that the ethos of the empire’s African governance was developed by Lord Frederick Lugard and that the foundational under­pinnings of its ­Middle Eastern mandates w ­ ere planted by the likes of Sir Henry Dobbs. By examining the imperial ­career of the Regulation in such far-­flung locales as Basra, Palestine, Nigeria, and K ­ enya, this chapter demonstrates the centrality of the Regulation both to the development of frontier governmentality as well as to the administration of an empire on which the sun never set. With the outbreak of the First World War, the British Empire faced a global challenge to its supremacy on a scale never before seen. With the metropolitan’s attentions and efforts focused on the fields of Flanders and 64

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France, defense of the imperial realm fell to its constituent, colonial parts. The Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war in November 1914 opened a new front, or rather fronts in the war, which became the focus of the attentions and efforts of imperial defense. While the troops of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) famously cut their teeth, and formed their national identities on the Gallipoli peninsula, the British Indian army—­the empire’s single largest military asset—­sought to assert the subcontinent’s long-­standing claims of supremacy over the Persian Gulf by invading Basra. On the larger war planning canvas, the invasion of Basra was only the opening gambit of the conquest of Mesopotamia, which offered a backdoor into the Ottoman Empire. The success of British Indian forces ­here would knock a third of the Central Powers’ triumvirate out of the war and secure the paramount position of the British ­Empire, and more particularly the British Indian Empire, in any postwar settlement.5 With the arrival of the IEF “D” in Basra in November 1914, the British Indian military administration recognized the need to put in place some sort of l­egal architecture to buttress their occupation. While a number of ele­ments ­were simply continuities with the retreating Ottoman power, ­others ­were radically dif­fer­ent.6 One of the most impor­tant in this latter category was the British blueprint for how to deal with the rural tribes of Iraq. Fortunately, for administrative economy and ease, the British Indian administration had a time-­tested and ready-­made design at hand. The FCR dealt with a similarly conditioned “barbarous” p ­ eople on British India’s North-­West Frontier. Though the Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen subjected to the Regulation inhabited an impenetrable mountainous terrain, their Iraqi counter­parts ­were no more amenable to state authority, as they occupied no-­less-­impassable marshlands. The replication of the FCR in Iraq as the Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) is in many ways unsurprising. ­After all, nearly the entirety of the Mesopotamian civil administration was staffed by seconded Indian Civil Ser­vice (ICS) officials. The most impor­tant of ­these, with regard to the TCCDR, was Sir Henry Dobbs, who served as the Revenue Commissioner for the civil administration.7 Dobbs was instrumental in the replication of the FCR in Mesopotamia. Before his posting to Basra in the waning days of 1914, Dobbs had been the Foreign Secretary for the Government of India. He had risen to this position ­after a c­ areer largely defined by his long ser­vice along the Afghan frontier in Baluchistan.8 It was during this ju­nior ser­vice that Dobbs was exposed 65

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to and became familiar with the workings of the FCR, originally extended to Baluch Agency as early as 1876.9 In the Basra vilayet, Dobbs and his superiors, including Chief Po­liti­cal Officer Sir Percy Cox, another India hand, believed they recognized a society nearly identical to that they knew from the Afghan frontier, at least in regards to its rural, tribal aspect.10 Consequently, in designing the systems of governance with which they would rule this newly conquered Ottoman land, they relied upon the practices they thought most suitable to the “tribal” inhabitants of southern Iraq.11 Yet as with the FCR on the British Indian frontier, the TCCDR, which was first deployed in Basra and then followed British Indian forces on their march northward to Baghdad and beyond, less codified a social real­ity on the ground than constituted a new one. And that newly constituted social real­ity reflected British beliefs about Iraqi society—­both urban and rural. In keeping with the traditions of the British Raj in India, the ICS men building the foundations of British rule in Mesopotamia looked to establish a conservative government designed to safeguard the traditional ele­ments of society from the corrupting and weakening influences of modernity.12 Nowhere was that modernity more pronounced than in the cities of Iraq, especially Baghdad, the former Ottoman provincial capital. And no one better personified that modernity and its debasing dangers than the urban intelligent­sia and professionals, whom British officials viewed as fundamentally compromised by the reforms of the late Ottoman period. ­These w ­ ere the men of business and law with po­liti­cal aspirations with whom the British would have to contend, but who ­were most likely to become the chief opponents of British rule. In this they resembled their urban Indian counter­parts who ­were becoming the backbone of an increasingly agitational All-­India Congress. And just as the British ­were more and more dismissive of Congressmen, infantilizing and effeminizing them, caricaturing urban Indian “babus” as softened and corrupted by modernity, so too w ­ ere the imperial officers equally contemptuous of ­these Iraqi urbanites. In contrast, the tribesmen of rural Iraq represented the au­then­tic and unspoiled body politic. This body needed to be protected from the debasing ills of urban modernity.13 Thus, rather than being governed by the commercial, civil, and criminal ­legal codes that the British promulgated for the cities of occupied Iraq, the tribal countryside would forego the formalities of colonial courts and instead be ruled by their “native customs and traditions,” as understood by the officers of the occupying power. 66

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The TCCDR was first promulgated by the IEF “D” in 1915 as part of the Iraq Occupied Territories Code.14 The initial version was an attempt by the thinly spread British military administration to disperse governmental authority to the tribal shaykhs it believed both embodied local power in the Iraqi countryside and could be relied upon, through a combination of sanction and sacrament, to maintain order t­here. Though noting its reliance on the FCR, the initial version of the TCCDR did not replicate the Indian regulation in its entirety.15 Indeed, the 1915 version of the TCCDR most closely resembled the original 1872 version of the FCR rather than the 1901 version then in force along the Afghan frontier. Yet while the details differed slightly, the under­lying ethos remained the same. The TCCDR assumed the collectivity of Iraq’s tribes, which it defined as teleologically self-­evident. Consequently, they ­were liable to collective responsibility as well as collective punishment. Any crimes committed within the tribal areas ­were to be tried by a majlis or tribal council, much like the FCR’s Council of Elders. The most impor­tant offense, which the TCCDR was designed to deal with at some (relative) length, was the “blood feud”—­the bane of colonial administration and the seeming foundation of tribal society and identity.16 Importantly, unlike the FCR, which clearly stipulated its jurisdictional heads (territorial, personal, and subject-­ matter), the TCCDR did no such t­ hing. It did not even leave it to the executive, which promulgated the Regulation in any case, to determine its reach through notification, as was the case with its Indian antecedent. Instead, the TCCDR applied to all “tribal” issues as determined by the “man on the spot.” While such l­ egal ambiguity may have enabled judicial efficiency in the eyes of the occupying, and subsequently mandatory, power, it hardly cultivated the “rule of law,” which was necessary to civilize Iraqi society to the point of self-­sufficiency, and thus in­de­pen­dence ­under the mandatory regime. The TCCDR was amended and again promulgated by the British occupying authority in the summer of 1918.17 This second version of the Regulation, as with subsequent versions of the FCR, was considerably more detailed. It furthered the pro­cess of the establishment of the rule of law, but paradoxically did so by carving out a space of ­legal exception to which it applied. It is impor­tant to note this second version was the product of the British occupying force rather than the mandatory administration, which came into existence only in 1919. One can won­der if following the uprising against British authority in 1919, such a Regulation would pass even a supplicant mandatory government, which included the Iraqi 67

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­ rbanites the TCCDR was meant to protect the rural residents from. u Regardless, it was on the books by the time the mandate came into being. More importantly, the key figure of the mandate period, Henry Dobbs, who served as high commissioner from 1923 to 1929, was the author of the original Regulation in 1915. Thus not only was the TCCDR embedded in the country’s administrative architecture when the mandate was birthed in 1919, but the key administrator of the mandatory period was himself the central agent of the Regulation. For all of its borrowing from the FCR, the TCCDR differed in at least one impor­tant re­spect. While the former required issues of adultery to be dealt with by the colonial judiciary, a clear emasculation of Afghan manhood, the TCCDR made no such claim. Perhaps part of their reason for this was the comparative weakness of the Iraqi administration, firstly ­under the IEF “D” and subsequently as a mandatory government. While this seems a minor point, it nonetheless opens the question of the differential aims, or at least consequences, of the FCR and TCCDR in their respective realms. Whereas the former reflected the colonial state’s calculation to exclude the Pashtun and Baluch frontiersmen from the colonial realm, the latter reflected the weakness of initially the military and subsequently the mandatory administration, which not only failed to penetrate “tribal society,” but also had a weak grasp of, and even weaker presence in, Iraqi society. The FCR was the product of an intentional colonial calculus of costs and benefits driven by the requirements of the imperial ledger. Though related, the TCCDR was a tacit acknowl­ edgment of ­imperial frailty. In both cases, the state abjured direct rule in f­ avor of the infrastructure of indirect rule. The replication of the FCR throughout Britain’s other ­Middle Eastern mandates proved more meandering than in Mesopotamia. It bled into mandatory Palestine in 1924 as the “Prevention of Crime in Tribal Areas Ordinance,” which High Commissioner Samuel acknowledged to be “modelled on provisions in legislation issued in ‘Iraq since the British Occupation for dealing with the tribes.”18 Though the ordinance was initially ­limited to one year, in 1925 it was consolidated with the Collective Responsibility for Crimes Ordinance (1921) into a piece of standing legislation.19 The Colonial Office’s model for the consolidation of the l­egal framework for collective punishment was Nigeria.20 Yet Nigeria itself, molded by the sure hand of Frederick Lugard, was modeled on the older ­legal infrastructure of British India’s North-­West Frontier. The subsequent Collective Punishments Ordinance (1926) remained in effect u ­ ntil it was 68

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replaced with the Bedouin Control Ordinance (1942).21 ­These ordinances presumed that collective responsibility and punishment w ­ ere a part of “tribal customs” of local ­people.22 While the British mandatory government considered extending the ordinances to cover the Jewish population, especially in the 1930s, the Jewish Agency vociferously and successfully objected to such extensions.23 It was rhetorically out of re­spect for such tribal “customs and traditions” that colonial administrators justified their departure from the individuated universal rule of law that the empire ostensibly stood for and with which it justified itself. Yet as on British India’s Afghan frontier, this was a wholly unconvincing stylistic slight meant to obscure the dual pressures of belief in the local inhabitants’ barbarity and the need for imperial administrative economy. The reproduction of the FCR, albeit in highly attenuated and modified form, in Palestine was simply the formal replication of the frontier governmentality that the Regulation itself both embodied and represented. In addition to the fact that the Bedouin ­were subject to the Collective Punishments Ordinance, and ­later the Bedouin Control Ordinance, they ­were also recruited into policing themselves and their fellow tribesmen. Just as the British Indian government joined the FCR with the innovations of the Sandeman system, particularly its tribal militias and police, the Palestinian mandatory government combined l­egal injunction with lethal policing to create a clearly identifiable form of frontier governmentality along its “savage” periphery. The tribesmen formed the core of a camel-­mounted police force that patrolled the Negev and kept its population in line.24 As with the Pashtun and Baluch tribesmen along the Afghan frontier, mandatory authorities created Bedouin-­based bodies of colonial vio­lence with the dual aims of monitoring them (and having them monitor their fellow tribesmen) and at the same time monetizing them, rendering them dependent on the mandatory state. Fi­nally, the British also utilized Bedouin tribal courts that relied on tribal “tradition” as the institutional mainstay of the administration of ­ ere subject to the oversight of the Assistant District justice.25 The courts w Commissioner, as with the tribal jirgahs along the British Indian frontier. Further, they ­were seen as particularly well equipped to deal with crimes the British thought culturally specific to the tribal Bedouin, most importantly “honour and blood dispute cases.”26 The effect of the ­legal ordinances and recruitment into tribal militias was much the same for the Bedouin of the Negev as it was for the tribesmen of the North-­West Frontier. Namely, they ­were rendered imperial objects, 69

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as opposed to colonial subjects, who w ­ ere eco­nom­ically dependent on, though denied participation in, the colonial economic sphere. While t­ here was no de jure or even rhetorical recognition of their sovereignty or in­de­ pen­dence, their de facto in­de­pen­dence was ensured by the mandatory government’s disinterest in them, at least ­until the Second World War. And in the postcolonial world a­ fter Israel’s creation in 1948, the Jewish state continued the colonial treatment of the Negev Bedouin who remained. They ­were placed ­under Israeli military administration on a “reservation,” continuing and in many ways expanding the regime of frontier governmentality ­under which they continue to strug­gle.27

nNnNnN While Samuel and the Colonial Office tipped their administrative hats to Iraq and Nigeria, respectively, for the coercive infrastructure of collective responsibility based on “custom,” the true intellectual and administrative origins of the Palestinian ordinances lay along the Afghan frontier. But the extent to which the FCR became both a mode and model of governance in Britain’s wider interwar M ­ iddle East is rather more muddled than this relatively linear ­legal genealogy indicates. Indeed, the FCR failed to clinch an administrative trifecta in the M ­ iddle East when Britain’s third regional mandate, TransJordan, pursued a parallel, though somewhat distinct strategy for governing its tribal inhabitants.28 Rather than replicating the Iraqi TCCDR as the Palestinian mandatory government did, the TransJordan mandatory government put in place two related governing apparatus to deal with the tribes. The first was the Arab Legion, which was in effect the TransJordanian army. This force was tasked with securing the mandate’s frontiers, ensuring the safety of its roads and policing its tribal population as necessary. The second was the Tribal Control Board, which implemented the Law of Supervising the Bedouin.29 Both the legion and the board ­were arms of, rather than substitutes for, central state control. On its face, TransJordan appears to have opted for a dif­fer­ent model of tribal governance, one that was the reverse of the TCCDR / FCR indirect template. Instead of outsourcing central state authority to customary tribal institutions, the legion and board subverted such institutions to central state control.30 The state did not rule through the tribe, rather the tribe ruled through the state, though the former was a creature created and maintained by the latter, making TransJordan in effect a tribal state.31 While this may seem at odds with the forms of governance put in place in 70

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

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against marauding Saudi tribes.38 He subjected the Bedouin to the rule of tribal courts, which used local custom and tradition, a practice codified in the Tribal Courts Law and the Bedouin Control Law in 1936.39 Though ­these courts ­were more formally, and firmly, institutions of the state than the jirgahs employed by Sandeman ­under the FCR, Glubb’s governance bore all the same hallmarks of the frontier governmentality that s­haped the British Indian border with Af­ghan­i­stan. Through the tribal courts, the desert Bedouin ­were channeled into an alternative judicial system where they ­were not afforded the rights of colonial subjects, but rather w ­ ere acted upon as imperial objects, ruled by the executive authority of mandatory officers. The Desert Patrol signified the economic dependence of the tribesmen. Like the frontier militias of Baluchistan, it affected the twin aims of monetizing tribal ­labor while monitoring them.40 And Glubb’s favoring of the Bedouin shaykhs meant authority was exercised indirectly through them. If ­there was a difference with Sandeman’s frontier governmentality, it is that Glubb’s rule did not de jure recognize the sovereignty of the desert Bedouin. But in the case of TransJordan at least, this was beside the point as the “tribal values” of the Bedouin, if not the desert Bedouin themselves, seem to have essentially taken over the mandatory state. Why did the FCR serve as a template of frontier governmentality along certain quarters of the imperial rim but not ­others? Especially when the ­people inhabiting ­these quarters ­were themselves the same? Only the advent of state borders with the intrusion of the colonial, or in this case mandatory, power demarcated t­ hese ­people as somehow dif­fer­ent. Indeed, the Bedouin tribesmen of TransJordan and Palestine had much in common with each other, as well as with the Bedouin of both Saudi Arabia and Mesopotamia. Yet they w ­ ere governed differently, even within the same empire. Why? The answer lay not with the governed, but rather with the governors. The laws and regulations applied to ­these spaces ­were authored by men with institutional memories and administrative training. ­There ­were two central sources for both in the ­Middle East—­India and Egypt (as well as, to a lesser extent, the Sudan). ­These sources w ­ ere themselves interrelated, with much of the Egyptian w ­ ater department u ­ nder Lord Cromer manned by old India hands, of which he was himself one.41 But they gave rise to two dif­fer­ent experiences of administration, if not administrative schools. The influence of Egyptian and Sudanese officials who had seen “tribal” ser­vice in the administration of the interwar mandates has been well documented.42 For example, Frederick Peake, the founder 72

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of the Arab Legion, was an officer of the Sudan Camel Corps, part of the British Imperial Egyptian Army.43 Such experience stood in contrast to the governing cadre of Mesopotamia, who had been recruited en masse from the British Indian ser­vice. Yet it is not so ­simple as to say that one administrative school came from Egypt and another from India, for within the imperial realm, ­these places and the personnel governing them ­were in constant communication. Many men served in both. Peake was in India before the First World War. His successor, John Glubb, though seeing no ser­vice in India, had a stint in mandatory Iraq before being posted to TransJordan. Yet they opted for a dif­fer­ent model of administration than that created by the FCR / TCCDR. Part of the explanation, no doubt, comes from an awareness of the limits of determinism. Simply ­because a man was posted in a par­tic­u­lar locale did not mean his subsequent administrative life personified the governing values of that locale. Even if he did adopt the modalities of governance of a certain administrative school, in India at least ­there ­were a number of such schools from which to choose. The frontier represented a very par­tic­ u­lar strain of administrative routine and values, which was in fact contested, as well as looked down upon by ­others on the subcontinent. The imperial c­areer of ideas and administrative practice thus does not map perfectly onto the imperial c­ areers of the Crown’s servants. Perhaps the determinism to be considered, if any, is not that effecting the men enforcing the forms of frontier governmentality, but rather the spaces in which such forms ­were enforced. For each of the spaces where formally or substantively the FCR and Sandeman system w ­ ere replicated lay on the periphery of imperial power. In many cases, beyond that periphery lay an amorphous, and potentially hostile indigenous potentate whom the tribesmen subject to frontier governmentality showed an unhealthy affinity for, or at least a willingness to transgress porous, poorly defined, and even more poorly policed bound­aries. Glubb’s Desert Patrol sought to stanch the flow of ­people and goods between TransJordan and the Saudi kingdom just as Sandeman’s tribal levies tried to police the ill-­ defined frontier between British India’s Baluchistan Agency and the nascent Afghan state. But this po­liti­cal buffer against agnostic if not hostile native foreign powers was not universally the case. The Bedouin of the Negev slipped over the line not into some hostile territory, but rather into the lands of another British-­controlled mandate.

nNnNnN 73

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What did unite the tribesmen of southern Palestine, TransJordan, and mandatory Iraq with t­ hose of Baluchistan and British India’s North-­West Frontier more broadly was the land—­specifically its poverty in the eyes of colonial administrators. All of ­these ­peoples of the periphery, as well as ­those to come, inhabited marginal, wild spaces at the edges of imperial authority. ­These spaces ­were, in the eyes of colonial administrators, ecologically and thus eco­nom­ically barren. They ­were simply not worth the expense of extending “regular” administration. As spaces that ­were not agriculturally productive, they ­were not spatial candidates for state control, save in a pressing and passing defensive posture. The arid hills and impenetrable marshlands occupied by the objects of frontier governmentality ­were the spaces where p ­ eople could potentially retreat from state power. But rather than retreating from state power, they w ­ ere in fact encapsulated by it. The ­peoples of the periphery did not practice the art of not being governed, but rather ­were governed indirectly and on the cheap. And this strategy of state control was an outcome of a noxious combination of administrative inertia creating universally applicable standard operating procedures, the security calculus of buffer zones, and ecological impoverishment, which bordered on environmental determinism. The M ­ iddle East was not the only imperial arena where frontier governmentality was at play. When contemplating the Collective Punishment Ordinance for Palestine, the Colonial Office looked elsewhere for examples of its successful application, and thus supposed transferability to the southern districts of Palestine. Though Samuel himself noted the ordinance’s origins in the TCCDR of Iraq, Leo Amery, then Colonial Secretary, instead pointed to Nigeria, which first passed a Collective Punishment Ordinance in 1912.44 In many ways, Nigeria was the ideal and obvious place to look, for it was ­there that Lord Lugard most famously developed his system of indirect rule, which in his eyes at least, as well as some other colonial administrators, was a model for imperial governance.45 Yet in looking to Nigeria for administrative guidance, Lloyd was actually seeing British India, and more specifically the experiences of administration along the North-­West Frontier. For Lugard’s system of indirect rule was both consciously and unconsciously constructed on the foundations of Indian administration. While it has long been acknowledged that much of Lugard’s system, most famously expounded in his 1922 work The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, resembled forms of rule in British India, it has for an equal amount of time been distinguished from t­hose forms.46 Lugard’s indirect 74

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rule has been compared both to the system of indirect rule represented by the Indian princely states, as well as to the system of village pan­ chayats (councils), which in effect gave much of the Indian countryside autonomy in the eyes of imperial Indian administrators.47 Lugard himself distinguished his system from the former by insisting the princely states ­were “independent”—­a position not shared by British Indian officials—­representing a separate, albeit subservient governing authority for t­ hose spaces in India, which ­were nonetheless subjected to the doctrine of paramountcy.48 In contrast, he envisaged his system of native administration not so much as separate from the regular machinery of colonial governance but rather subsumed within it. Local chiefs and rulers w ­ ere not an authority unto themselves, l­imited only by the presence of the resident as he characterized the Indian princes to be. Rather, in the Nigerian context they ­were the indigenous face through whom colonial authority exercised itself.49 While t­ oday, Lugard’s differentiation of his system of indirect rule from the princely states of India, as well as t­hose of Malaya, sounds somewhat like a distinction without much substantive difference, to his colonial contemporaries this was an impor­tant and telling point.50 But while Lugard and his contemporaries—­both critics and adulates—­ compared and contrasted his form of indirect rule with that found in the Indian princely state, as well as that found in the Indian countryside (though this was a less developed and more fleeting comparison), his system had distinctive ele­ments that most closely resembled the forms of governmentality found on the North-­West Frontier.51 Most prominent among ­these was his penchant for collective responsibility and collective punishment, an issue he addressed in his Po­liti­cal Memorandum (1906) where he discussed punitive expeditions against the native tribes.52 The ­legal architecture for collective punishment, though substantively authored by Lugard before his posting to Hong Kong, was erected in his absence just before his return from the Far East. In 1912, the Collective Punishment Ordinance was promulgated for the colony and protectorate of Southern Nigeria by the governor, Sir Walter Egerton. It was extended to northern Nigeria following Lugard’s amalgamation of the colonies in 1914. Further, it was buttressed by other ordinances such as the Unsettled Districts Ordinance, which allowed for the banishment of unsavory characters—­usually educated Africans who posed challenges to the social order in the eyes of colonial administrators.53 The Native Courts Ordinance established a highly regimented system of courts that oversaw the natives using their own colonially sanctioned customs and traditions.54 75

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

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

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FCR substantively excluded the tribesmen from the jurisdiction of colonial courts, the Native Courts Ordinance in Nigeria worked in the reverse. Rather than limiting the jurisdiction of colonial courts, it ­limited the jurisdiction of the Native Courts, which themselves ­were considerably more regimented than their Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian, TransJordanian, or ­ Kenyan counter­ parts. Instead, the Nigerian Native Courts most closely resembled the tribal courts used on Native American reservations in the United States. The 1934 Native Courts Ordinance outlined the l­imited jurisdiction of the Nigerian courts, essentially granting them remit over minor offenses and reserving serious crimes to the colonial judiciary.62 In this aspect at least, the ordinance looks much like the Major Crimes Act (1885), which likewise l­ imited the jurisdiction of the Court of Indian Offenses in the United States to minor transgressions.

nNnNnN Nigeria was not the only outpost of the British Empire in Africa where frontier governmentality was to be found. ­Kenya even more fully embraced it. While this regime of rule arrived in the west African colony through the imperial circulation of personnel, most importantly in the person of Lord Lugard, it arrived in ­Kenya through cir­cuits of imperial knowledge and administrative practice. K ­ enya evinced not only the style of governance found on the North-­West Frontier of British India, but the same ­legal infrastructure as well. The FCR of 1901, originally authored as a culturally specific solution to the prob­lem of governing the Pashtun tribesmen, was found by ­Kenyan authorities to be equally applicable to the Somali tribesmen inhabiting the Northern Frontier Province (NFP).63 Accordingly, the K ­ enyan government passed an only slightly modified version of the FCR entitled the Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance (SDAO).64 With the exception of the substitution of “Somali” for “Pathan and Baluch,” the K ­ enyan law differed very ­little from its British Indian counterpart. But while the Government of ­Kenya acknowledged the debt owed to its British Indian counterpart, it did not fully acknowledge the rather circuitous and tortured route of the Regulation’s arrival to His Majesty’s east African possessions.65 The SDAO was not the first attempt by the K ­ enyan government to deal with recalcitrant tribesmen. Indeed, the colony first passed a Collective Punishment Ordinance (CPO) as early as 1909, which was used as a model elsewhere, including in both Nigeria and mandatory Palestine. Interestingly, and rather confusingly, when the ­Kenyan CPO was revised in the 78

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ABYSSINIA Lake Rudolf

Lake Victoria

Garissa R. Tana

Nairobi

TANGANYIKA TERRITORY 0 0

Wajir

ITA LIAN SO MA LILAN D

UGANDA

NORTHERN FRONTIER PROVINCE

Galana R.

150 miles

INDIAN OCEAN

Mombasa 300 km

Map 4. ​Colonial ­Kenya, c. 1934.

1920s, the K ­ enyan colonial government cited the Nigerian CPO as its model.66 The CPO was not geo­graph­ic­ ally, ethnically, or tribally specific. It applied with equal force to the Kikuyu as to the Somalis. But the resumption of civilian control over the NFP in the late 1920s quickly convinced authorities in Nairobi that the CPO was insufficient to the task they faced in an area that encompassed nearly half of the colony. The NFP was enormous, totaling nearly 95,000 square miles. But it was sparsely populated, with authorities estimating the number of inhabitants at a mere 65,000.67 Much of the region was arid, bordering on desert. ­Those living ­there ­were, in the main, pastoral nomads who herded their flocks with more concern for rains and grazing lands than regard for the borders separating Abyssinia, Italian Somaliland, British Somaliland, and K ­ enya from one another. 79

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As on the Afghan frontier, the un­regu­la­ted mobility of the frontier ­ eoples was unacceptable to the colonial state. Migrations, or the un­ p regu­la­ted movement of p ­ eople, was the first issue raised in support of the SDAO upon its second reading in council. The Chief Native Commissioner made the case: The difficulties, Sir, which the Administration have to face in the Northern Frontier Province are, as a rule, migrations, which bring bloodshed in their train, blood feuds and vendettas, outbreaks of stock diseases, wrongful possession of grading grounds and the return of the outlaws, who, a­ fter committing offences in K ­ enya, cross over to the other side, and return to K ­ enya when all is quiet. ­These difficulties have been further increased by certain po­liti­cal circumstances of the country, the extent of the area, the aridity of the country which ­causes the populations to be nomadic, the impenetrability of the bush which provides asylum for offenders, and fi­nally the presence of two long international frontiers, which enable malefactors to cross over and hide themselves in one or other of ­these territories.68 The ­Kenyan government pursued plans to denote “tribal grazing areas.”69 Officials believed this would lessen vio­lence and competition in the region, which resulted from competition for scarce resources. As, if not more, importantly, it would tie collectivities, in this instance tribes, to specific plots of land. ­Doing so would hopefully, in the eyes of the colonial overlords, constrain the nomads’ movement. In the long term, it could encourage, if not force, them to ­settle permanently on state-­designated plots of land. Such hopes, however, ­were severely circumscribed by the state’s near total absence on the ground in the NFP. With the exception of a few companies of King’s African ­Rifles and a few district officers ruling an area the size of Michigan, the ­Kenyan colonial government was mainly missing. This in turn complicated attempts at administering the space, even with such blunt instruments as the CPO, which was passed again in 1930.70 In 1932, colonial administrators fi­nally concluded that even this draconian piece of colonial ­legal handi­work was insufficient for the challenges faced in the NFP. They thus drafted a special ordinance for the province designed to accommodate the unique combination of state absence and tribal recalcitrance, a bill that was “intended to provide rough and ready, but especially ready procedure.”71

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When the SDAO was first proposed in 1932, though it generally met with approbation, t­here ­were reservations regarding its passage. Some thought insufficient time had been allowed for the workings of normal administration in the NFP and thus urged caution.72 While such voices won the day in 1932, by 1934 their hesitance had been overcome. The SDAO was promulgated in 1934 following its second reading in council. Though the 1934 bill was meant to sunset at the end of 1935—­just as Samuel’s Palestine ordinance was only supposed to be a short-­term measure—it was extended in 1936 on a permanent basis.73 Whereas many of the other corners of the empire that replicated the regime authored on India’s North-­West Frontier had a personnel connection to that space—­Dobbs in Iraq, Lugard in Nigeria—­Kenya had no such discernable link. Yet K ­ enyan officials ­were aware of the Indian, and even Iraqi, provenance of the practices they ­were emulating.74 The Attorney General noted that while it was not the practice of the K ­ enyan government to replicate Indian laws, the NFP required an exemption to this rule. He stated, The hon. member is perfectly correct when he says it has been our policy, especially with regard to commercial laws in East Africa, in recent years, to break away from India. But we should hardly look to ­England for the requisite law to discover how to deal with the Northern Frontier Province. It is necessary for us to go to older colonies which have similar trou­bles to our own to find the law that they have found to have suited their book and which have apparently acted very well. Instead of experimenting on our own, which is always a dangerous ­thing, we have adapted our law from that of India.75 The colonial government a­ dopted the FCR w ­ holesale as the model to be applied to the NFP, and the par­tic­u­lar prob­lem of Somali pastoral tribesmen. In the eyes of the government, “in dealing with primitive nomadic tribes, all law as we understand it goes by the board.”76 As with the FCR, the SDAO continued with the by then well-­established tradition of collective punishment. It likewise established “tribal courts” designed to try transgressors by their own “customs and traditions.” Further, it noted the prevalence of “blood feuds” among the tribesmen, a practice colonial administrators long associated with the “savage” and uncivilized character of the frontier’s inhabitants.

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

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wage laborers in a colonial economy of vio­lence, but in position of privation.81 The NFP thus evinced the same constellation of colonial power with regard to frontier governmentality as the North-­West Frontier of British India. But the reach of such a constellation was not l­imited to the NFP, or even to colonial ­Kenya. For ele­ments, if not the totality, of the system of frontier governmentality w ­ ere copied from this space to neighboring regions in eastern Africa. In par­tic­u­lar, the CPO proved a mainstay of colonial government throughout the area. Both British Somaliland and mandatory Tanganyika copied the draconian ­Kenyan ­legal code.82 Interestingly though, just as K ­ enyan colonial authorities got the chain of transmission wrong, erroneously looking to Nigeria’s CPO as a model for their 1930 revision when their own 1909 CPO had been the template for Southern Nigeria’s 1912 ordinance, the authorities in Tanganyika likewise looked to Nigeria rather than their northern neighbor.83 With the passage and enforcement of the CPOs in Tanganyika and Somaliland, virtually all of British East Africa was subject to the central normative plank of frontier governmentality—­namely collective responsibility and its corollary, collective punishment. Further, both governments deployed native police forces to augment state authority and the application of the precepts and black-­letter law of collective punishment. Interestingly, the ­Kenyan experience bookends the imperial spread of the FCR, and more broadly frontier governmentality beyond the Indian subcontinent. On the one hand, the original ­Kenyan CPO dated from 1909 and itself proved a model for legislation in other Crown colonies. Though the K ­ enyan CPO shared with the FCR a focus on collective punishment and responsibility, which was born of a characterization of ­those subject to the law as “uncivilized” and “savage,” the former was not explic­itly modeled on the latter. On the other hand, the SDAO, fully implemented as it was in 1934, proved the last replication of the FCR within the British Empire, and more broadly was the last self-­conscious replication of the system of frontier governmentality. In the interval between ­these two laws, the FCR was planted and flowered in soils as diverse as mandatory Iraq and Palestine, while the CPO bloomed in Nigeria, Tanganyika, Somaliland, and likely even farther afield. But frontier governmentality was more than a single law, even one reproduced around the empire. Rather, it was an administrative constellation, the substantive reproduction of which may or may not take the form of black-­letter ordinance and regulation, but definitely had a personal 83

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champion. ­After all, frontier governmentality was a system that put a premium on the knowledge, abilities, and judgments of the “man on the spot.” Thus, though the FCR was not formally replicated in TransJordan, Glubb Pasha nonetheless substantively reproduced the system of frontier governmentality among the desert Bedouin. In ­doing so, he closely resembled Robert Sandeman in ambition, outlook, and disposition. But Glubb was neither the first nor only to fabricate in substance frontier governmentality while abjuring its form. That honor lay to the south and in the past, in mid-­nineteenth-­century Natal.

nNnNnN Theo­philus Shepstone, the long-­serving Secretary for Native Affairs of Natal, was one of the most consequential colonial administrators in Africa of the Victorian age.84 Shepstone has variously been celebrated and vilified by commentators and scholars over the years who viewed his “Shepstone system” as ­either an administrative regime of cultural sensitivity designed to accommodate the tribesmen of Natal or one of cultural relativism that was inherently predicated on separateness, and thus underlay the ­later emergence of the apartheid regime in South Africa.85 Regardless of t­ hese posthumous assessments of Shepstone’s legacies, one of the most striking aspects of the man and his administrative system is their uncanny resemblance to Robert Sandeman and his own system of frontier governmentality on the Baluch frontier. Both Shepstone and Sandeman authored systems of rule predicated on the maintenance of tribal identity and integrity, which effectively encapsulated the subjects of such systems to colonially sanctioned “customs and traditions.”86 Yet Shepstone began constructing his system at the mid-­point of the nineteenth c­ entury, nearly a quarter of a c­ entury before Sandeman’s system and the concomitant FCR regime emerged. Shepstone’s system thus did not have its genesis through the imperial chains of transmission found farther north. Rather, what emerges from this episode is the seemingly in­de­pen­dent development of a mirrored system of frontier governmentality along the edges of empire.87 By the time of his appointment as Diplomatic Agent to the Natives in 1845, Shepstone was well versed in local culture and languages. Having grown up in a mission station in the Cape Colony, he was fluent in a number of native languages, including Xhosa and Zulu, which gave his opinions considerable weight and legitimacy in the eyes of colonial authorities.88 That said, the scheme he initially proposed for the governance of the tribes of the newly annexed Natal colony crashed on the shoals of 84

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imperial economy. As head of the Locations Commission of 1847, Shepstone argued for the reservation of sizable productive lands (nearly two million acres) in Natal for the native inhabitants, as well as facilities for their education, and eventual assimilation as a civilized p ­ eople.89 According to this design, indigenous law, custom, and leaders would be eventually supplanted by colonial law, white settler norms, and colonially appointed Africans who would be directly accountable to the state rather than in­de­pen­dent with their own reservoir of authority.90 But the Colonial Office decried the expense of the scheme, rejecting it on the grounds of imperial economy. In the wake of this administrative defeat, Shepstone went on to construct what over time became known as the “Shepstone system,” a system of indirect rule closely resembling the ­later “innovations” of Lugard in Nigeria.91 The Shepstone system placed the indigenous inhabitants of Natal on Crown and mission reserves where they ­were ruled by their chiefs, who wielded tribal custom and tradition. In turn, the chiefs ­were overseen by Native Magistrates, white officials resembling the Po­liti­cal Agents of the tribal agencies along British India’s North-­West Frontier. The chiefs and Native Magistrates served as the interlocutors between the colonial state and native society.92 As with the system of frontier governmentality along the Afghan frontier, the Shepstone system encapsulated Natal’s indigenous inhabitants within their colonially sanctioned customs and traditions on physically delimited (and poor) spaces. The status of the spaces within the colonial order was at one and the same time clear and confused. Shepstone’s initial title was “diplomatic agent” to the natives, a title that by the early 1850s drew the rebuke of the Lieutenant-­Governor of Natal, Benjamin Pine, ­because the tribes of the district could no longer be viewed as in­de­pen­dent.93 Shepstone viewed his own position as that of Supreme Chief, the paramount power exercising ultimate sovereignty over a collection of subsidiary allies and chiefs.94 This language was impor­tant for, in Shepstone’s own rendering, he was not simply an imperial bureaucrat—­the Secretary of Native Affairs—­responsible for the administration of the Queen’s benighted subjects. Rather, he fashioned his office, his role, and himself in an altogether African vernacular, reliant in many cases on the symbolism of the ­great Zulu empire builder Shaka, whom he sought to emulate and self-­consciously considered himself to be an heir to. Shepstone sought to identify himself as a “transcendent po­liti­cal authority” who could bridge the colonial and native worlds by subsuming the latter within the former. Part of that claim entailed a par­tic­u­lar understanding 85

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and assemblage of sovereignty in which, according to Shepstone, Shaka recognized the paramount authority of the British Crown over the Zulu themselves. Such recognition was binding on Shaka’s po­liti­cal progeny in Shepstone’s vague construction.95 While Shepstone’s system, and the colonial government in Natal, demurred the formal recognition of sovereignty or in­de­pen­dence for the native reserves and chiefs seen along the Afghan frontier, in reality t­hese ­were effectively observed. The practices he embedded in Natal eventually assumed their full l­egal form of differentiation u ­ nder the apartheid regime.96 ­After 1948, the white South African government sought to formalize the colonial practice of separate l­egal systems, which lay at the heart of the Shepstone system, with the recognition of the formal in­de­ pen­dence of the African reserves in the form of the infamous “Bantustans.” The most closely associated with Shepstone’s Natal was the Republic of Transkei, which was only recognized by the South African government itself.97 Thus full realization of all the ele­ments of frontier governmentality, while sown by Shepstone in the mid-­nineteenth ­century, did not formally come about u ­ ntil the mid-­twentieth ­century with the advent of apartheid. Nevertheless, Shepstone’s system both relied on and entailed the substantive and formal hallmarks of frontier governmentality evinced elsewhere. The inhabitants of native reserves ­were judicially subject to native courts, which applied customary law. ­These courts w ­ ere overseen by Native Magistrates, who, in cases involving customary usage, relied on the council of chiefs and elders, overseeing a judicial venue akin to the FCR’s Council of Elders.98 ­There was a right of appeal, rarely exercised, to the Secretary of Native Affairs (Shepstone himself), who heard such appeals on behalf of the Lieutenant-­Governor.99 The customary law applied in such judicial venues was subject to the unevenness of individual knowledge and expediencies of local practice. As such, the system afforded the “man on the spot,” and most particularly Shepstone himself, maximum autonomy, much like Sandeman in Baluchistan. This changed, however, with the passage of the Natal Native Code in 1878, which put on paper what had formerly been l­imited to the personal knowledge of the “native expert.”100 Shepstone opposed the codification of native law, as he saw such a move as bound to unnecessarily rigidify local practice. Transcribing practice—­giving it a written ­legal form—­would likely make it “much more difficult to amend.”101 Further, it would curb Shepstone’s powers. As Secretary of Native Affairs, he essentially combined executive and judicial 86

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authority, meaning that he could both declare what customary law was and enforce his understanding of it. Such expansive authority would be significantly circumscribed if laws assumed an in­ de­ pen­ dent, accessible ­textual form. The passage of the Code, which was substantially revised in  1891, in addition to po­liti­cally clipping Shepstone’s wings, may be seen more broadly as part of the bureaucratization and regularization of the colonial state in the late nineteenth c­ entury.102 In addition to the native courts applying local custom, Shepstone relied on a native police force of Africans commanded by indunas to enforce his rule. ­These men ­were rewarded for their ser­vice with b ­ attle prizes and fines, usually in the form of c­ attle and ­women.103 This tribal police force worked as wage ­labor—­becoming monetized in the process—­while at the same time they served as sentinels over their fellow tribesmen by monitoring them for the colonial state. The economic effects of Shepstone’s system ­were the same as ­those in other places where frontier governmentality was administratively affected. Encapsulated on their agriculturally poor reserves, the indigenous inhabitants of Natal strug­gled to maintain a subsistence economy. Yet their collective right to land at one and the same time gave them a ­limited autonomy vis-­à-­vis the surrounding settler economy. Or more properly, it rendered them dependent on that economy without integrating them into it. Consequently, some white settlers opposed Shepstone’s governance on the grounds it allowed the African inhabitants of Natal to escape the demands of the wage l­abor market.104 But in the end his system produced a captive ­labor reserve for large plantation ­owners who needed African ­labor, as opposed to small farmers who wanted tenant rent (and ­labor).105 The Shepstone system not only produced a ­labor market for large plantation land ­owners, but also produced a sizable tax base for the colonial state. Shepstone enforced a hut tax on the inhabitants of the native re­ ere not only made dependent on the settler economy, serves.106 They thus w but also ­were subject to the demands of the colonial one as well.107 Further, his system was predicated on the collectivity of the tribe, and consequently the collective owner­ship of their land. This necessarily militated against their civilization, as that required individual property owner­ ship. Yet the natives could not be trusted to run their wealth properly, and so their lands w ­ ere governed by a white-­run, colonially staffed trust, the Natal Native Trust (established in 1864), placing the natives in a wardship relationship vis-­à-­vis the state, much like American Indians.108 While the natives w ­ ere collectively incapable of overseeing the appropriate disposition 87

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of their wealth and resources, they ­were at the same time collectively responsible for the transgressions of colonial norms and law.109 As elsewhere, the princi­ple of collective responsibility was at least partly predicated on the needs of imperial economy as it supplanted “the place of a largely military force at Imperial expense, and an enormous police establishment at the cost of the Colony.”110 The collectivity of the tribe—­and concurrently its collective responsibility and punishment—­thus lay at the heart of the Shepstone system as it did everywhere ­else frontier governmentality was practiced. An additional aspect of Shepstone’s system bearing an arresting likeness to that seen not only on the Afghan frontier but also in northeast ­Kenya, Basra, the Negev, and elsewhere was the location it was manifest in. At the time of the creation and enforcement of the Shepstone system, Natal was the precarious frontier of British south African settlement. To its north, it faced hostile Boers in the Transvaal (a polity Shepstone himself would attempt to annex, an ill-­fated po­liti­cal move that preempted the disastrous Anglo-­Zulu War).111 To its northeast it faced a potentially aggressive Zulu kingdom.112 Indeed, the Zulu kingdom was responsible for much of the indigenous populace of Natal in Shepstone’s (and other contemporaries’) eyes. He viewed the native population of Natal not as indigenous to the district, but rather as refugees from the mfecane, which was a consequence of Zulu expansion u ­ nder Shaka at the beginning of the c­ entury.113 Natal thus lay on the imperial periphery, with dangerous and destabilizing native polities beyond its limits, themselves interceding between the British and even more dangerous European—or in this case white—­powers.114 It was, in other words, a buffer to the imperial center, like nearly all the other areas of empire subject to forms of frontier governmentality. Though Shepstone’s system would persist, his star began to wane at the moment Robert Sandeman’s waxed. And his fortunes w ­ ere tied to an imperial administrator well versed in the challenges Sandeman faced in Baluchistan. The arrival of Sir Bartle Frere in 1877 as Lord Carnarvon’s man to affect the south African ­union had deleterious consequences on the reputations of both Shepstone and Frere, but ones largely self-­ inflicted.115 Frere’s imperial ambitions, along with ­those of his po­liti­cal masters in London, allowed him to stumble into an inglorious disaster that would shape memories and understandings of the British imperial proj­ect in Africa and abroad. The Anglo-­Zulu War he started in 1879 at least partly resulted from the advice of Shepstone, who encouraged him to 88

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annex the Zulu kingdom in order to head off the menace of Zulu militarism.116 And Frere partly rationalized the Anglo-­Zulu War on the success of the Shepstone system in Natal and the belief it could usefully be extended to Zululand, whose inhabitants w ­ ere, in his eyes at least, the “same race” of men.117 The calamitous Anglo-­Zulu War was forced to compete for print space and public attention with the near-­contemporaneous and equally disastrous Second Anglo-­Afghan War. The empire faced defeat along its barbarous limits ruled by frontier governmentality. This was no accident, for vio­lence was a constituent and enduring part of the system. Frere’s and Shepstone’s public humiliations, along with the dual imperial defeats at Isandlwana and Maiwand, offer an opening to consider the deeper questions both under­lying them and linking them together. Though the defeats differed in their details, they ­were connected by imperial personnel, Frere foremost among them. More importantly, they ­were connected by imperial practice. For while the Anglo-­Zulu and Second Afghan Wars w ­ ere on the one hand complicated by their own layered rationales and origins, on the other they shared the fact that they w ­ ere waged against indigenous polities bordering regions ruled by systems of frontier governmentality. This was no accident. Rather, it speaks to the dangers of the “barbarous” periphery that occasionally erupted—at times in spectacular fashion—to endanger the civilized centers. ­These wars w ­ ere ostensibly undertaken to c­ ounter the geopo­liti­cal threat of Eu­ro­pean states on the far side of ­these “savage” kingdoms. But they ­were also waged to tame the imperial imagination.118 That imagination reveled in the image of the dangerous and violent native—­the “savage”—­inhabiting the wilderness beyond the limits of colonial order. It is to that savagery, or rather the specter of that savagery, we turn to next.

nNnNnN Frontier governmentality enjoyed an imperial ­career that continued right on through to the postcolonial era. Shepstone’s system laid the foundation stone for the ­later apartheid regime. The SDAO was not formally withdrawn from the K ­ enyan ­legal code u ­ ntil 1997.119 Since then, both the ­Kenyan government and its American allies in the War on Terror have continued exercising ele­ments of frontier governmentality in what is ­today the North East Province of the country.120 Grotesque vio­lence has ensued, culminating, though not ending, with the massacre at Garissa University in 2015. The CPOs, widespread throughout colonial Africa, continue to inform the administration of justice in many of the postcolonial states 89

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where they w ­ ere colonially pre­sent. The TCCDR in Iraq remained on the books ­until 1958. Saddam Hussein returned to many of its injunctions and techniques with his resurrected tribal policies in the interval between the first and second Gulf Wars.121 And while the ordinance that Samuel endorsed for Palestine as early as 1923 ultimately ended with British authority over the mandate, that did not mean the Bedouin of the Negev subject to it escaped its clutches in the newly founded state of Israel. Rather the Negev was subject to martial law and military administration, which continued the collective negation of the rights of ­these ­people of the periphery. The imperial ­career of frontier governmentality was a remarkable one, the ghost of which continues to haunt the (post)colonial pre­sent.

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N4n The Colonial Specter of “Savagery”

I

n 1881, following his ignominious recall by the newly elected Liberal government, Sir Bartle Frere did something both extraordinary and desperate in order to save his tattered reputation. He published a series of letters between himself and William Gladstone, the Prime Minister, as well as a number of accompanying documents concerning Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa. Having served as a se­nior imperial administrator along the bounds of the former and in the latter—­the Commissioner of Sindh and the Governor of the Cape Colony, respectively—­Frere’s fortunes ­were closely tied to both locales. And in 1881, neither ranked highly on the scale of imperial success. Indeed, Gladstone led the Liberal party back from the po­liti­cal wilderness to victory in the summer of 1880 through a dazzling campaign that launched a searing critique of the policies of Benjamin Disraeli, the Tory prime minister, and the Conservative government that had seemingly overreached itself. The Anglo-­Zulu War (1879) and the Second Anglo-­Afghan War (1878–1880), though both ultimately “won” by the British Empire, nonetheless w ­ ere marked by disastrous imperial defeats. The stains of Isandlwana and Maiwand refused to be expunged by ­either Rorke’s Drift or Roberts’s occupation of Kabul.1 Disraeli felt the stinging rebuke at the ballot box as Gladstone’s star r­ ose once again. Frere’s publication of his correspondence with the then incredibly popu­lar Prime Minister clearly ran contrary to prevailing public sentiment. It was no surprise that Frere’s machinations did little if anything to recover his public standing.

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nNnNnN Frere had served the empire loyally through an illustrious global ­career.2 He had negotiated the end of slavery with the ruler of Zanzibar in 1873 as well as regularized the administration of Sindh, one of the unrulier provinces of British India. His appointment as the Governor of the Cape Colony was supposed to be the fitting capstone to a distinguished public life, which had resulted in Frere’s knighthood as well as elevation to a baronetcy. Instead, it proved a calamitous coup de grâce from which he would never publicly recover. The disasters of the Anglo-­Zulu War, fairly or not, w ­ ere laid at Frere’s feet. Upon his recall to London, he was publicly censured and disgraced. Unjust as he may have felt this to be, it was nonetheless irregular for a civil servant to so publicly criticize his po­liti­cal masters, particularly the Prime Minister. And while Frere may have been no enthusiast of the Liberal Government’s policies, he was no Tory toady. He had faithfully served a number of governments of dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal stripes without public protest.3 Frere’s actions ­were thus not based on mere po­liti­cal calculus, but rather on a deeply felt sense of personal injustice and dishonor. He saw himself as the sacrificial lamb, unfairly forfeited by conniving politicians to the ever-­shifting winds of public opinion. The correspondence between Frere and Gladstone, centering on Af­ ghan­is­ tan and South Africa, reveals the importance of the language with which ­these spaces ­were framed. For the lexicographical terrain upon which ­these men engaged in a war of words was the same enclosing the inhabitants of ­these frontier spaces. That terrain was the dialectical divide of “civilization” and “savagery.” The empire embodied the former while the frontier dwellers—­the “natives”—­invariably personified the latter. In Frere’s wounded invective as well as Gladstone’s passionate eloquence lay the contours of how imperial officialdom conceived the p ­ eoples of the periphery. Their pugilistic correspondence pre­sents a public recitation of the colonial specter of savagery, a way of understanding the world par­tic­u­lar, though not specific, to Eu­ro­pean high imperialism, and part of a longer historical trend dividing the world between the “civilized” and “savage.” While by the nineteenth c­ entury the specter haunting Eu­rope may have been communism, that troubling the imperial realm was the blood-­lusting barbarism of the uncivilized “savages.” And just as inflated fears of the former served as rhetorical foils to justify class vio­ lence, amplified fears of the latter likewise inspired and justified colonial conquest. 92

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Figure 4.1. ​Sir (Henry) Bartle Frere (“Men of the Day,” No. 68), by Sir Leslie Ward. Published in Vanity Fair, September 20, 1873. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

The colonial specter of savagery provided the means by which empires made the first and most impor­tant division between their subjects along the axis of civilization. ­Those on one side of that axis could be redeemed through the paternal tutelage of regular colonial administration while ­those on the other side existed beyond the pale, requiring an altogether dif­fer­ent governing method. While no colonial subject was fully civilized, some ­were more advanced along the scale of civilization than ­others. And some fell off that scale altogether into the abyss of savagery.4 As H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines, quipped, “A savage is one ­thing, and a civilized man is another; and though civilized men may and do become savages, I personally doubt if the converse is even pos­si­ble.”5 93

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Nowhere ­were men more “savage” than along the imperial limits. It was the savagery of the p ­ eoples of the periphery that justified their subjugation to frontier governmentality. Regular colonial administration was too complicated for t­ hese ­peoples collectively driven by their violent base instincts.6 The colonial specter of savagery was deftly deployed h ­ ere by imperial administrators to vindicate this regime of rule along the edges of authority. By the nineteenth c­ entury, ­there was a clear criterion for the club of civilization demarcated by the specter of savagery. The mark of civilization was the rule of law. And the object of that rule, indeed of the law ­ ere t­ hose who recognized and reitself, was property.7 Civilized ­people w spected the right of individuated property holdings. While some colonial proj­ects additionally elevated Chris­tian­ity as a prerequisite of civilization, generally Christ proved an addendum to such proj­ects, rather than being at their core.8 The white man’s burden was to make God-­fearing men not of the heathen ­peoples of the earth, but rather individual property o ­ wners with a real interest in land. Fee s­ imple absolute—­the permanent, unencumbered owner­ship of real estate by an individual—­was the gospel of civilization for Eu­ro­pean imperialism, the Beatitudes be damned. Individual property ­owners ­were collectively “civilized,” whereas communal property ­owners ­were individually (and collectively) “savage.” The link between civilization and property, mediated through the rule of law, which the Eu­ro­pean and neo-­European empires of the nineteenth ­century made, was neither inadvertent nor inconsequential. Rather, it reflected one of the animating impulses of the colonial proj­ect: the expansion of global capitalism. Central to the structures of the colonial empires was a fiscal calculus that required subject p ­ eoples and places to be a net debit to the imperial exchequer. This was mostly, though not exclusively, accomplished through agrarian taxation. Even if the agricultural produce was not directly taxed, state officials encouraged agricultural productivity for a panoply of reasons. Such state patronage reflected that it was in the state’s interest to make the most of that productivity. Nineteenth-­century liberal economics propounded the key to maximization lay in the individual profit motive. Personal property rights needed to be secured in order to create an incentive structure for investment in land productivity.9 Forms of communal property rights, at least in the eyes of colonial administrators, worked against ­these aims and needed to be done away with.10 Civilized ­people ­were rational economic actors. This meant they maximized the utility—­productivity—of their land. ­Those who did not

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forfeited their normative claim to the land as they perpetuated waste. ­Legally then, they became the dispossessed. Civilization was intimately tied with capitalism; the extension of one necessarily entailed the expansion of the other. Yet the ideologues of empire rarely made ­either the claim, or the link, between civilization and capitalism explicit. Instead, they couched the justification for empire in the language of civilization and savagery wherein colonial expansion brought the former, extinguishing the latter. If that expansion brought with it the advance of capitalism, this was a ­silent but no less positive development. Neither Frere nor Gladstone was unique in their reliance on the discourse of savagery. That discourse provided a universal motif with which imperial and neo-­imperial administrators of nearly ­every stripe painted the hostile hordes inhabiting the limits of their expanding realms. Frere offers one example of the colonial specter of savagery in the context of the British Empire. He is joined by ­others—­administrators, politicians, academics—­who repeated this trope of savagery and in so ­doing justified the conquest and governance of frontier dwellers. Their savagery necessitated their subjugation. At the same time, it negated the possibility of extending regular administration over them. They w ­ ere simply, but definitely unequipped to deal with the complications of western l­egal order. Consequently, they w ­ ere to be governed by their own order, overseen benevolently by the imperial state. Encapsulated in their own colonially sanctioned traditions, the ­peoples of the periphery ­were to be ruled by forms of frontier governmentality. Beyond the confines of Britain’s global empire, administrators and intellectuals in the United States and Argentina likewise deployed the colonial specter of savagery to rhetorically justify their treatment of the p ­ eoples of the periphery. Many used the language of savagery to refer to American Indians and Argentine indios, as did two prominent and impor­tant public intellectuals, Frederick Jackson Turner and Domingo Sarmiento.11 Their respective writings, The Frontier in American History and Facundo, together with Frere’s Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, offer a literary and linguistic triumvirate of the colonial specter of savagery. They afford a win­dow onto a universal language of otherness that justified acts of imperial vio­lence along the limits of the expanding state system of the nineteenth ­century. This was the normative bedrock on which frontier governmentality rested. While the colors of Frere’s fight with Gladstone may have been unique, the outlines ­were most decidedly not.

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nNnNnN During the general election campaign of 1879–1880, Gladstone thundered to his audience, “Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his h ­ umble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Af­ghan­i­stan among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.”12 His speech went on, noting ­those rights transcended the “bound­aries of Christian civilization.” With an eye to con­temporary events, and the embarrassment caused the government by them, he lobbed the “naked bodies” of the Zulus in rhetorical censure of the Conservative government just as they had thrown themselves at “the terribly improved artillery and arms of modern Eu­ro­pean science.” Likewise, “the hill tribes of Af­ghan­i­stan who enjoy more or less po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence”—­language Gladstone copied from imperial administrators ruling British India’s North-­West Frontier—­found themselves the victims of British imperial aggression, though they “had committed no real offence against us.”13 While Gladstone’s oratory evoked the sympathy, horror, and disapproval of his audience—­and was designed to do precisely that—it neither challenged the trope of nor fundamentally rehabilitated the “savage” in the popu­lar imagination. Rather, it rendered them victims of the insatiable appetite of British imperialism, that harbinger of civilization. Gladstone’s speech reads as an indictment of imperialism rather than the civilization animating it. Instead of questioning the division of the world between savagery and civilization, it assumed the division as a natu­ral and immutable one. But it critiqued a world wherein the civilized acted savagely while the “savages” acted civilized. In this topsy-­turvy realm, the order of ­things had been inverted. Gladstone promised his constituents that upon his election to office, he would return t­hings to their proper equilibrium. While Gladstone represented a significant innovation in British politics, he reinforced the dichotomous division of the world—­between civilization and savagery—­upon which imperialism both rested and was justified. Read as an affirmation rather than subversion of the imperial order he supposedly sought to condemn (but would go on to expand as Prime Minister), Gladstone’s “Rights of the Savage” speech offers an entrée into the world of words constructing, maintaining, and buttressing the colonial specter of savagery. Two years l­ ater, when he corresponded with Frere regarding the latter’s actions in Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, both writers reaffirmed the binary worldview of civilization and savagery at the same 96

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time they traded po­liti­cal jabs regarding the spectacular imperial failings of the moment. In his correspondence with Gladstone published as a pamphlet entitled Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, Frere asserted that Gladstone’s mischaracterization of his views t­ oward Af­ghan­i­stan intentionally undermined his standing on questions regarding South Africa.14 Frere charged Gladstone to have “condemned [him] as an unsafe advisor ‘who knew not the spirit by which the British government ­ought to be regulated or controlled.’ ”15 Consequently, Frere emerged in the public imaginary as responsible—­ administratively for one, intellectually for the other—­for the two simultaneous imperial disasters of the day, namely the Anglo-­Zulu and Second Anglo-­Afghan Wars. While the thrust of Frere’s pamphlet centered on questions of imperial policy, mainly regarding Af­ghan­i­stan, it also revealed the way the civilization of the imperial proj­ect was conceived, and conversely how the savagery of the other was depicted. Throughout, Frere referred to the “improvement” of the “uncivilized” and “barbarous” races. He bemoaned his own fall from po­liti­cal grace as premised on old calumnies and misrepre­sen­ta­tions of fact . . . ​[which led to] the ruin of the prosperity, of a region which might other­wise have become a southern home of men of Eu­ro­pean races, discharging a ­great duty in civilizing and raising in the scale of humanity millions of natives of Africa, who for many ­great ages past have never known what permanent peace and civilization might mean.16 The Zulus’ savagery was put on display by their practice of blood money, one they shared with many other uncivilized ­people on the edges of the empire, including the Pashtuns, Baluch, Somalis, and Bedouins among ­others, which Frere argued must be extirpated by British administration.17 He insisted that his charge as Governor of the Cape Colony was to promote “as far as may be pos­si­ble, the good order, civilization, and moral and religious instructions of the tribes [along the frontier].”18 Frere further viewed it his responsibility to protect “uncivilized” races, essentially from themselves: The true ­causes of the Zulu, as of the Afghan war, are neglect of neighbourly duties and responsibilities, incumbent on a rich, civilized and power­ful nation, ­towards poor barbarous tribes on its borders. We have allowed a noble p ­ eople capable of rapid and permanent advancement in civilization, to grow in numbers, whilst they festered in barbarism, till they became a serious danger to us. 97

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We have shut our eyes and turned our backs on their wants and defects, left them as much as pos­si­ble to themselves, endeavoured to see and know as l­ittle of them, and to let them see and know as ­little of us as was pos­si­ble, and then we are surprised to find that they have grown into a danger, only to be averted by war.19 Frere characterized the policy of noninvolvement—or “masterly inactivity” as it was called along the Afghan frontier—as a “selfish policy of isolation and . . . ​neglect.”20 In rebutting what he considered the unfair charges leveled against him by Gladstone, Frere declaimed he had “some practical acquaintance with the modes of converting such lawless savages into peaceable and industrious subjects.”21 To him and the broader “civilized” world of the nineteenth ­century, civilization was marked by individual economic activity and, most importantly, individual property owner­ship. As both a public intellectual and imperial administrator, Frere wanted to “extend the right to individual tenure of property,” as he saw this as the “means of advancement and civilization to the aboriginal groups.”22 It was the protection of that regime of owner­ship that inevitably entangled the civilized powers with the barbarians beyond their frontiers. Frere laid out his theory of civilizational advance in his discussion of the expanding Tsarist Empire and its potential annexation of the “savage hordes intervening between them and India.” “How the annexation comes about” was that the savagery of the uncivilized barbarians invited, if not necessitated intervention by the civilized powers bordering them.23 With annexation affected, the issue of administration inevitably arose. ­Here too the “savage” nature of frontier ­peoples mitigated against civilized governance, and thus civilization itself. Consequently, rather than extending the ­legal and bureaucratic rule of the conquering imperial regime, Frere subscribed to the cult of the “man on the spot.” He argued that the frontier tribes would be best governed not by institutions, but by individuals. Thus, “you must manage to train up men in the spirit of your Malcolms, Elphinstones, and Metcalfes of times past, and of Sir George Clerk in l­ater days;—­men who by their character and the confidence the Native have in them, can hold their own without the immediate presence of battalions and big guns.”24 Frontier administrators’ effectiveness depended on their charismatic authority, much like the traditional holders of authority—­the elders, maliks, pirs, and saints they replaced along the frontier. In essence, one chief was to replace another. 98

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

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Frere’s position, as well as that of his verbal nemesis Gladstone, at the heart of the imperial structures of power, endows their utterances and polemics with special weight. Frere’s role in both Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, lending as it does a personnel link in the administrative chain of transmission of frontier governmentality, is impor­tant. His imperial ­career helps map the movement of this regime of rule around the British Empire. Likewise, his words provide a win­dow into the ways it was both justified and rhetorically cloaked. The rights of the “savage” gave rise to the regimes of rule keeping them “savage.”

nNnNnN Whereas Bartle Frere was a failed British imperial administrator whose disgraceful downfall prompted a now-­forgotten public fray in the press with the Prime Minister, Frederick Jackson Turner was an American academic whose pronouncement of the closure of the American frontier at the 1893 American Historical Association conference in Chicago has proven a durable cornerstone of American self-­conceptions. Turner’s formulation has largely proven definitional of understandings—­academic and other­wise—of frontiers.31 Like Frere, Turner employed the rhetorically repetitive use of the civilizational / savagery divide, writing, “The frontier is the outer edge of the wave—­the meeting point between savagery and civilization.”32 But his importance lay not in his emulation of Frere’s linguistic acrobatics. Rather, it derives from the bridging position he holds between the formally imperial and national worlds of the nineteenth ­century. For while Frere talked of the “savages” lurking on the edges of empire, Turner discussed t­ hose the expanding nation-­state would swallow up in its inexorable march westward across the continent. Turner offers a means to escape the limits of the British imperial world of the time and enter upon the expanse of the larger global canvas. For Turner, the frontier proved a space of generative destruction. The “perennial rebirth,” offered by the proximity to “primitive society, furnishes the forces dominating American character” and history.33 Constitutive of national character, Turner famously insisted that “the frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization.”34 That generation of American character, however, was predicated on the destruction of two things: the Eu­ ­ ro­ pean character of frontier settlers and the “savage” ­wilderness (including its indigenous inhabitants). While he meant the former in figurative terms, the latter he meant in quite literal ones. On the frontier, civilization was initially made “savage” so that savagery could 100

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

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economy remained decidedly deficient. By 1893, the year Turner delivered his verdict, one he actually backdated to the 1890 census, the indigenous inhabitants of the continental United States had all been encapsulated on hundreds of Indian reservations. Native Americans no longer had to “face east from Indian country” to see the encroachment of white settler society for by now they had been fully engulfed within it.44 Yet the spread of that settler society was uneven and peripatetic. And while the Indian “savages” may have been l­imited in their geographic range, their subjugation to the white cap­i­tal­ist economy was far from accomplished. Even with the advent of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, designed in the words of T. R. Roo­se­velt as “a mighty pulverizing machine intended to break up the g­ reat tribal mass,” savagery remained.45 The wilderness had not been fully transformed into fee ­simple absolute, and the “savages” w ­ ere not individual property ­owners. Consequently, and despite Turner’s pronouncement to the contrary, the frontier was not closed, but rather was practiced right across the country upon its uncivilized victims. Only the triumph of capitalism in the guise of property owner­ship would complete the pro­cess Turner claimed. While much has been written about Turner’s formulation of the role of the frontier in the genesis of Amer­i­ca, less attention has been paid to the relationship between civilization and savagery. Yet suffused throughout Turner’s prose lay deeply rooted and firmly held ideas accommodating, reflecting, and reinforcing the colonial specter of savagery. In Turner’s formulation of civilization, just as in Frere’s, capitalism holds pride of place. Chris­tian­ity is at best an addendum, ancillary to the domestication of the wilderness and its “savages” as homo economicus. Though Turner and Frere meditated upon dif­fer­ent imperial enterprises, the context—­the expansion of civilization by ­those enterprises—­was largely the same.

nNnNnN Whereas Turner portrayed the conquest of the American wilderness as a seemingly natu­ral consequence of the intrusion of Eu­ro­pe­ans into it—­with traders followed by farmers, themselves followed by cities and industry—­ Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, an Argentine literary figure and statesman, painted a rather darker picture of the relationship between Eu­ro­pe­ans and the wilderness. Sarmiento’s prose, and his indictment of Argentine society, is marked not by the conquest of the wilderness, but rather of the conquest by the wilderness.46 Sarmiento rendered a real­ity where Eu­ro­ pe­ans, more particularly Spaniards, w ­ ere transformed by the Argentine 102

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environment, rather than transforming it. Though the original sin lay with the Indians, the Eu­ro­pe­ans had also been corrupted by it. He wrote, “The American aborigines live in idleness, and show themselves incapable, even u ­ nder compulsion, of hard and protracted l­abor. . . . ​[T]he Spanish race has not shown itself more energetic than the aborigines, when it has been left to its own instincts in the wilds of Amer­i­ca.”47 According to Sarmiento, the “unfortunate . . . ​incorporation of the native tribes . . . ​[into] the pro­cess of civilization” infected and ruined the entire enterprise.48 Thus the Spaniards w ­ ere conquered by the wilderness, and rendered into facsimiles of the personification of that wilderness—­“white-­skinned savage[s], at war with society.”49 While Turner offered a vision of the colonial specter of savagery from the vantage of academia at the end of the nineteenth c­ entury, and Frere from the perspective of an imperial servant, Sarmiento’s perch combined the two while at the same time staking out new ground. Domingo Sarmiento was one of Argentina’s most impor­tant po­liti­cal figures of the ­century. A member of the so-­called Generation of 1837, Sarmiento was a politician who served as Argentina’s seventh president, an educator who was instrumental in the establishment of universal primary education, and a journalist whose writings against the dictatorial Juan Manual Rosas regime assumed the form, most famously, of his book Facundo.50 A meditation on the nature of Argentine society, and an impeachment of Rosas and the politics he both embodied and represented, Facundo accomplished both tasks through the biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a caudillo (strongman) of the province of La Rioja. Writing from exile in Chile, Sarmiento’s narrow aim in the tract was the critique of his po­ liti­cal enemies. But Facundo served as an indictment not simply of Quiroga or Rosas, but rather more broadly of the society that produced and empowered such men. In Facundo, Sarmiento constructed a dialectical society where the rural embodied by the most Argentine of characters (the gaucho) represented barbarism, whereas the urban centers embodied by the most Eu­ro­pean male fashion (the frock coat) represented civilization. It was the b ­ attle between rural and urban, barbarism and civilization, that marked the contours of Argentina’s po­liti­cal pro­gress. Clearly in Sarmiento’s construction, Rosas, Quiroga, and the provincial caudillos lay on the side of barbarism, while he and his frock-­coated allies of the Generation of 1837 lay on the side of civilization. With the defeat and exile of Rosas at the ­battle of Caseros in 1852, Sarmiento and his po­liti­cal allies—­and more 103

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Figure 4.2. ​Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, c. 1873. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

importantly the civilization they embodied—­eventually won the day.51 But this all tran­spired ­after he authored and published Facundo, which first appeared in 1845. Facundo is no mere po­liti­cal tract, but rather is an existential interrogation into the very nature of Argentine society. At the core of that interrogation w ­ ere the categories of “civilization” and “barbarism.” Sarmiento placed ­these on spatial, personal, and lifeway registers, with the former associated with Eu­ro­pean immigrants to Argentina’s cities who practiced industry and commerce and the latter with the gauchos in the countryside who practiced seminomadic husbandry. It was the last of ­these registers, lifeways, that most firmly embodied the rupture between civilization and barbarism in Sarmiento’s calculus. Civilized life was impossible without the sense of a common civic community, necessitated by the 104

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

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contemporaries, Sarmiento understood that the dividing axis between the civilized and the “savages” was individual owner­ship, most importantly of land. He wrote that “­there can be no pro­gress without permanent possession of the soil”—­individuated and protected by the full force of the law.59 Roo­se­velt echoed this view precisely in his assessment of the Dawes Act in the United States. The rule of law was predicated on the protection of capital, which itself resulted from the accumulation of surplus guaranteed by permanent possession of the soil. It was an interlinked and interwoven mosaic that collectively composed the fabric of civilization. In contrast to the cities, the nearly limitless expanse of the Pampas—­the Argentine grasslands—­meant the gauchos’ lifeways mediated ­toward individualism and mitigated any sense of community. ­Here, Sarmiento asserted, “Barbarism is the normal condition.”60 The vacuity of the Pampas allowed for the unchecked flourishing of the individual—­unhindered by the needs or demands of communal society. For Sarmiento, civilization stood as a collective undertaking and his indictment of his fellow Argentines fundamentally rested on their valorization of the individual countryman, rather than the collective city dweller. He stands in stark contrast to Turner, who celebrated the wilderness as the incubator of the rugged individualism at the core of American character and success. Sarmiento believed so powerfully in the civilizing effect of the city that he favorably compared the by-­then minuscule population of black Argentines to the gauchos: the former, “mostly inhabiting the cities, has a tendency to become civilized.”61 Sarmiento’s vision of the Pampas as an empty wasteland, which in turn wasted the character of the nation, was intentionally blind to the fact that it was already populated by a ­people predating the gaucho. He wrote, “The vast tract which occupies its [the Argentine republic’s] extremities is uninhabited . . . . ​wastes containing no ­human dwelling,” echoing a well-­established rhetorical extermination of the existence of the indios, the indigenous p ­ eoples whose physical extermination would follow with the desert campaign of 1875–1885, but was ever only partially comsur­ able and plete.62 The “wandering savages” traversed the “immea­ boundless spaces” of the Argentine interior but w ­ ere incapable of its occupation as that would both require and imply proprietary owner­ship, something well beyond them.63 Yet Sarmiento could not fully escape the presence of the indios, referring to them as the “savage horde,” “blood-­thirsty and rapacious,” and 106

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“ever on the watch.”64 Consequently, Sarmiento, like nearly all of his contemporaries, thought their eradication—­literary as well as a­ ctual—­was a decidedly good ­thing. Defending the Spanish, in 1844 he wrote, Let’s be fair to the Spaniards; by exterminating a savage ­people whose territory they would occupy, they simply did what all civilized p ­ eople do to savages, what the colony did deliberately or nondeliberately with the indigenous: it absorbed, destroyed, exterminated. . . . ​It may be very unjust to exterminate savages . . . ​but thanks to this injustice, Amer­i­ca, instead of being abandoned to savages, incapable of pro­gress, is t­oday occupied by the Caucasian race, the most perfect, most intelligent, the most beautiful, and the most progressive of ­those who ­people the earth.65 Sarmiento at least partially blamed the state of Argentine society and the failure of civilization on racial miscegenation and the integration of the natives into rural society. While the gaucho had been laid low by the infusion of “savage” blood, his society was still advanced over that of the indio. The gauchos w ­ ere the barbarians of the Argentine Pampas, the missing indios its “savages.” Yet Sarmiento’s categories of barbarism and savagery ­were fundamentally unstable. He quoted Sir Walter Scott approvingly that “the vast plains of Buenos Ayres [sic] . . . ​are inhabited only by Christian savages known as Gauchos.”66 Like Sarmiento, Scott negated the presence of the indios. But more impor­tant was Scott’s reference to “Christian savages,” a reference reaffirming the fact that during the nineteenth c­ entury at least on the Pampas—­just as on the American, South African, and British Indian frontiers—­adherence to religion, or more precisely Chris­tian­ity, was not the mea­sure of civilization. Rather civilization was a function of property and its protection. The juxtaposition of Scott, as a lowland Scottish romantic who valorized the life of the countryside (albeit in a decidedly atemporal manner) then in retreat in the face of Britain’s industrial revolution, with Sarmiento—an unapologetic municipal booster of civilization who denounced the countryside as a morally corrupting wilderness—is a jarring one Sarmiento himself did not reflect upon. But the real marker of savagery for both Scott and Sarmiento was the appalling poverty that marked the countryside of the Argentine interior and the ­Scottish Highlands. Poverty, a­ fter all, was a consequence of the moral failing of its victims. The poor showed no industry and ­were lazy. They lacked the work ethic fundamentally necessary to succeed in a cap­i­tal­ist society. 107

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­ onsequently, they ­ C were ­ little more than social detritus—­ “savages” standing in the way of the pro­gress of civilization. Sarmiento’s invocation of Scott invites a consideration of the intellectual milieu in which to situate the former’s narrative. Scott has been credited with introducing the stadial ideas of civilizational development marking the Scottish Enlightenment into the romantic fiction of the early nineteenth ­century.67 The Scotsman’s denunciation of the “savage” Scottish highlanders, most famously in his novel Waverly, must be si­mul­ta­ neously set against his cele­bration of their bravery and capacity for moral purity.68 Scott’s ambivalence t­oward the barbarians was shared by Sarmiento, but more importantly so too was his stadial, progressive vision of ­human history—”savage” barbarian to agriculturalist to industrialist.69 Sarmiento’s Facundo may be read as a form of philosophical history common in the Scottish Enlightenment, but one layered over by a number of other literary genres and po­liti­cal motives. Related to Scott’s influence is Sarmiento’s repeated Orientalizing of the gaucho—­and the po­liti­cal life of the Argentine republic. Throughout his text he referred to the Turk, Bedouin, Cossack, and Arab, and he compared the Pampas to biblical Palestine.70 He went so far as to state that the relative flatness of the Argentine interior made the body politic topographically prone to despotism, giving the Republic a “certain Asiatic coloring.”71 Like many of his contemporaries, including Scott, Sarmiento understood certain terrains to be generative of freedom, and ­others as incubators of repression. He noted that “many phi­los­o­phers have also thought that plains prepare the way for despotism, just as mountains furnish strongholds for the strug­gle of liberty.”72 But while Sarmiento denounced the tyranny of his native land as comparable to the Asian despots of the Orientalist imaginary, he actually spoke more highly of non-­Argentine native society than he did of gaucho culture itself.73 His repeated use of Orientalist imagery, which made Argentine barbarism legible to his nineteenth-­century reading public, nonetheless placed the gauchos lower on the hierarchy of civilizations than their con­temporary Asiatic barbarian brethren.74 Sarmiento repeatedly evoked the image of the Cossacks and the Bedouins as nomadic tribes not unlike t­hose inhabiting the Argentine interior.75 But though uncivilized, they ­were not altogether barbarous, simply neglecting moral pro­gress rather than lacking it altogether. The diffusion of the gauchos over such a vast, vacant land (the presence of the indios notwithstanding) meant that their culture, unlike that of the Asiatic nomads, “admits of no social reunion.”76 Sarmiento saw gaucho society as so democratic—or more 108

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properly anarchic—in character that “even the savage [indio] tribe of the Pampas is better or­ga­nized for moral development than our country districts.”77 It is “the disor­ga­ni­za­tion of society among the gauchos [which] deeply implants barbarism in their natures.”78 Asia was not the limit of Sarmiento’s comparative frame. He invoked North Amer­i­ca as a touchstone for the Argentine experience of barbarism, conjuring the writing of James Fenimore Cooper and his depictions of savagery in The Last of the Mohicans and The Pioneer.79 His evocation of Cooper’s language of civilization and savagery was physically located on “the border land between civilized life and that of the savage.”80 In this space, Sarmiento recognized the characters, customs, and condition of civilization (or lack of it), which Cooper authored as very much akin to that of the Pampas. He wrote that Cooper’s “accounts of practices and customs . . . ​seem plagiarized from the Pampa.” Sarmiento also linked North Amer­i­ca with the Orient by noting the American herdsman, purloined as he was from the Pampas, was virtually the same as the Arab. The reason for this was “that analogies in the soil bring with them analogous customs, resources, and expedients.”81 Like begot like; the same ­environment produced the same savagery. Sarmiento insisted that the “strug­gle between civilization and barbarism” that he documented in the Argentine interior resembled its contemporaries across the globe. The Bedouin tribesmen of the Algerian frontier, the African “goom” [man?], and the “clouds of Cossacks . . . ​give an exact idea of the Argentine montenera.”82 He saw himself and his allies united in a universal fight against savages, whose appearances, though conditioned by the locality they inhabited, w ­ ere undeniably analogous.83 His compression of time and space in order to embody barbarism was both complete and intentional.84 Sarmiento created a global, if not universal, register for the specter of savagery, which joined together the disparate corners of the world in their common oppression by the barbarian hordes. In the words of one author, “Sarmiento’s mission, then, was to insert ­Argentina into the framework of universal history.”85 He accomplished this mission with stunning brilliance.

nNnNnN Sarmiento, Turner, and Frere all agreed upon the outlines of the universal history they both authored and relied upon, one fundamentally framed by civilization and savagery. All three, in their respective guises, advocated for the triumph of the former over the latter, bitterly denouncing the roadblocks 109

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to the natu­ral advancement of history where they appeared. Theirs was an uncomplicated vision of the pro­gress of humanity, deeply indebted to and ingrained with Enlightenment ideas of the hierarchy of civilization and stadial theory of civilizational development. “Savages” ­were on the bottom rung of that hierarchy, the civilized on the top. This required no explanation, no defense or apology. For this was the natu­ral order of ­things. The states t­ hese men served, represented, and observed w ­ ere harbingers of civilization in a dark world. Their literary works placed t­hese polities within that universal history, as driving forces of pro­gress and the betterment of humanity. The under­lying architecture of the universal history t­hese men relied on was the colonial specter of savagery. All three divided the world between civilized and “savage,” incarnate in the Eu­ro­pean socie­ties and indigenous ones, respectively. Hardly original in their rendering of the world, ­these men reflected widely held con­temporary understandings upon which colonial / imperial actions rested and ­were fundamentally justified. Their common definition of civilization, or rather what made certain p ­ eople civilized and ­others not, was individuated property owner­ship, most notably in land. From this, all other markers and ele­ments of civilization flowed. Property was the origin point of civilization.86 What of the ­peoples of the periphery—­the frontier dwellers—­who had no discernable systems of individual property owner­ship? Clearly, ­these ­people ­were rootless “savages,” transient beings beyond the pale of civilization.87 What to do with them then? Embedded in ­these three men’s writings is an assimilative impulse. Frere clearly believed the frontier to be a space not of accommodation, but rather incorporation by the civilized power of the “savages” beyond the direct reach of their realm (thereby extending the reach of that realm). Turner characterized the natu­ral course of events to inevitably lead to the absorption of the Indian into the American body politic. That act of digestion was generative of the new American man. And Sarmiento noted how the integration of the indios of the Pampas ­shaped gaucho culture, much to his disgust. Yet while all three recognized the assimilative consequence of the pro­gress of civilization, none w ­ ere particularly enthused by the prospect. Instead, in dif­fer­ent ways and through dif­fer­ent renderings, each preferred the eradication and disappearance of the native. At its most benign, that might have been rhetorical, such as when Sarmiento wrote about the deserted wastes of the Pampas. In real­ity though, the erasure of the Indians seldom proved l­ imited to the vio­lence of the written word. 110

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If assimilation was not the answer, what was? Eradication was indeed a morally acceptable possibility. But in truth it was a rather expensive proposition to undertake. Instead, what ultimately happened was an altogether dif­fer­ent strategy—­encapsulation. The ­people of the periphery ­were almost invariably fenced in on the marginal lands the state could force them onto, and, once ­there, policed through their own colonially sanctioned “customs and traditions.” They ­were subject, in other words, to frontier governmentality. That subjugation may have carried with it the promise or potentiality of ­either assimilation or eradication, but this was not necessarily its original aim or end goal. Rather, the frontier dwellers ­were meant to be kept separate and apart, but kept nonetheless. As the imperial ­career of the FCR and its associated Sandeman system of frontier administration moved around the British realm in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperial servants carried with them knowledge of administrative practices they could apply to similarly situated places against similarly disposed ­peoples. Bartle Frere, as Commissioner of Sind and ­later Governor of the Cape Colony, was one such link in the imperial chain of transmission. But administrative practices in the governmentally bureaucratized nineteenth-­century world knew few, if any, po­ liti­cal or geographic bounds. What worked against the Afghans and the Zulus along the edges of the British Empire was likely to work just as well (or poorly) against the Apache and Mapuche facing the American and Argentine republics. ­After all, ­these indigenous frontier dwellers shared the same savagery, just as the republics shared the empire’s light of civilization. Frere, Turner, and Sarmiento provide the intellectual connective tissue of a singular, though admittedly uneven understanding of the world that rests on the colonial specter of savagery. The strength of that understanding is that it is at one and the same time universal and infinitely par­tic­u­lar. The details may differ, sometimes substantially so, without unsettling the fundamental princi­ple of frontier governmentality. The colonial specter of savagery is thus marked by both a remarkable plasticity and resilience. It was activated along the frontiers of the ostensibly nonimperial spaces confronting Turner and Sarmiento. For on the bounds of ­these expanding republics, a parallel story to that already documented along the limits of the British Empire was playing out in the Amer­i­cas, transported by the prose of an academic and politician-­cum-­public intellectual.

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N5n Ruling the Chiricahua Apache in Amer­i­ca’s Desert Southwest

A

fter nearly a de­cade of pursuit, they fi­nally had him. They had tracked Geronimo to a relatively remote mountain hideaway where his chances of escape w ­ ere ­limited at best. Nobody was sure how long he had been hiding in this par­tic­u­lar locale, one of a number of refuges he had availed himself of during his years on the run. But nobody cared at this point. ­After years of waging a bloody war against him and his small band of followers, one which gripped the attention of the press, public, and politicians alike, the United States had arrived at Geronimo’s day of reckoning. “Geronimo E[nemy]. K[illed]. I[n]. A[ction],” crackled the radio relating the kill. The date was May  2, 2011. Members of Seal Team Six confirmed to President Obama and his national security team gathered in the White House situation room that they had just killed Osama bin Laden, whom they had code-­named “Geronimo.”1 They had tracked bin Laden to a compound in the Pakistani hill station of Abbottabad—­a military town named ­after James Abbott, a frontier officer of the British Raj who had been instrumental in governing the Afghan borderlands. Military planners claimed the designation of Amer­i­ca’s most wanted ­enemy with the name of one of its most famous Native American warriors was a fluke of military acronyms. Intentional or not, naming bin Laden “Geronimo” has disturbing implications for how Americans associate the ongoing War on Terror against foreign Muslim extremists with the war of conquest against the country’s indigenous ­peoples. On the one hand, it likens a modernist po­liti­cal movement with a premodern, “uncivilized,” and “savage” p ­ eople. On the other, it equates a sophisticated indigenous 112

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group resisting the violent expansion of a settler society with the “fanat­i­ cism” of a group of religious radicals wanting to take the world back to the age of the Caliphate.2 Both images are unsettling and profoundly wrong. The linkages between Pakistan’s northwest and the American Southwest go beyond the chance, or choice, of US military acronyms. The operation to kill bin Laden at least partly resulted from surveillance and tracking efforts undertaken at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona.3 ­Today one of the largest intelligence installations of the US military, the fort was originally established as a cavalry outpost along the ill-­defined border with Mexico to police and corral local Indians.4 While the personal connection between t­hese frontiers—­bin Laden and Geronimo—­ provides an in­ter­est­ing anecdote, their administrative and conceptual linkages are far more substantive and arresting. The historical parallels intertwining them are deep, though largely unrecognized and essentially unexcavated. The way that the Americans dealt with the original Geronimo and his fellow Apache tribesmen at the end of the nineteenth c­entury shares much in common with the way their con­temporary British counter­ parts dealt with the inhabitants of the Pakistan / Afghan frontier. Geronimo’s treatment by the federal government was at one and the same time emblematic of and aberrational from the norm of federal-­Indian relations at the time. His surrender effectively ended the Indian wars that had greatly defined the nation’s westward expansion. As such, his capture marked the final subjugation of “in­de­pen­dent” indigenous ­peoples to the juggernaut of white settler colonialism. A mere seven years l­ater, Frederick Jackson Turner declared the American frontier closed, and with it the “victory” of civilization over “savagery”—­natu­ral and Indian. Geronimo’s experience, and that of his band of Chiricahua Apache, offers a detailed glimpse not only of federal-­Indian relations, but more importantly of the forms of frontier governmentality the United States deployed to rule what white settler society viewed as its problematic population of natives. ­There are a number of stories nested within the saga of Geronimo’s re­sis­tance and capture. ­These stories not only speak to the violent and unjust history of American relations with its Indian subjects, but also place ­those relations in a broader global context of the subjugation of the ­peoples of the periphery. The experiences of Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apache closely mirror ­those of many other liminal, borderland inhabitants. Though the details are distinct, the intellectual and administrative space separating the Apache from the Afghans is remarkably slender. The 113

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practices of administration, norms of governance, and vio­lence of rule the British first developed along India’s North-­West Frontier with Af­ghan­i­ stan in the 1870s find an uncanny doppelganger in the Desert Southwest of the expanding American republic at the very same time.

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

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

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Figure 5.1. ​Indian agent John P. Clum with Diablo and Eskiminzim, at San Carlos Agency (in a photo­graph taken in 1875). Library of Congress Prints and Photo­graphs Division  /  LC-­USZC4-7938.

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still ­under federal jurisdiction and lacked state governments.9 While t­ here ­were multiple Indian groups and communities in the region, among the most impor­tant ­were the Apache. Athabascan speakers who originally migrated to the Desert Southwest in the sixteenth ­century, the Apache are an ethnolinguistic grouping who, upon their arrival to the area, splintered into a number of discrete groups, such as the Chiricahua, Western, Lipan, and Mescalero, to inhabit dif­fer­ent environments.10 ­These groups spread over a wide area, including much of southern New Mexico and Arizona, as well as northern Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico. Many of the Apache bands developed a po­liti­cal economy of plunder based largely on raiding area settlements and ranches. The response of local authorities, though modulating with time, was predictably violent.11 The United States assumed control of the region and its inhabitants with the invasion of Mexico in 1846. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-­American War, and the Gadsden Purchase transformed what had previously been a Mexican, or more precisely a Chihuahuan and Sonoran, prob­lem into an American one.12 Contact did not necessarily entail conflict. The small number of Americans in the region ­limited the potential for clashes with the Apache. At first, the United States sought to establish relations with the Apache on the same treaty foundations it had with other indigenous groups. In July 1852, E. V. Sumner, commander of the New Mexico military department, arrived at an accord with a number of prominent Apache chiefs, most notably Mangas Coloradas, a leader who had been a thorn in the side of Mexican authorities and would ­later prove to be so to the Americans.13 The treaty acknowledged the Indians ­were ­under exclusive US jurisdiction. As a consequence, they would neither associate with nor aid any other tribe or power at war with the United States. In keeping with the obligations of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the accord required the Indians to refrain from raiding in Mexico or other­wise attacking Mexican persons or property. It further promised that the US government would delimit the Apache’s territorial bound­aries, and pass the necessary laws to operate within them. In return, the Apache would receive regular “donations, pre­sents and implements” from the government as well as any other “liberal and humane mea­sures” deemed proper.14 While the treaty of 1852 provided a framework for relations, it was necessarily subject to local accommodations between the Apache and American authorities. The US Army turned a blind eye to Apache raiding in Sonora and Chihuahua that left American citizens and property

117

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­ nharmed. In return, the Apache ­limited their vio­lence to the area south u of the border.15 The international border between the United States and Mexico—­a ­legal fiction created by American military success—­facilitated a real­ity mutually beneficial to both the Americans and Apache at the cost of Mexicans. The Apache continued their po­liti­cal economy of plunder, which they had long practiced against Spanish and l­ater Mexican settlers. They used not only the physical refuge of inhospitable terrain they had mastered, but also the ­legal refuge provided by the international state system they ­were too “savage” to partake in. Though they may not have had a legible state of their own in the eyes of e­ ither Mexican or American authorities, the Apache proved a­ dept at navigating the interstices of international law to the g­ reat frustration of its state participants.16 They alternatively transgressed international bound­aries and used them to secure refuge, knowing full well that though they did not re­spect such ­legal fictions, the states pursuing them did. At the same time, the proximity of the border provided American authorities with an opportunity to manage and divert a threat to their security, and possibly state integrity. It was in the interests and to the advantage of both the Americans and the Apache to maintain an ambivalence about the border, which allowed them to live peaceably with one another. The Americans looked the other way to Apache cross-­border raiding and in turn the Apache kept the vio­lence south of the fictive line that had no meaning for them. But that ambivalence was necessarily fleeting, for once the under­lying dynamics, most importantly the relative absence of American authorities and settlers, upon which it rested changed, so too did the calculations of both the Americans and the Indians. The critical moment followed the end of the American Civil War in 1865 when the newly re­united nation was poised to fulfill the promises and potential of its “manifest destiny.” While the Arizona and New Mexico territories where the Apache lived boasted ­little in the way of prime agricultural land, which drew many white settlers to the West, other interests, including ­cattle ranchers and miners, eyed Indian lands ­there. In order to satisfy the demands of settlers, cap­i­tal­ists, and mining industrialists, the army sought to confine Indians to their ever-­ shrinking reservations throughout the West, returning Indian lands to the public domain through manufactured consent or force if necessary. Although many openly called for the extermination of Indians, the US government opted for a dif­fer­ent course of action. 118

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nNnNnN From 1868 onward, Grant’s administration moved away from the previous policy of force employed against Indians and ­toward its so-­called peace policy. The policy sought to initially acculturate and subsequently assimilate Indians into the expanding republic. It was driven by a combination of normative calculations and the needs of economy. The policy promised to becalm relations between the federal government and the Apache, which had turned particularly violent in the 1860s. The treaty of 1852 had been ignored by both parties, with the Apache raiding within US territories and the army aggressively tracking them down. Whereas the Apache had previously used the international border to thwart Mexican authorities, they w ­ ere increasingly using it to thwart American ones. Despite the enforced hiatus of hostilities caused by the bloodletting of the Civil War, between 1861 and 1869 the government continued to pursue a costly strategy which expended men and material out of proportion to the realized returns.17 ­There was a palpable appetite for another less costly approach to Indian relations, especially with the Apache.18 The peace policy set the general par­ameters of federal-­Indian relations. Indians would be placed on reservations, separating them from the hostile white settlers and preventing vio­lence. Once ­there, they would be provided with rations and encouraged to take up settled agriculture. They would also receive Christian instruction from agents, men like Clum, who ­were almost exclusively appointed from religious denominations. While this was the carrot of the Grant administration’s policy, the stick was that any Indians refusing reservation life would fall ­under the purview of the military and be dealt with by force ­until such time as they complied. The peace policy capped an explosion of treaty making between the US government and Indian groups, with over one hundred treaties concluded between 1848 and 1867.19 The proliferation of treaties fi­nally drew Congressional ire as the legislative body tired of the expense such treaties entailed. So in 1871, Congress banned their f­ uture use. While existing treaties would be respected, ­future relations would be mediated through statute or executive order. The treaty system, though honored more in breach than observance, created a ­legal pretense wherein Indian consent, even if fraudulently manufactured, was nonetheless required. The post1871 situation did away with this entirely. This had impor­tant implications for the Apache as they entered a more intense period of relations with the federal government, one based on a new and hitherto untested 119

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foundation. Unlike many of the plains Indians with whom relations ­were treaty-­based, the Apache ­were bound by local accommodations. Even the 1852 treaty, by now a dead letter, applied to only a relatively narrow band of Apache, leaving ­those not ­under the supposed authority of the signatory chiefs outside the ambit of any legally structured relationship with the American government. As in the past, the local accords upon which this new era of relations rested ­were themselves largely contingent on the personalities involved. The most impor­tant of ­these brokered understandings was arrived at in October 1872, between General O. O. Howard, the military commandant of the Arizona department, and Cochise, one of the greatest of the Chiricahua Apache chiefs. The Chiricahua w ­ ere among the most impor­tant and subsequently famous band of Apache inhabiting southern New Mexico and southern Arizona, the Apache heartlands. Their location made them a par­tic­u­lar concern for American officers like Howard as they abutted and regularly raided across the Mexican frontier, provoking international tensions. Though relatively small in number, the Chiricahua nonetheless assumed an outsized role in relations between the federal government and Southwest Indians. The Apaches’ raiding and warfare, both across the international border and within the United States, earned them a reputation for “savagery” in the minds of governmental officials and the public alike. Even an agent as seemingly and condescendingly “pro-­ Indian” as Clum referred to his charges’ “savage natures” in his official correspondence, and in his private reminisces described them as “wild, savage and turbulent.”20 The military had a number of violent run-­ins with the Chiricahua over the years, most notably the Bascom Affair in 1861 and the B ­ attle of Apache Pass the fol21 lowing year. ­These incidents led to the establishment of a permanent military presence throughout the Arizona and New Mexico territories, with a key outpost—­Fort Bowie—­strategically located at a chokepoint in the Chiricahua lands. ­These violent interactions, mediated more often than not through military engagements, cemented the image of the Apache as rapacious “barbarians” out for blood. ­ Those Apache, however, would point out that it was the US government and white settlers who w ­ ere invading their lands, contravening the spirit if not letter of the original 1852 treaty. Relations between the military and Apache ­were marked by flaring, though fleeting episodes of vio­lence punctuated by periods of peace, such as that a­ fter the agreement between Howard and Cochise.

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The agreement between Howard and Cochise was an oral one that the latter believed more binding than the former’s superiors. It ended more than a de­cade of hostilities. Apache success at largely evading and harassing the US army meant Cochise negotiated from a position of relative strength and equality with Howard. The costs of continued war against the Chiricahua outweighed the costs of peace in the calculus of the federal treasury—­both in po­liti­cal currency as well as silver specie—­making Howard pliable to negotiations. The Apache leader virtually dictated the size and location of the reservation he and his band of Chiricahua would be confined to. Cochise’s spatial imaginary entailed much of the group’s traditional territories, covering almost the entirety of southeastern Arizona. Surprisingly, Howard acceded to this vision. Cochise ensured that the reservation would be overseen by someone sympathetic to the Apache in general, and Cochise’s band in par­tic­u­lar. Tom Jeffords, a well-­known advocate for the Apache who was instrumental in facilitating the negotiations that led to Cochise’s surrender, was appointed as agent to the newly formed Chiricahua reservation.22 The reservation, one of four the Apache ­were confined to, was established in December 1872 by executive order.23 The fact it was an executive creation ensured Cochise’s diplomatic victory would be short-­lived. Absent the l­egal security of a treaty, the reservation proved susceptible to the capricious be­hav­ior of the US government, itself subject to the pressures of multiple interest groups. Cochise lived out his remaining two years on the reservation he extracted from Howard, ­under the guardianship of his friend Jeffords. But his survivors w ­ ere shortly thereafter forced to leave the Chiricahua reservation for San Carlos to the northwest. This forced removal was part of the attempted concentration of the Indian population, leading to the dissolution of the reservation in 1876. That dissolution left the Chiricahua no practical or ­legal recourse. The veneer of ­legal protection afforded other tribes whose relations w ­ ere treaty-­based was completely denied the Chiricahua due to their timing, itself partly a function of their ability to fend off the distracted appetite and ­limited abilities of the American government ­until the early 1870s. The San Carlos reservation had been established contemporaneously with the Chiricahua reservation and, like it, was the creature of an executive order.24 As with the Chiricahua reservation, San Carlos was subject to repeated takings by the government, having lands clipped off and returned to the “public domain” as mining, ranching, and timber interests

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Map 5. ​Arizona Territory, c. 1877.

convinced officials of their value.25 Unlike its short-­lived neighbor, however, San Carlos survived, mainly ­because its territories ­were so unattractive. The reservation was hated by many of its inhabitants, particularly the malaria-­infested riverbed lands on which they ­were settled. Nonetheless, it became a virtual dumping ground for a number of dif­ fer­ent, mainly Apache, Indian groups, many of whom had enmity-­filled relations with one another. Originally created for the Aravaipa (Western) Apache, by the late 1870s the reservation had been inundated with other Indian groups forcibly relocated.26 General George Crook, military commander of the Department of Arizona, warned that throwing together 122

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such a diverse population of Indians, including not only Aravaipa but also Tonto and Chiricahua Apache as well as Mojave, on the relatively poor land of San Carlos was a r­ ecipe for disaster.27 In this he proved prophetic, with a number of tribal breakouts from the reservation commencing in 1877.28 From that point onward, Indians bolting from the San Carlos reservation became a regular occurrence. Once off the reservation, they ­were subject to military jurisdiction, turning their flight into open hostilities with white settlers and the US military. This led to nearly a de­cade of renewed warfare between the US government and Apache Indians, which only concluded with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. Clum stepped onto this stage in August 1874. Supremely confident of himself, Clum believed the Indians could be civilized through hard work and a strong bond to the land. In this, he echoed Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a republic of yeoman farmers, a vision that served as the bedrock of the Homestead Act and, in the case of the Indians, the ­later General Allotment Act (1887), also known as the Dawes Severalty Act. With a Congressional appropriation of $50,000 to get the San Carlos reservation in order, Clum set about building permanent agency structures along the bed of the Gila River.29 Rather than dispersing them throughout the reservation, which was roughly the size of Connecticut, Clum wanted the Indians settled near their riverbed fields, adjacent to his agency. Such settlement had the dual advantage of providing close supervision, as well as making the Indians permanent agriculturalists rather than seminomadic ones who would necessarily be harder to police. He allowed Indians to move about the reservation, and even off it in search of game with his prior permission. But to hunt, the Apache had to retrieve their weapons from Clum, with whom they w ­ ere required to deposit them u ­ nder normal 30 circumstances. Upon his assumption of the agency, the reservation’s population was roughly eight hundred Indians. However, by the time he departed in July 1877 the population nearly sextupled to around 4,500.31 The first increase came with the closure of the Camp Grant Agency, which brought approximately one thousand Yavapai Apache in early 1875. Shortly thereafter, Clum relocated nearly 1,200 White Mountain Apache from Camp Apache, which, though technically part of the San Carlos reservation, was for all intents and purposes an autonomous if not fully in­de­pen­dent entity.32 The removal of the Chiricahua in June 1876 from their reservation to the southeast brought another 350 charges to San Carlos.33 Though he successfully removed the bulk of the tribe, a number of Chiricahua, 123

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

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

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attendant agency establishments, lessened the burden on the federal government’s already-­strained coffers. More importantly, the closure of the Chiricahua and Ojo Caliente reservations meant the lands they contained could be exploited by any number of white economic interests. Chief among ­these ­were mining interests, which sought access to valuable mineral deposits, including silver and copper, discovered on Apache grounds. ­These interests pressed relentlessly for the opening of remaining Indian lands. They successfully lobbied to have lands of the San Carlos reservation “returned to the public domain” on five separate occasions by the close of the 1870s.37 One of the most impor­tant of ­these was the return of the reservation’s southwest corner, t­ oday the site of the Morenci mine, one of the Western Hemi­sphere’s largest copper mines and formerly one of the crown jewels of the Phelps Dodge mining empire.38 Additionally, it was hoped that concentrating the Indian population in general, and the Apache population in par­tic­u­lar, would make them easier to control. Though Cochise and Howard’s accommodation of 1872 brought peace to the Arizona territory, it also created new challenges that ­were becoming increasingly unmanageable. The Chiricahua reservation’s southern limit lay along the ill-­defined US-­Mexico border, allowing unhindered access to raiding grounds in Sonora and Chihuahua. Following the tradition established by the 1852 treaty, the Apache abstained from plundering the American side of the frontier in return for peace with the US government. However, while this arrangement may have worked for both sides two de­cades prior, it no longer satisfied ­either the requirements or policy vision of the American government. Such raiding had to be ­stopped. This necessitated not only the physical removal of the Chiricahua from the border, but more importantly the permanent end to their po­liti­cal economy of plunder. Concentration on the San Carlos reservation promised to fulfill both t­ hese ends. It lay well inside US territory and could be the proving ground for the Chiricahua’s acculturation to a life of settled agriculture.

nNnNnN With the increased number of his charges due to the concentration policy, Clum’s overriding focus was to ensure complete civilian control over the reservation and its inhabitants. This quickly led him into bureaucratic and jurisdictional disputes with the army, which for its own reasons, philosophical and other­wise, sought exclusive control over San Carlos and surrounding reservations. Clum navigated his relationship with the military 125

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largely through bluster and sheer force of w ­ ill.39 Both sides availed themselves to their supporters in the Arizona press, with Clum favored by the Arizona Citizen out of Tucson and the military favored by The Miner out of Prescott, which was not coincidentally the military department’s headquarters in the territory.40 Clum also had the support of the territorial governor, Anson Safford. Ultimately, the willingness of the Secretary of the Interior to back his man for the moment led to Clum’s seeming victory over the military in the summer of 1875. All military forces removed five miles outside the reservation and the civilian agent was invested with complete authority.41 Clum’s strug­gle for unitary control of reservation life resembled Robert Sandeman’s bureaucratic brawl with his superior, William Merewether, for sole authority over the Baluch tribesmen along the Afghan frontier.42 Just as Clum leveled attacks against the seemingly failed policies of military rule on the reservations in the Arizona and New Mexico territories, Sandeman decried the established system of frontier administration as an ossified orthodoxy. Though Clum never used the words, he would have no doubt recognized Sandeman’s call to construct a regimen of rule appealing to the “hearts and minds” of the tribesmen, rather than solely their fears.43 The bureaucratic victory of t­ hese two men, both in their twenties at the time, was neither assured nor expected. Indeed, it surprised many of their contemporaries. While Sandeman’s success outlasted Clum’s—­ Sandeman stayed on as a frontier administrator u ­ ntil his death in 1892, ensuring the maintenance of his system whereas Clum quit the Indian ser­vice in 1877 and left the military to resume control over San Carlos by 1883—­both proved transformative of their respective po­liti­cal masters’ frontier policies and ­were central to constructing and embedding frontier governmentality in ­these spaces. With the army off the reservation, Clum faced the issue of ensuring control of the reservation absent the troops. In their place, Clum raised what would become a cornerstone of his administration—­a body of Indian police manned by respected tribal leaders and balanced to reflect the vari­ous groups populating the reservation.44 Clum claimed to his superiors that “the Indian police system is my g­ reat hobby in the management of wild Indians.”45 With each wave of new arrivals removed to the San Carlos reservation, Clum allowed the immigrants to appoint a set number of their own men to the force. Beginning with only four Indians, the force grew to twenty-­five by the time of Clum’s departure in 1877. Each policeman received $15 a month in compensation.46 Commanding them was 126

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

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one of the most impor­tant institutional structures of frontier governmentality. They rendered tribesmen, and indirectly their families and larger social networks, eco­nom­ically dependent on the colonial economy, in the case of Arizona the surrounding white settler economy. H. L. Hart, Clum’s replacement at San Carlos, noted in his first annual report in 1878 the “numbers of Indians . . . ​constantly employed” by surrounding towns and settlements, providing l­abor for mining camps and ranches. The government provided insufficient rations for the Indians on the reservation, presumably to “encourage” such work.50 At the same time, police and militias served as arms of indirect rule whereby the tribesmen policed themselves, but only u ­ nder the watchful eye of the Indian agent or po­liti­cal officer. This was as true in the Arizona desert as it was in the Afghan one. Clum’s force was not the first Indian police force to be raised on an American reservation. ­There had been previous incarnations through the 1860s, including the Modoc Indians on the Klamath reservation in Oregon.51 But the main pre­ce­dent Clum followed, consciously or not, was the Navajo Constabulary created by General Howard in 1872.52 Though defunct by the time Clum established his own force, the Navajo experience provided Clum a working template. However, policing the San Carlos reservation presented a dif­fer­ent set of challenges than ­those found elsewhere, largely due to the fact that San Carlos held such an eclectic, antagonistic mix of Indians. By allowing each resettled band to appoint its own officers to the police force, Clum sought to balance the dif­fer­ent and often distinct interests and sensibilities of the reservation’s diverse populations. The force worked not only as an experiment in enforced unity among the vari­ous bands of the reservation, but also as an arm of acculturation on the reservation, both regularizing and enforcing white l­egal concepts on San Carlos. Clum and his successors uniformly praised the per­for­mance of the police ser­vice in their annual reports, stating that nothing preceded the men’s sense of duty in the exercise of their office.53 Such was the seeming success of Clum’s police that it provided the model for a much wider experiment in Indian policing when such forces ­were authorized on all reservations by Congressional statute in 1878.54 Within three years, two-­thirds of reservations had Indian police forces, totaling over eight hundred men and Congress allocated upward of $70,000 annually.55 The police w ­ ere only one part of Clum’s administrative structure and judicial calculus, and in many ways the less impor­tant one at that. Once the police apprehended an Indian, a seeming Pandora’s box of possibili128

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ties opened. What exactly constituted a crime? How was a crime to be judged—­against what standard and by what institution? How was punishment to be assessed and enforced? Congress’s power to answer ­these questions, even in theory, was legally suspect at the time.56 The issue had not been pressed when the military was in charge of the reservation, but with the ascendance of civilian control over San Carlos in the hands of Clum, martial law was in abeyance. Clum had l­ ittle structure or guidance for his ­little experiment. The only law on the books was the 1834 act regulating Indian commerce. While it specified some commercial transgressions and crimes, t­ hese ­were in the main aimed at affected whites rather than Indians. The act was s­ ilent as to an explicit criminal or civil code to be applied to reservation spaces.

nNnNnN ­ egal questions such as jurisdiction, venue, and even the operative l­egal L standard and code could be seen as ­little more than meaningless roadblocks to the dispensing of rough-­and-­ready frontier justice. And, indeed, the instances in which authorities themselves seemed to give ­little serious consideration to such considerations grossly outnumber t­hose where they did. However, the law was seen by many as one of the driving forces civilizing the Indians. The law justified the conquest, subjugation, and takings the Indians suffered at the hands of white settlers and the American government.57 Law not only contained, but also justified vio­ lence, at least to ­those who employed it. Further, it was a mark of civilization. Only through its exercise would Indians be transformed from “barbarians” into “civilized” subjects, and eventually citizens. The con­ temporary silences on l­egal ­matters, while practically understandable, are normatively troubling as they obscure the central importance of questions of law in federal-­Indian relations and to the very character and definition of the republic itself. The law was the ultimate expression of nineteenth-­century positivism and governance. It lay at the foundation of a just society and successful civilization. The national and colonial proj­ects of the time promised empires of law, and thus liberty, as opposed to the past (in the Eu­ro­pean case) or pre­sent (in the case of every­one ­else) barbaric practices of despotism. Law stood as a powerfully defining normative and governing discourse of the American state. While t­here was a profound disconnect between the l­egal and lived policies affecting the Indians, the law was taken seriously by its guardians (the Court), its executors (the President), as well as 129

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its enactors (Congress). It is not enough to say the l­egal opinions of the time ­were the outcome of a “lawyerly desire for consistency.”58 Such assertions give insufficient credence to law’s import, minimizing the impact of the dissonance between rhe­toric and practice and what it reveals about the nature of the American state itself. The state of American law regarding the Indians was articulated by the Supreme Court, which wrote, “The relation of the Indian tribes living within the border of the United States, both before and since the Revolution, to the p ­ eople of the United States, has always been an anomalous one, and of a complex character.”59 The Court’s characterization of relations between the federal government and Indian tribes represents the uniquely American penchant for claims of exceptionalism. But how the US government dealt with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent originated with the colonial practices the newly formed republic inherited at its in­de­pen­dence. It had a number of con­temporary parallels around the world, ranging from the settlement colonies of the British Empire, such as Canada and Australia, to the practices of the Argentine republic on the Pampas.60 The En­glish, and subsequently British, practice employed in its American possessions was to transact with indigenous p ­ eoples on a treaty basis, ostensibly sovereign to sovereign. The meaning of Indian sovereignty was never clearly defined, a fact that, intentional or not, enabled ­later generations of imperial and republican administrators alike to fudge its significance.61 The United States codified its imperial inheritance of Indian relations in its Constitution.62 The special sovereign status of Indian tribes was acknowledged in the so-­called Indian commerce clause: “The Congress s­ hall have the power . . . ​to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”63 Juxtaposing Indian tribes with two other sovereign bodies implicitly acknowledged Indian sovereignty, something the imperial practice of treaties had long accepted. The newly in­de­pen­dent republic continued to regulate its relations with Indian tribes through treaties, ratifying 371 of them between 1778 and 1871. It additionally controlled commerce with six separate acts to regulate trade and intercourse with Indian tribes.64 Yet the implicit acknowl­edgment of Indian sovereignty was not the same ­thing as its explicit definition. Indeed, while the inclusion of Indian tribes in the commerce clause with “foreign nations” and “several states” admitted the tribes’ sovereignty, it did so in a manner revealing the pluralistic nature of sovereignty deeply embedded in the American 130

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constitutional architecture. Foreign nations, the states of the ­union, and Indian tribes may all be sovereign bodies, but the nature of their sovereignty fundamentally differs. While relations with foreign nations are governed by treaties—­essentially contracts between two ostensibly equal governmental parties—­American states enjoy a sovereignty subsumed by the supremacy of the Constitution and the plenary powers of federal government. They are governed by statutes passed by Congress, given force by the Constitution’s supremacy clause and the judiciary’s hierarchical view of federalism. At the time of the Constitution’s creation, Indian tribes, with their history of treaty-­based relations, more resembled foreign nations than the states of the newly formed u ­ nion. But the fact that Indian tribes ­were specifically enumerated, rather than simply included as “foreign nations,” indicated their sovereignty somehow differed. The placement of Indian tribes in the commerce clause a­ fter foreign nations and states arguably construed their sovereignty as inferior to that of the bodies preceding them. Just as the tribes socially inhabited a less advanced place in the hierarchy of civilization, po­liti­cally they occupied a lower rung in the hierarchy of power. Where exactly Indian tribes sat in that hierarchy of power and what that meant for tribal sovereignty was given definite form by the Supreme Court in the 1820s and 1830s through a series of cases known as the Marshall trilogy. In the second of the trilogy, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Chief Justice John Marshall famously found the Cherokee to be a “domestic dependent nation.”65 In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the third installment, the Court recognized that “Indian nations have always been considered as distinct, in­de­pen­dent po­liti­cal communities, retaining their natu­ral rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil.”66 Yet such recognition contradicted the trilogy’s first case, Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), where Marshall denied Indians possessory rights over land, but rather ­limited them to usufruct rights. In that case, the Court held “that the Indian inhabitants are to be considered merely as occupants to be protected, indeed, while in peace, in the possessions of their lands, but to be deemed incapable of transferring the absolute title to ­others.”67 The ­legal confusion spawned by the contradictions of the court’s logic ­here ­shaped federal-­Indian relations for the remainder of the ­century. The trilogy failed to put relations with the tribes on a clear ­legal footing. Nonetheless, it effectively subjugated Indian tribes as collective judicial beings to the federal government, laying the foundations for the Congress’s plenary power, which the court ­later expounded and expanded. 131

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Taken together the opinions pre­sent less a unified statement of the place of the American Indian in the republic’s constitutional and l­egal order than a tortured attempt to judicially encapsulate con­temporary po­liti­cal belief and exigency. That po­liti­cal belief and exigency determined the character of relations between tribes and the federal government in the aftermath of the Marshall trilogy. Over the course of the nineteenth ­century, the federal government vacillated between policies of assimilation and removal, at times supported by and at other times at odds with the states. Regardless of policy preference, the formal means of mediating relations remained the treaty. The l­egal force of such treaties was something less than that of treaties with foreign states, but something more than statutes, which applied to the states of the u ­ nion. Indians w ­ ere at one and the same time both within and without the United States. Their lands lay within the exterior limits of the ­union, a claim recognized by foreign states though not by the Indians themselves. Yet they ­were not citizens of the republic. ­There was disagreement if they w ­ ere even subject to its laws within their own territories, which w ­ ere themselves claimed by federal authorities to be encompassed within the United States. Indians inhabited a liminal and ill-­ defined space, a “third space of sovereignty,” the contours of which w ­ ere de­cided through force and subsequently given l­egal sanction.68 As the nineteenth ­century moved forward, the substantive terms of relations between the tribes and the federal government swung decidedly in f­ avor of the latter, regardless of their formal instrument. Treaties less resembled the negotiated outcome of the po­liti­cal meeting of two sovereigns, domestic or foreign, than the dictates of settler colonial policy. Congress banned f­ uture treaties with Indian tribes through a rider to the annual Indian Appropriations Act in 1871.69 Substantively, agreements with tribes resembled ­those found in ­earlier treaties, but ­these statutes ­were now subject to the approval of both the House and the Senate. The altered footing of relations buttressed Congress’s plenary powers at the expense of Indian sovereignty.70 While the latter may have been previously curtailed, if not totally inoperative, it was at the very least a l­egal fiction with which the government had to contend before 1871. Following the end of treaty relations, the federal government was f­ ree to deal with tribes through normal statutory channels, which did not require their consent, or, even more perniciously, through executive order. And this was precisely the ­legal foundation upon which the San Carlos reservation rested when it was established in 1872. Not only was Indian consent not required for 132

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its creation, alteration, or destruction, but neither was Congressional sanction.71 Adjustments to its status, and thus the lives of its inhabitants, lay wholly within the power of the President.

nNnNnN The contested sovereignty of American Indian tribes closely resembled the “in­de­pen­dence” of tribes inhabiting the North-­West Frontier of British India. It was not only American jurists who employed the language of sovereignty and in­de­pen­dence, even if through their use of such vocabulary ­these words ­were vacated of meaning. The “in­de­pen­dence” of the ­peoples inhabiting the frontiers of British India, like the sovereignty of American Indians, was largely a function of linguistic gymnastics, and thus practically meaningless. The dissonance between law and real­ity was genuine, and deadly for ­those on the wrong side of it. Nonetheless, both t­ hese colonial powers felt it incumbent to continue the use of the language of in­ de­pen­dence and sovereignty when referring to the tribes, even if they did not believe in its meaningful existence. Paired with the a­ ctual, if not l­egal negation of Indian sovereignty through the course of the nineteenth c­ entury was the development of the ward relationship between the tribes and the federal government. Marshall laid the l­egal foundations for this relationship in Cherokee Nation, writing, “They [the Indians] occupy a territory to which we assert a title in­de­pen­dent of their ­will, which must take effect in point of possession when their right of possession ceases. Meanwhile they are in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.”72 The pupilage to which Marshall referred was that of civilization. ­Until such time as Indians graduated from their wardship, the contours of their relationship with the government remained at best imprecise. In the words of one author, “wardship [was] an ambiguous l­egal status deemed curable by citizenship,” a position the Society of American Indians would pursue at the turn of the twentieth ­century.73 But ­there appeared ­little appetite to extend that cure to the Indian patients. Indeed, despite the extension of citizenship following the Civil War and the passage of the ­Fourteenth Amendment to freed blacks, Indians remained firmly outside this expansion.74 If Indians w ­ ere not citizens of the republic, then what was the nature and object of their allegiance? The Court definitively answered this question in Elk v. Wilkins (1884). The reasoning was that, as members of “an alien, though dependent power,” Indians owed their “direct and immediate 133

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allegiance to the tribe” and thus ­were not US citizens. Despite being born on land the Court previously constructed as “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, Indians w ­ ere subjects of their tribes, an exclusive allegiance that remained paramount ­ until the dissolution of tribal bonds. Only once such bonds ­were dissolved would an individual Indian be freed for assimilation as an American citizen. The exclusivity of tribal allegiance is paradoxical when juxtaposed with the idea of state citizenship. Both states and tribes ­were constitutionally sovereign bodies, but while the court found the claims of allegiance on its members absolute in the case of the latter, in the case of the former ­there was no bar to ­people enjoying both state and federal citizenship si­mul­ta­neously. The currency of citizenship in the con­temporary ­legal and po­liti­cal mind was civilization, itself composed of two inextricably linked, though by no means equally impor­ tant ele­ ments—­ Chris­ tian­ ity and private property.75 The Supreme Court focused on the latter with repeated emphasis on the phrase “Indians not taxed,” which first appeared in the Constitution and was repeated in the F ­ ourteenth Amendment.76 Indians could not become citizens ­until they ­were in the full possession of both ­these ele­ments, a pro­cess the ward relationship with the federal government was meant to inculcate. The former was to be delivered by the Grant administration’s peace policy. The latter was the aim of the Dawes Act. Modeled on the Homestead Act of 1862, the Act broke up the ­collective owner­ship of reservation lands in ­favor of individual owner­ ship.77 Recognizing that most Indians ­were ill-­prepared to take immediate possession of the lands and make them productive, it held the land in trust for the Indians, selling off excess land to white settlers. Once Indians demonstrated themselves to be productive property ­ owners, they could become citizens, but only through a special act of Congress.78 It was not u ­ ntil the Indian C ­ itizenship Act of 1924 that the status of “citizen” was extended to all Indians en masse, regardless of their ­attainment of “civilization.” Just as citizenship was subject to the mastery of private property for the American Indians, so too was Afghan subjecthood along the British Indian frontier conditioned on the maintenance of private property. The indecipherability of local property arrangements among the Pashtun and Baluch at least partly accounts for the emergence of the FCR in 1872, based as it was on the Hazara Settlement Rules of 1870. The tribesmen ­were “savages” b ­ ecause they did not understand the value of individually held property, which meant they did not utilize their lands with sufficient 134

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

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civilizational advancement. Practices of restorative justice (such as the payment of a victim or his or her ­family by the offender), communal owner­ ship of real property, and polygamy w ­ ere viewed as “barbarous” impedi80 ments by white authorities. White l­egal theories and practices, developed for an advanced civilization, clearly could not be applied equitably to “savage” ones. Instead a system of tiered l­egal application developed wherein criminal law was primarily the purview of Congress and secondarily the states, “other­wise the reservation might become a sink of iniquity whence all the surrounding territory be polluted.” White property law, “devised to govern civilized society, not a primitive one, and which are not adapted to the requirements of the latter, do not extend to the property of the Indians.” As for personal law, “the domestic relations of the Indians” presented l­egal “lacunae . . . ​filled by tribal custom, usage and law.”81 What ­those tribal customs, usages, and laws w ­ ere, however, remained both undefined and at the same time subject to the approval of the individual reservation agent, the “man on the spot.”82 On the San Carlos reservation, that man was John Clum. He faced a ­legal landscape where individual Indians had no standing in the eyes of the law and thus ­were nonjusticiable, a situation that did not change ­until Standing Bear v. Crook in 1879.83 The courts lacked a clear or consistent ­legal doctrine for dealing with individual Indians.84 However, such absence did not prevent them from discounting Indian testimony or punishing Indians convicted for crimes against white settlers or the government. The courts did not allow the fact that Indians ­were in a strict sense legally illegible to prevent them from passing judgment and sentence. Yet when the perpetrator and victim w ­ ere both Indians, or the crime occurred on an Indian reservation, the Supreme Court found that neither the federal nor territorial courts had jurisdiction as Indian tribes ­were themselves sovereign entities.85 In response, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act in 1885, which gave the federal government jurisdiction over seven major crimes, including murder, rape, and assault, in Indian country regardless of the identity of the perpetrators or victims.86 The Act, affirmed the following year in United States v. Kagama, ended Indians’ autonomy to deal with crimes on their lands involving their p ­ eople. Affirming what Marshall had written a half c­entury ­earlier, the Supreme Court stated, “­These Indian tribes are the wards of the nation. They are communities dependent on the United States, dependent largely for their daily food; dependent for their po­liti­cal rights. They owe no allegiance to the states, and 136

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receive from them no protection.”87 What the Court left unsaid, though clearly implied, was that not only did Indians “owe no allegiance to the states,” but more importantly they had no choice in directing their allegiance. It was a debt they owed, to be collected by the federal government, not a credit that the Indians could dispense at ­will. Clum’s actions at San Carlos, however, resided in an e­ arlier moment of transition in American Indian policy—­a hiatus between the policies of removal and assimilation. Grant’s peace policy favored the latter, seeking to assimilate Indians to white settler society. But it did not fully provide the means to accomplish this. ­Under the policy, churches ­were given authority over the recruitment of Indian agents with an eye t­oward proselytization of the Indians. The missionary efficacy of such arrangements was mixed at best. Clum himself was not the most energetic steward of the Gospel to his reservation flock. Conspicuously absent from his own writings is any mention of efforts at conversion, or even acknowl­edgment of his Christian charge. If Christianization was one pillar of civilization, then another pillar, property owner­ship, awaited the General Allotment Act in 1887. The final ele­ment, education, was likewise missing at the time of Clum’s tenure on San Carlos. The Carlisle School, most famous of the Indian boarding schools, was not founded ­until 1879, two years ­after he had left the reservation. Clum occupied temporally liminal space in American Indian policy just as the Chiricahua occupied a geo­graph­i­cally peripheral one.

nNnNnN While federal Indian policy seemed to tentatively and haphazardly embark on a course of acculturation and Christianization at this time, Clum was intent on pursuing a dif­fer­ent course. Into legally murky ­waters he plunged with his San Carlos police experiment. While the police provided order, the question remained as to what forum provided the law. In a number of cases, generally the more severe ones including depredations against whites, Clum turned Indian suspects over to white authorities to be dealt with. For instance, during the removal of the Chiricahua to San Carlos, the tribal police apprehended a renegade leader, Pionsenay, accused of murdering two whites. It was in fact this incident that prompted the removal of the tribe and closure of the Chiricahua reservation. Clum transferred Pionsenay to the Tucson sheriff for trial in federal court.88 But the issue of jurisdiction and justiciability was a complicated one, which neither Clum, nor his superiors in Washington, nor indeed the courts had a clear answer to at the time. 137

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Clum’s real innovation was not the San Carlos police, but rather the “supreme court” he set up at the same time. Clum’s annual reports w ­ ere completely ­ silent regarding this body. He briefly outlined the court’s composition, in an article written for the Arizona Historical Review more than fifty years a­ fter the fact, as including three or four prominent chiefs (at least some of whom ­were themselves policemen), with himself as the chief justice.89 In the one case he discussed, Clum served not only as a police auxiliary in the apprehension of the suspect (a twispsit or moonshiner), but also as chief prosecutor and chief judge. In the latter role, Clum reserved to himself the authority to confirm the findings and sentences of the court, much like the Deputy Commissioners (DC) in British India’s tribal agencies. Despite the pretense at judicial institution building then, justice remained in the hands of the agent, with no recourse for ­those who fell afoul of it or, rather, of him. This court seemingly operated based on a combination of “tribal custom” and Anglo l­egal pre­ce­ dents. But what, exactly, ­those ­were is unclear. Further, the character of the punishments imposed by the court can be discerned only in their most basic outlines. Clum referred to the agency guard­house, where suspects and convicts w ­ ere confined.90 He also made passing reference to work ­orders and fines. Clum’s court and the punitive mea­sures it employed stood in marked contrast with indigenous judicial practices. Just at the Apache lacked formal po­liti­cal institutions structuring their communal life, justice was maintained through social norms rather than institutional forms. For transgressions affecting individuals, the operative norm was restorative justice, with the animating aim to make the injured party w ­ hole. It fell on that party to pursue and enforce such restorative justice, though this did not preclude them enlisting other members of the tribe to do so. In contrast, transgressions of communal norms affecting the group at large w ­ ere largely dealt with by public shaming or exclusion. Justice was neither institutionalized nor punitive as it would become u ­ nder Clum’s supreme court, or the subsequent Court of Indian Offenses. The punitive innovations introduced by Clum’s court w ­ ere impor­tant in two ways. First, the move ­toward incarceration as punishment, as opposed to communal shaming or individual restorative justice, represented the move by the state, personified by the agent (in this case Clum), to discipline not only the individual offender but also the tribe at large. It emasculated the tribe’s power by abrogating its capacity for social censure and

138

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thus communal policing. What once had been an individual or communal responsibility was transformed into a state one. As such, the institutions required to execute this responsibility—­namely a court, police force, and jail—­had to be created and maintained. Second, the use of fines as a means of punishment further monetized governance, and in so ­doing subjugated the Indians to the economic order of the settler society. The fine required money, and money required wage work. Even in instances where the fine was assessed in terms of coerced ­labor—an echo of the carceral state formed in the ex-­Confederacy of the American South—­the key effect was the disciplining of Indian ­labor into the white economy. Through such actions, Indians ­were rendered dependent on the surrounding white economy, transformed into a productive ­labor pool that served the needs of local miners, ranchers and farmers. This was a centrally impor­tant ele­ment in the transformation of Indians from a state of “savagery” to civilization. Before they could enjoy the rights of citizenship, Indians had to be turned into property ­owners—­not only of land, but of their own ­labor as well. Just as the San Carlos police founded by Clum provided an institutional doppelganger to Sandeman’s tribal militias, so too did the reservation’s “supreme court” stand as the American equivalent to the tribal jirgahs or Council of Elders, which served as a central plank of the FCR. Both relied on the participation of native men of authority and stature to lend ­these judicial bodies legitimacy among the ­people they sat in judgment of. Both invested the reservation agent or po­liti­cal officer with the ultimate authority over the validation or other­wise of the bodies’ findings. Both ­were ­limited in punitive sanction, with fines being their main­ ere a stay.91 And despite the fact that the jirgahs of the Afghan frontier w legally codified body as opposed to an ad hoc practice, the l­egal content of their proceedings remains as cryptic as that of Clum’s court. Yet ­these adjudicative venues differed in significant ways. The jirgahs w ­ ere legally codified bodies existing anywhere the FCR was in force. Clum’s court, however, was his own innovation and at the time only had a documented existence on the San Carlos reservation. More importantly, the British frontier and judicial administrators justified the jirgahs as a preexistent indigenous practice that they ­were simply giving ­legal sanction to, rather than their own innovation. Though a suspect claim at best, it is one colonial administrators consistently advanced. In contrast, Clum acknowledged and indeed celebrated the innovative character of his court.

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Clum argued the court was a vehicle for the introduction of white l­egal culture, and thus civilization, among the Apache.92 This idea clearly struck a chord with his superiors who, as with his police experiment, used his judicial one as a model for reservations across the country. In 1883, u ­ nder guidelines issued by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Courts of Indian Offenses ­were created to deal with petty offenses and misdemeanors on reservations.93 The courts lacked civil jurisdiction and, given the Major Crimes Act, held a l­imited purview over criminal m ­ atters in the Indian domain. Composed of prominent Indian chiefs and holders of authority, the courts w ­ ere designed to introduce white law to the reservations, and in so ­doing advance the acculturation and civilization of the Indians. As with Clum’s court, the procedures of ­these courts in the early days ­were both unclear and informal. Likewise, the concepts of criminal law and punishment introduced by them onto the reservations ­were opaque, but nonetheless disruptive. They marked an impor­tant interruption in Indian life by replacing the norm-­centered mechanisms of community justice in Indian society with institutionally bounded ones enforcing radically dif­ fer­ent ideas of crime and punishment. By the time Clum’s supreme court was scaled up as the Court of Indian Offenses, he had left the San Carlos reservation in frustration and disgust. Following the successful capture of Geronimo and removal of the Ojo Caliente Apache to the reservation in April and May 1877, Clum acted on his previously submitted resignation.94 Although he had won the initial fight with the military over the control of San Carlos, he believed that victory to be eroding and with it his power and in­de­pen­dence. Clum had per­sis­tently lobbied his superiors in Washington for increased resources, and been per­sis­tently denied them. ­After nearly three years, he fi­nally had enough. He sent a final proposal to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs stating he would stay on at San Carlos if his salary ­were substantially increased and he was allowed to enlarge his police force to three companies, which could then be charged with maintaining control over the Indians throughout Arizona. In the summer of 1877, not waiting for the inevitable rejection, he left the Bureau of Indian Affairs and moved to Tombstone, where he became mayor as well as owner and editor of the Arizona Citizen.95 Assessing his tenure as agent, Clum wrote to his superiors, Since taking charge of the San Carlos Agency in 1874 it has been my lot to consolidate five agencies into one, and to superintend the 140

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movement of about four thousand wild Indians to the San Carlos reservation; thus bringing together Indians, who, by their former locations, ­were separated by a distance of 600 miles; and also opening to ranchmen and miners three Indian reservations, including impor­tant tracts of agricultural and mineral lands. ­These movements have all been effected without the loss of a single life, and without destroying the property of citizens.96 Clum’s exit from the reservation created a vacuum once occupied by the force of his personality. Subsequent agents proved incapable of filling it. As a consequence, the policies and practices he authored began to atrophy almost immediately. Unlike his con­temporary Sandeman, Clum failed to construct an institutional superstructure to ensure the survival of his innovations beyond his tenure. It was left to Congress to do so ­after he left the scene. The ultimate demise of Clum’s administrative innovations was hastened by a number of tribal breakouts following on the heels of his resignation. In the autumn of 1877, Geronimo led a band of Chiricahua out of San Carlos ­toward Sonora and the Sierra Madre Occidental. This band remained a near constant threat to both the American and Mexican governments, as well as a source of fear and angst to Arizona settlers u ­ ntil their negotiated return to the reservation in 1883. While Clum proudly trumpeted in the pages of his Arizona Citizen the fact that no breakouts occurred during his tenure as the San Carlos agent, the truth in his perfect rec­ord was more likely an accident of his well-­timed exit rather than his ability to contain the pressures created by a five-­fold increase in the reservation’s population during his three years as agent. The concentration policy was a ­recipe for vio­lence that needed only time to ferment. With its explosion in 1877, the military renewed pressure not only on the Indians, but also on the Indian agents who it believed should be subsumed ­under its own authority. The agents proved impotent in resisting this pressure, largely due to their perceived ineptitude, and the army resumed control in 1883.97 Despite his claims to the contrary, ­there was significant overlap between Clum’s administration and military control. Clum made much of his use of Indian police, yet General Crook had long employed and preferred Apache scouts. The latter became a mainstay of his military methods in tracking down Victorio and Geronimo.98 For the Apache, the opportunity to scout for the army off the reservation or to police on it provided 141

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one of the few opportunities, apart from re­sis­tance, for them to maintain martial practices. As importantly, t­ hese provided one of the few opportunities for paid work, something that was becoming a mainstay of life and necessity on the reservation. Both the reservation police and the army scouts, like the tribal militias along the Afghan frontier, funneled the most able-­bodied men into a military ­labor market where the terms of ser­vice ­were monopolized by the colonial power. The day-­to-­day operations of t­ hese bodies w ­ ere virtually indistinguishable, but the ends for which they ­were deployed—­civilian governance versus military campaigning—­differed significantly. And ­those ends reflected the dif­fer­ent ethos of civilian as opposed to military administration of the Indians. Whereas Clum pursued an alien, but individuated justice against the Indians, Crook and his military successors treated the Indians collectively. Tribal breakouts w ­ ere dealt with more often than not with collective punishment, with ­those who stayed on the reservation subject to the same harsh sanctions as t­hose who fled. The bitterest example of this was the treatment of the Chiricahua ­after Geronimo’s final surrender in 1886. Though his band of renegades included only a small number of his fellow tribesmen, most of whom remained quiescent on the reservation, the entire Chiricahua tribe was banished to Florida as prisoners of war. ­Under Crook’s leadership, however, the military opted more often than not for the velvet glove rather than the iron fist. Many times he negotiated the return of renegades to the reservation, promising few if any consequences for t­hose who had fled. It was only a­ fter the arrival of his replacement, General Nelson Miles, that the fist decisively struck in 1886. More than anything, the methods of governance of the Chiricahua and the San Carlos reservation ­were marked by instability and confusion. The back and forth between Clum and Crook, personifying the tensions between civilian and military control of the Indian question, exposed the whiplash of bureaucratic politics. Both sides complained that the continual public tension over who held ultimate responsibility for Indian governance degraded white authority over the Indians. Prestige, that incalculable asset of authority, was undermined by tawdry turf fights. The worst of all pos­ si­ble worlds in the eyes of all concerned was the system of dual management, where civilian agents and military officers shared responsibilities. Such an arrangement only led to further confusion and inefficiencies, for both the Indians and white authorities. Neither the system of dual management nor the bureaucratic infighting it gave rise to ­were unique to the Arizona territory or the American West more generally. Rather, they mir142

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rored arguments taking place along the Afghan borderlands, as well as along other similarly situated frontiers of the British Empire. Just as the innovations Clum instituted ­were ­later replicated on other reservations, so too was Sandeman’s system reproduced along the limits of other Eu­ ro­pean empires as well. Both w ­ ere progenitors of the global construction of frontier governmentality as Eu­ro­pean empires expanded and attempted to tame the “savage” periphery. It is more than coincidence that men of comparable dispositions came upon virtually identical ideas of border management si­mul­ta­neously. Sandeman and Clum w ­ ere both products of similarly permissive environments that encouraged the development of their systems of frontier governmentality, and then largely a­ dopted them once developed. Central to ­these environments was the ability of the “man on the spot” to shape a real­ity on the ground, which central authorities would subsequently find hard to overturn. As Indian agent, Clum had ­little oversight and ­great autonomy and power over ­those he was charged with. The same was true of Sandeman, himself responsible for an area even larger than Clum’s Connecticut-­sized reservation. The physical removal of Baluchistan and San Carlos from their respective centers of authority gave ­these agents freedom to enact the policies they saw fit and pre­sent them as a fait ac­ compli to superiors. In effect, the “man on the spot” was the man in charge. Administrative wrangling created opportunities for enterprising agents like Clum and Sandeman to score their own personal victories. Yet one need balance the autonomy of the “man on the spot” against the fact that t­ hese men ­were bureaucrats of late nineteenth-­century states that w ­ ere in the midst of professionalizing their servants and asserting ever more control over them. The space of autonomy, which both Clum and Sandeman exploited, was at least in part a consequence of design. The American republic and the British Raj both abjured the assertion of their exclusive authority along ­these frontiers ­because they would be hard-­ pressed to convincingly do so at a cost both sustainable and palatable. But most importantly, this decision reflected not simply a cost-­benefit analy­sis, but rather a fundamental norm of governance and aspect of ­these states’ characters—­namely that both ­were creatures of sovereign pluralism rather than sovereign absolutism. It was not only the states that ­were similar, but also the “savages” they ruled in ­these spaces. Structural ­factors predisposed ­these “men on the spot” to a relatively narrow band of options. Though Clum and Sandeman w ­ ere a world away from one another, in the eyes of the socie­ties and powers they 143

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represented, the p ­ eoples they interacted with ­were not. Sandeman’s Baluch and Afghans lacked civilization just like Clum’s Chiricahua Apache. The re­sis­tance of ­these ­peoples and the relative poverty of the land they inhabited made conquest and subjugation prohibitively expensive. Their location at the extremities of state power meant the ability to compel them was fundamentally compromised. They needed to be corralled into physically ­limited spaces where they could be policed, not through the intrusion of “civilized” forms and norms of governance beyond their understanding and cultural dispositions but by their own customs and traditions as sanctioned by state authorities. ­These frontier administrators confronted substantively the same circumstances and reacted by d ­ oing in effect the same ­thing. ­There is a direct parallel of the American Indians and the Chiricahua in par­tic­ul­ ar with the Pashtuns along the British Indian frontier. The ­legal regimes they faced transcended the personalized administrations of Sandeman and Clum. For the Afghans, the practices of frontier governmentality w ­ ere codified in the FCR in 1872. The Regulation encapsulated the Afghans on territorially restricted reservations, known as “tribal areas,” where the natives ­were expected to police themselves through locally raised militia and / or paramilitary police forces that fell u ­ nder the control of the government DC. They w ­ ere subject to local judicial bodies overseen by the DC, which employed colonially sanctioned native customs, traditions, and practices. Though t­ here was no single equivalent of the FCR in the United States, the triumvirate of the tribal police, the Courts of Indian Offenses, and the Major Crimes Act substantively accomplished the same t­ hing. Whereas the FCR essentially denied jurisdiction to the colonial courts over nearly all crimes save adultery, the Major Crimes Act did virtually the opposite, giving federal (in this case, colonial) courts exclusive jurisdiction over serious crimes. Yet both the FCR and Major Crimes Act structured the judicial universes the frontier dwellers inhabited, creating the opportunities they could take advantage of as well as the limits they ­were bound by. In effect, they cut both the Indians and Afghans off from normal judicial venues, rendering them imperial objects in the eyes of the law. While the ultimate aim of encapsulation on reservations may have differed—­the British Raj never sought to acculturate and assimilate as did the American government—­such lofty goals w ­ ere far removed in time and space. With the exception of South Africa, and to a lesser extent K ­ enya, the British colonies examined ­here ­were distinguished by the fact that they ­were not colonies of settlement. Imperial administration necessarily took 144

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a dif­fer­ent hue when not ­under pressure from settlers. Yet in its practical effects, the difference was rather less than one might imagine. The p ­ eople subject to frontier regimens of rule in the British Empire ­were never considered citizens or subjects, even if imperial ones at that. Rather, like the American Indians, they w ­ ere objects of imperial action. With no meaningful l­egal recourse, ruled indirectly by state sanctioned “customs and traditions,” considered “sovereign” and “in­de­pen­dent” by imperial authorities, yet rendered dependent on the neighboring colonial economy through linkages to the local and global military ­labor market, ­these ­peoples of the periphery suffered ­under a globalized system of frontier governmentality constructed near si­mul­ta­neously in the late nineteenth ­century. The divergent aims of governance, themselves a consequence of the distinct characters of colonial socie­ties, led to the differential application of ­these forms of frontier governmentality. The Raj, having consciously unburdened itself of Kipling’s call to the “white man’s burden” along the frontier, embedded its system of frontier governmentality ­there with surety. The personalized system of administration championed by Sandeman became institutionalized. In contrast, the American commitment to civilizing the Indians complicated its actions among them. ­There was a lack of a clear, consistent, and coherent method of administration on the San Carlos reservation through this period, reflecting many of the prob­lems of Indian governance specifically and governance more generally. This meant that reservation administration necessarily rested upon shaky foundations that could quickly dissolve with the departure of an individual agent. Clum’s system of frontier governmentality, though extended to other reservations, collapsed at San Carlos a­ fter he exited. The real contrast with the frontier governmentality of the Raj was the de­cided ambivalence of the American government born of the inherent contradictions of its own policies. The Indians, unlike the Afghans, w ­ ere to be civilized and assimilated. But they first needed to be pacified. This was best accomplished by utilizing local customs familiar and legitimate to them, exercised by recognized holders of authority who had been co-­opted and subsequently overseen by a government agent. Yet relying on the “customs and traditions” of “savages” did nothing to advance their civilization. This contradiction bred indecision among American policymakers, making their commitment to par­tic­ul­ar policy prescriptions tepid at best. American ambivalence was not simply a product of the contradictory impulses of its Indian policies, but also of its demo­cratic politics, something 145

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the colonial authorities of the British Empire did not have to deal with ­until well into the twentieth c­ entury, and even then not in regard to its frontier spaces. The proximity of the American frontier, physically as well as emotionally, gave it a dif­fer­ent weight in the popu­lar consciousness than Britain’s far-­removed imperial frontiers. White settlers in the territories proved an impor­tant and vocal interest group influencing policy. At times they often affected their own, forcing the government to e­ ither denounce them or ratify their actions. White settler society was far from homogenous and instead was riven by factions who, often through their support ­behind the vari­ous bureaucratic blocs, vied for control of Indian policy. Money was as stake—­not only in land, but also in resources, as well as trade. Clum was accused of being beholden to the so-­called Tucson ring of merchants who had profitable contracts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to supply San Carlos. In contrast, General Crook was supported by the Prescott ring, itself composed of merchants with lucrative supply contracts for the military. Ranching, mining, and timber interests vied with one another for Indian land on San Carlos and elsewhere. More often than not, they got what they wanted. But in the pro­cess, they created pressures that led to an unseemly back and forth in policy preference and approach, in par­tic­u­lar between the army and the agent. But while the methods of governance may have varied between civil and military authorities, the ultimate aims differed l­ittle. The Indians ­were meant to dis­appear, at least culturally, but also physically if necessary. Civil control proposed d ­ oing this through a pro­cess of assimilation while military control offered, in its most excessive form, eradication. In truth, neither side hewed to ­these extreme positions, but instead navigated a contingent combination of acculturation and force. Both approaches w ­ ere forms of vio­lence—­one epistemic and the other ­actual—­resting on a continuum of force that served as the bedrock of Indian governance. Assimilation, ­after all, meant the destruction of Indian culture and its replacement with white culture, namely capitalism and Chris­tian­ity. This was to be accomplished through education, proselytization, and property owner­ship. The Dawes Act, ending communal owner­ship of tribal lands by granting title to individuals, was meant to force the last of t­ hese ele­ments onto the Indians. In this aim of eradication, American efforts more closely resembled ­those of the Argentine republic than the British Empire. In Argentina’s “conquest of the desert,” a campaign against the indios of Patagonia con­ temporary with that of the American fight against the Apache, the expanding republic sought to erase the indios with the conquest of their 146

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lands. This was partly a physical eradication through vio­lence. But the Argentine state was too weak to accomplish such a feat, as well as normatively prevented from d ­ oing so by the objections of at least some of its influential citizens and elites. More in­ter­est­ing, in the case of both the United States and Argentina, Indian eradication was fundamentally premised on the liberal idea of citizenship, an inclusive identity at the core of the respective republics’ self-­understandings. Following their conquest, the indigenous inhabitants of t­ hese countries ­were no longer to be Indians or indios, but rather citizens and ciududanos. A republican form of government, postulated on the uniform and universal application of the law, should not recognize difference within the bounds of its po­liti­cal community. One was ­either in or out, and, if in, was an American or Argentine. The assumption of citizenship erased one’s past in order to glue together the pre­sent po­liti­cal body. While this may have been true in theory, it proved true in practice in neither the United States nor Argentina. The primary reason for this is that while po­liti­cal ideas and norms may have been conceived as universal abstracts, their daily enactment had to navigate the contours of po­liti­cal and social topographies marked by prejudice and power. The republican ideal was subject to the constraints of the civilizational—­and racial—­ real­ity. “Savages” could not be citizens, at least not ­until they w ­ ere civilized. This meant the abandonment of their “barbarous” indigenous practices and assumption of the markers of civilization, namely Chris­tian­ity, property, and the rule of law. Indians required tutoring in ­these ways and their pupilage, however long or short it may be, was ultimately the responsibility of the state and the settler society it represented. Only once Indians had abandoned their own “primitive” ways and perfectly a­ dopted the civilized ones of white society could they become full participants in the po­liti­cal community—­citizens. This classic view of civilization and “savagery,” expressed by Sarmiento and Turner, had its roots in older ideas about the hierarchy of civilizations and whites’ and Indians’ respective places in that hierarchy. As condescending as this view of ­human civilization was, it nonetheless allowed for the advancement and pro­gress of ­those lower in the hierarchy to a higher level of civilization and being, eventually on par with white society. But the racial thinking that dominated by the end of the nineteenth ­century permitted no such possibility of equality, theoretical or other­wise. While Indians could overcome their “savagery,” they could not escape their race. The ideas of scientific racism predominant in the latter part of 147

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the nineteenth c­ entury turned their perceived barbarism into a consequence of their inferior biology, rather than simply an effect of their backward culture. As with blacks, ­there ­were natu­ral and thus insurmountable limits to the potential advancement of Indians. While they could adopt the outward modes of white society, such adoptions would be simply emulative rather than truly transformative. Given this, even if Indians could be po­liti­cally enfranchised through the extension of citizenship, they could not be expected to be equal to whites. Though the law of the republic may be theoretically blind, society was most definitely not. In truth, neither was the law. The idea of Indian sovereignty, as articulated by the Constitution and American jurisprudence, carved out an exceptional space for the Indians to inhabit. Indian ­legal separateness survived the g­ reat upheaval of the American Civil War and its aftermath. That exceptionality meant in practice they remained excluded. This is where the American and Argentine experiences most fundamentally differed. For while both shared a history of relations with the Indians based on treaties, and both expanded and conquered Indian lands at approximately the same time in the wake of the respective republics’ federative crises, and both employed citizenship as the vernacular of po­liti­cal identity and belonging, they ultimately took dif­fer­ent paths in the moment a­ fter conquest.99 The main reason for this was the greater abilities of the American as opposed to the Argentine state. Equally though, the actions of the American state belied a confusion absent in the Argentine case. The American government, buffeted about by the competing interests of vari­ous bureaucratic bodies (i.e., the war and interior departments), the entrenched interests of settlers, the sometimes complementary interests of cap­i­tal­ists, and demands of reformers, not to mention the unyielding need for economy, alternated rather wildly from one policy to another. The Argentine government, though facing many of the same pressures, lacked the established reservations that could have potentially complicated their treatment of the indios. This sped their integration, or rather eradication, of the native populace, who became citizens with conquest. American Indians had to await the Indian Citizenship Act.

nNnNnN If citizenship is the defining individual characteristic of po­liti­cal identity in the modern age, then sovereignty is its corporate counterpart. Perhaps the most in­ter­est­ing issue in the case of the Apache, and the American Indians more generally, is that while the US government in the main denied 148

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the Indians the former in the late nineteenth c­ entury, it ascribed to them the latter. But that ascription, though meaningful de jure, was meaningless de facto. Just as the Afghans w ­ ere not truly in­de­pen­dent, the Indians ­were not truly sovereign. Or more precisely, their sovereignty was nested within that of the United States. The Apache experience shows that sovereignty is not an absolute condition, but rather a graduated state. As a nation-­state, the United States is historically conceived as a sovereign state, where this aspect of its character is defined as indivisible. In contrast, the British Empire is better considered a space of layered sovereignty, or sovereign pluralism. ­Here, sovereignty is a negotiated relationship rather than an absolute characteristic of the state. But on the margins of both, such theoretical archetypes succumb to the lived real­ity of po­liti­cal authority. While some might like to differentiate the motivating po­liti­cal logic of the white republics of Argentina and the United States from that of Eu­ro­ pean colonial empires, and in par­tic­u­lar the British Empire, t­ hese ­were all imperial proj­ects.100 Differently shaded and ­shaped no doubt, the differences ­were of degree rather than kind. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than along the edges of ­these proj­ects. It was on ­these peripheries at roughly the same time—­the 1870s to the mid-1880s—­that ­these po­liti­cal corporations constructed a regime of rule to deal with the problematic p ­ eoples living ­there. This system of frontier governmentality, far from being in some manner exceptional, was quite quotidian.101 It was not at odds or a departure from the essential nature of the modern state being constructed at this time around the world, but rather was central to it. Consequently, a consideration of such frontier governmentality reveals much about not only the forgotten frontiers of the colonial and postcolonial world, but also more importantly about the fundamental structure of that world itself. The frontier lay at the heart of the modern global order. Yet one may won­der the applicability of frontier governmentality to the experiences of the American Indians who ­were enveloped within the territories claimed by the United States and recognized as such by other Eu­ro­pean and neo-­European powers. Some of ­those Indians inhabited reservations physically located on the bounds of the expanding American state. The Chiricahua reservation, for example, ran along the border between the Arizona territory and Mexico. However, the majority of Indians lived on reservations—in “Indian country”—­far removed from the limits of an alien power.102 Did this interiority of the American Indian experience make it fundamentally dif­fer­ent than that of the frontier dwellers of the British Empire? Emphatically not. ­Because the “frontier” is not a place, 149

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but rather a practice manifest through claims and administrative routines expressed in par­tic­u­lar territorial spaces. The spaces inhabited by American Indians w ­ ere themselves frontiers, regardless of their physical location abutting a foreign potentate or not. They w ­ ere made and maintained as such through the practices of frontier governmentality employed and policed by the settler colonial government of the United States. All the constituent ele­ments of frontier governmentality are readily apparent in the experiences of the American Indians. They ­were subject to a form of “indirect rule” overseen by a combination of civilian agents and military officers who relied on indigenous holders of authority—­“chiefs”—to implement their w ­ ill. Such “indirect rule” was encapsulated by them in their own customs and traditions in physically ­limited spaces from which they w ­ ere not allowed ­free egress and entry. The Indians w ­ ere sovereign, though not completely so. Rather, they possessed a lesser sovereignty within the American po­liti­cal universe where sovereignty was itself plural and overlapping, though at the same time decidedly hierarchical. Individually, Indians ­were neither citizens of the republic nor even visibly subjects of its laws u ­ ntil the late nineteenth ­century. Rather, they ­were objects of the imperial state—­for their denial of admission into the national body politic made the US government anything but a national state to them—­who ­were acted upon with l­ittle regard for any obligation ­toward them by the state, treaty stipulations notwithstanding. They w ­ ere rendered dependent on the globalizing American economy through treaty rations, and they w ­ ere transformed into wage laborers through recruitment into military and paramilitary policing activities. Regardless of place, the space American Indians inhabited was that of the frontier. It was along that frontier the American state built and defined itself, a fact attested to by the lasting power of Turner’s frontier thesis. The simultaneous construction of identical regimes of rule along the Afghan and Arizona frontiers in the mid-1870s, in­de­pen­dent and ignorant of one another, reveals that frontier governmentality served as the natu­ral template of control for modernizing imperial proj­ects where faced with a specific set of po­liti­cal, cultural, and ecological challenges. This template was built on established antecedents. But its par­tic­u­lar structure—­political, ­legal, as well as economic—­made frontier governmentality a specifically modern advent. The parallels between the British Indian frontier and that of the American West, while arresting, are not surprising. Or rather they should not be, for ­here are two states with similar imperial proj­ects expanding their rule among poor nomadic p ­ eoples inhabiting agriculturally unproductive and 150

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rugged lands. The surprise is spurred not by the comparison between the Afghans and the Apache, but rather between the British Indian Empire and the American republic.103 In the minds of many, ­these are distinctive, if not antipodean po­liti­cal proj­ects manifesting radically dif­fer­ent institutional structures and norms of governance. The former was a self-­proclaimed empire, a po­liti­cal form dating back to the advent of recorded history; the latter, a nation-­state, a new kind of po­liti­cal community born of the revolutionary vio­lence of the late eigh­teenth ­century. Yet along their frontiers such distinctions collapse. Frontier governmentality proves a ­great flattener of ­imagined state differences. In 1886, following the surrender of Geronimo and his final band of “renegades” to General Nelson Miles, all the remaining Chiricahua—­even ­those who had scouted for Miles and helped capture Geronimo—­were deported as prisoners of war to Florida. By this time, their numbers had nearly halved from 1,200 to just u ­ nder 600. The years in Florida, then Alabama, and fi­nally Oklahoma would likewise negatively affect the Chiricahua’s population. By the time they w ­ ere offered the opportunity to return to the Southwest and live on the Mescalero reservation in southern New Mexico, barely one hundred took up the offer. Ultimately, though they had suffered greatly, the Chiricahua had been neither fully eradicated nor assimilated. Their survival signaled the failure of American Indian policy, their tragedy a stain on its national conscience. ­Unless that policy was less about eradication or assimilation, and more about encapsulation—­ precisely the aim of frontier governmentality—­then it was an outstanding success from the perspective of the state. The Apache ­were hardly the only peripheral ­peoples subject to such a regime of rule in the late nineteenth-­century world of expanding frontiers. Rather, they expose the common forms of frontier governmentality developing si­mul­ta­neously along far-­removed, though similarly situated expanses of the globally ubiquitous imperial frontier. The Apache, like the Afghans, found themselves bounded within reservations, ruled by their own customs and traditions, and subjugated to the requirements of the white, colonial economy. Such frontier governmentality transformed t­ hese ­people not into citizens or subjects, but into objects to be acted on. As such, they remained at one and the same time both insiders and outsiders, inhabitants of a “third space of sovereignty.” They remain trapped in that state ­today.

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At the beginning of the twentieth ­century, ­after the Apache terror had been tamed in the white imagination, the nation transferred its gaze from one of feared “barbarism” to celebrated spectacle. Teddy Roo­se­velt included Geronimo in his inauguration parade, dressed in his Indian regalia, not only to show off the inheritance of Amer­i­ca, but also to clearly display the subjugation of its “savagery.” John Clum was taken aback at the thought that his old nemesis was to be celebrated in a parade down Constitution Ave­nue.104 Yet Clum’s denunciation of the public pageant was hypocritical. He had brought a troupe of Chiricahua with him to Washington, DC, in 1876 while agent at San Carlos with the intention of capitalizing on their exoticism like so many other con­temporary “wild west shows.”105 Clum’s objections ­were couched in the language of righ­teous indignation that a murderer and rebel would be honored by the republic on the day of the passage of power of Amer­i­ca’s most exalted office. Like his contemporaries, he problematized neither the voyeurism inherent in such a spectacle, nor more pointedly the brutal legacy of federal-­Indian relations that Geronimo’s presence personified. Despite Clum’s protests, Geronimo, along with five other Indian chiefs, marched and was feted in the parade. A ­century l­ater, Geronimo again gained prominence in the nation’s cultural imagination, if only in passing. While his image has been commercialized on t-­shirts wryly noting the origins of “homeland security” in 1492, more disturbingly his name has been used as the pseudonym for the country’s most wanted ­enemy, a position Geronimo once claimed as his own. By invoking his name in the current global War on Terror, the United States elides, intentionally or not, the War on Terror with the war of terror it once waged against the Apache and Indians more generally. As importantly, the invocation reminds us of the origins of that previous terror in the form of frontier governmentality, the aftereffects of which continue to shape our world ­today. The vio­lence of the global War on Terror, which was momentarily transposed from Arizona to the Afghan borderlands with the code-­naming of bin Laden as “Geronimo,” has a deeper, shared history in both locales. The forgotten peripheries of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan and San Carlos, among some 300-­odd US reservations, remain pregnant with the possibilities and scars of vio­lence enacted on them through the course of the construction of the modern state system.

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N6n Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert and the Limits of Frontier Governmentality

T

 he desert was empty. That emptiness made it dangerous. It incubated “savagery” among ­those who ventured into it, especially the gauchos. The wild lands turned them wild and barbarous. Their barbarism, most famously denounced by Domingo Sarmiento, threatened civilization and the newly united republic that nurtured it.1 If the republic was to survive, if civilization was to thrive, the desert had to be subjugated. But barbarism was not the only danger birthed by the desert. Its emptiness presented a less active, but no less pressing danger. The desert was nothing but wasteland. As such, it was an affront to the modernizing impulse of the Argentine state, which stood in the way of national wealth, of modern capitalism. The wasteland was dangerous as it displayed the weakness of man—­the sovereignty of nature over humanity. To tame such dangers, the desert needed to be conquered. As with American westward expansion, the Argentine conquista del desierto (conquest of the desert) was a seminal event in the making of modern Argentina.2 Roughly spanning the de­cade from 1875 to 1885, it was part of the pro­cess known as el pro­cesso de organización nacional (the pro­cess of national organ­ization), which saw the emergence of the modern Argentine state nearly three quarters of a ­century ­after it declared in­de­pen­dence from its Iberian overlord.3 Beyond constituting the extension of the Argentine republic into its modern borders, the conquest was centrally impor­tant in shaping its state form—­both formally and substantively. It thus pre­sents a story where the periphery defined the center through its subjugation. 153

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Rio Sala

URUGUAY

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Map 6. ​Argentina, c. 1885. 154

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The central question raised, and answered by the Argentine conquest of the desert, was how the republic was to relate to indigenous p ­ eoples inhabiting the ill-­defined extremities of the state. What effect would both the method and substance of that answer have on the emerging Argentine state? The delimitation of the state’s territories marked by the conquest was a state-­shaping enterprise through the integration of territory.4 The subjugation of the indios (Indians) was just as impor­tant. The relationship between the state and the indios was framed as a dichotomous relationship between “civilization” on the one hand and “barbarism” on the other.5 As the rhe­toric of Sarmiento attests, t­here was the impor­tant task of constructing the other against whom the state would define itself. The state had to make its enemies legible in order to render itself so. In this sense, the Argentine state and the vari­ous bands of indios it subjugated through the conquest ­were mutually constitutive.6 The conquest of the desert provides yet another chapter in the story of the emergence and entrenchment of frontier governmentality along the perimeter of expanding state system of the late nineteenth ­century. While this story shares much in common with ­those episodes already discussed, it also differs in significant re­spects. In many ways, the conquest fails to fit the paradigm of frontier governmentality, and thus demonstrates the model’s explanatory limits. The Argentine state ultimately opted for the direct rule of subject ­peoples rather than ruling them indirectly through traditional holders of authority. It did not recognize the sovereignty of native ­peoples, but rather treated them as subjects of the republic’s universally applicable ­legal regime. The indios, rather than being excluded from the state’s judicial sphere as imperial objects, ­were instead made citizens of the republic. They ­were, however, made eco­nom­ically dependent on the white settler economic order as wage laborers. Part of that wage l­abor sphere included their participation in a nascent military l­abor market—­ indirectly as indios amigos (friendly Indians) and more directly as members of the Argentine military, often in the role of scouts like the Apache of Arizona.7 On three out of four counts then, the Argentine expansion into the Pampas and Patagonia fails the tests of frontier governmentality. Yet this is not the w ­ hole, nor indeed most revealing, part of the story of the conquest. The in­ter­est­ing question about the Argentine experience is why the young republic de­cided not to follow the burgeoning template of administration at the moment of its spread and reproduction around the world. This question is doubly confounding as Argentina looked to the United States as a model for its own expansion, putting in place much 155

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of the ­legal framework found in its northern neighbor, including the idea of reservations.8 Ultimately though, the southern republic opted not to mimic its northern neighbor, nor more broadly construct the emergent system of frontier governmentality entrenching itself along similarly situated spaces around the globe. This was not due to a lack of exposure to the ideas of frontier governmentality, nor indeed to some of the personnel enforcing it. Why, then, did Argentina not construct this regime of rule along its periphery? And what does Argentina’s failure to do so reveal about the limits of frontier governmentality?

nNnNnN ­ here are multiple explanations that may account for Argentina’s failure T to construct frontier governmentality along its limits. Argentina was previously a Spanish colony, and imperial Spain in general and the lands that made up Argentina in par­tic­u­lar had their own history and tradition of frontier rule and relations with indigenous ­peoples.9 Further, Argentina in the late nineteenth c­ entury was a colony of settlement, unlike many of the lands within the British Empire examined in the preceding pages. ­Either, or possibly both, of ­these facts represented a dif­fer­ent paradigm of power into which Argentina fit. Yet such differences, while true, are not germane. With regard to the former, the Spanish tradition of frontier rule in general and in the Argentine lands in par­tic­u­lar differed qualitatively ­little from that examined elsewhere.10 Further, the ­fathers of the republic, in this instance at least, showed themselves more than willing to abandon what historical hold the Spanish traditions may have had over them when they put in place a l­egal regime of frontier rule consciously based on the American system. With regard to the latter, the idea that Argentina’s character as a society of white settlement accounts for the difference is not convincing. ­After all, Chapter  5 examined how another white settler society, the United States, constructed a system of frontier governmentality along its limits. The same was seen in South Africa, as well as arguably Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.11 Further, the massive influx of white Eu­ro­pean immigrants followed rather than preceded Argentina’s conquest of the desert. What then accounts for Argentina’s dif­fer­ent trajectory? Argentina clearly intended to put in place the system of frontier governmentality along its limits, much like its con­temporary colonial counter­ parts. As in other areas, republican authorities viewed the experiences of the United States as both a model and bellwether of its own frontier 156

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

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

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of the periphery ­under the order of frontier governmentality by importing the ­legal structure of frontier rule almost ­wholesale from the United States—­but not instituting it—so too did the Argentine state mimic the ethnographic state constructed by colonial powers elsewhere.20 However, its realization of that state form was at best ­limited, and at worst completely lacking. And this is precisely what Argentina’s failure to construct, enforce, and maintain frontier governmentality along its periphery reveals about the regime of rule—it was not for the administratively feeble. While its use may be indicative of states’ positional weakness, such weakness was relative. It was not a default system for states with no other choice who seemingly fell into it ­because they lacked v­ iable alternatives. Rather it was a system that incurred significant expense—­administrative, po­liti­cal, and financial. And it was available only to states that could enforce a rule of difference. Not all states could convincingly do so in the late nineteenth ­century. Frontier governmentality thus relied on a surprising resilience if not under­lying power of the states that constructed and enforced it along their limits. In place of enforcing frontier governmentality, Argentina instead integrated the lands and p ­ eoples of the periphery into the republican body politic and its normal channels of administration. This would, prima facie, seem to be the harder and more costly option than enforcing frontier governmentality. And yet in the case of the young republic, Argentina had no other option. Unable to plausibly enforce the rule of difference over the newly conquered ­peoples, or even its own w ­ ill over the personnel persecuting state-­sponsored vio­lence against them—­the “men on the spot”—­the Argentine state ultimately had to accept the “assimilation” of the indios as a fait accompli. Anything less would expose its rule for the skeletal shell it actually was, fundamentally endangering, if not fatally condemning it.21 Yet that assimilation was not an active one and thus remained essentially incomplete. Argentina’s experience of the frontier was both conditioned by and is revealing of the liminal, or rather mediatory, position it occupied in the global po­liti­cal and economic order of the late nineteenth ­century. The new republic uncomfortably straddled the divide between the national and imperial worlds. Like its American counterpart to the north, the ­Argentine republic understood itself not within the con­temporary imperial framework dominated by Eu­ro­pean powers, but rather within the national framework that emerged from the revolutionary moment of 159

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the late eigh­teenth ­century into the early nineteenth ­century. Yet that self-­ understanding was in many ways self-­delusional. For the Argentine ­republic, like its North American cousin, was fundamentally a colonial enterprise.22 Further, Argentina was an outpost of the expanding global cap­ it­al­ ist economy of the time. The logic of capitalism conditioned the circumstances and forms of its manifestation. This was as true in Argentina as along the Afghan frontier.

nNnNnN The conquest of the desert provides an impor­tant case study where one may draw together the seemingly unentangled strains of liberalism and empire with ­those of global capitalism and the nation. For the Argentine republic of the late nineteenth ­century was both an outpost of empire, though admittedly “informal,” and an emergent nation-­state. It was this dual characteristic of the Argentine state—­a liberal nation-­state in the traditions of the French Enlightenment and concurrently an informal outpost of the British Empire of capital, which made it an in­ter­est­ing bridge between two strongly interconnected, though rhetorically distinct worlds, worlds that nonetheless w ­ ere firmly bound together by the logic of capitalism and its expansion. To fully understand the importance of the conquest of the desert, one must place it within the trajectory of the development of the Argentine state in the late nineteenth c­ entury. ­After a tumultuous and violent epoch following in­de­pen­dence from the Spanish Empire in 1816, Argentina began to coalesce into its modern po­liti­cal and institutional form from the 1860s onward.23 During the period of internecine fighting and competition, the penetration of the multiple and competing federal and regional governments into the Argentine interior was ­limited. ­There ­were exceptions to this, such as Juan Manuel de Rosas’s initial conquista del desierto in the 1830s.24 However, even Rosas’s largely successful expedition was less about conquering the tierra adentro (interior lands) than about securing the strongman’s flank in order to concentrate on his ­criollo (Argentines of Eu­ro­pean descent) competitors. This was all to change in the final years of the ­century. By the mid-1870s, the country was ready to embark upon the state-­and nation-­building pro­cess first envisioned by the “generation of ’37,” and now taken up by the “generation of ’80.”25 Internally, the long-­running and often violent strug­gle between the federales (federalists) and the uni­ tarios (unitarians)—­a strug­gle that had largely defined Argentina’s in­de­ 160

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pen­dent existence since its break from Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth ­century—­was definitively concluded in ­favor of the latter, whose main center of power was the city of Buenos Aires. Externally, by 1873 Argentina emerged victorious from the horrific War of the ­Triple Alliance, often referred to as the Paraguayan War, where along with its allies Brazil and Uruguay it vivisected the prostrate body of Paraguay. In the eyes of ­those elite, this state-­building proj­ect was founded upon two related ele­ ments, the sequencing of which was impor­tant. First, it required the integration of the vast interior hinterlands—­the country’s yet-­to-­be-­claimed patrimony promising its f­ uture wealth and security. The Pampas and Patagonia, enormous and agriculturally rich lands, beckoned for the taking. Second, bodies ­were needed to farm ­those lands and make the desert bloom. And they had to be the right kind of bodies—­namely white Eu­ro­ pe­ans. This was the immigration proj­ect envisaged by the likes of Roca, who saw the nation’s destiny tied to the conquest and colonization of its emptied interior. The ordering of ­these ele­ments hints at the causal relationship between them. As opposed to other white settler socie­ties where population pressure drove expansion and the subjugation, or eradication, of indigenous ­peoples, this was not the case in Argentina. Rather, the conquest resulted from the expansionary vision of the Argentine elites. The lack of population pressures meant the related land speculation accompanying so many other white settler expansions was muted at best. The land of the Pampas, once conquered, would be virtually worthless without a land-­hungry immigrant horde keen to make their fortunes on the Argentine steppe. This real­ity was evident at the time as the country found it difficult to attract foreign capital u ­ ntil the last de­cade of the nineteenth ­century. Such a population and speculative real­ity conditioned the way the Argentine state went about the conquest. One of the central prob­lems the Argentine government faced in effecting the conquest was the fact that, by the mid-1870s, the state’s coffers ­were barren. To finance the conquest of the interior, the government sold stocks for the expedition on the Argentine bolsa (stock exchange). Law 947, of October 1878, authorized the sale of 4,000 shares worth 400 pesos each, totaling $1.6 million pesos. The shares paid their o ­ wners 6 ­percent interest ­until the successful completion of the expedition whereupon the shareholders would receive the lands of the conquest for having fronted cash to complete it.26 In addition to the Argentine elite who purchased shares, the majority ­were bought by British investors and land 161

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speculators.27 The Argentine state competed in a global market for scarce international capital, which saw safer and surer returns in places like British India, where the railway bonds ­were backed by the Government of India’s revenue receipts. Britain played a centrally impor­tant role in the development of the Argentine state, so much so that many scholars have long considered Argentina as the preeminent example of Britain’s informal empire.28 Britain was, ­after all, the global hegemon of the nineteenth ­century. Though her formal remit encompassed territories spanning the globe, her informal reach extended even farther. Nowhere was this more palpable than on the Pampas in the latter half of the nineteenth ­century. British capital was preponderant in Argentina, to such an extent that when Barings Bank collapsed in London in 1890 it nearly took Argentina with it.29 British banks and financiers owned the railroads, the slaughter­houses, even much the municipal infrastructure of Buenos Aires itself. Nearly anything connecting the Argentine republic to the global economy, dominated by Britain, had the imprimatur of British owner­ship. The conquest of the desert was both driven by and propelled the demands of British capital looking for a lucrative investment outlet as much as by the po­liti­cal needs of the Argentine elite. Their disparate interests converged on Argentina’s expansive interior grasslands—­the Pampas—­ which promised both profit and po­liti­cal power. The Argentine frontier, long a lucrative venue for ­cattle raising, underwent an agricultural revolution in the 1860s where ­cattle ranching gave way to more profitable sheep farming. This was aided by an influx of knowledgeable workhands from the United Kingdoms of Ireland, Wales, ­England, and Scotland.30 The advent of sheep farming tied the Pampas into global cir­cuits of l­abor and capital in the burgeoning world economy created and dominated by the British imperial complex. It also created pressure for state expansion into “unoccupied,” “virgin” lands that could be exploited for economic gain. That expansion was predicated on the taming of the desert through its violent subjugation. The conquest of the desert began in earnest in 1875 ­under the direction of the Minister of War Adolfo Alsina. The frontier line was firmed up and forays ­were made beyond it. But it was not ­until 1878, ­under the direction of General Julio Roca, that the campaign assumed the form that would shortly lead to its kinetic crescendo. Between 1878 and 1882, ­under Roca’s leadership first as field commander, subsequently as Minister of War, and fi­nally as President, the armies of the republic surged across the 162

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Pampas and penetrated deep into Patagonia. By 1885, during Roca’s first presidential term, the conquest came to an end with the final surrender of the last resisting caciques (chiefs). Only the remote lands of the Chaco at the republic’s northern extremities remained beyond the state’s formal reach. But the days of in­de­pen­dence of the indios of the Chaco ­were numbered. The conquest, though centrally impor­tant to the construction of the Argentine state in the late nineteenth ­century, was a relatively small affair in keeping with the comparative size of the polity itself. In terms of the native population subdued, con­temporary state officials estimated around 20,000 indios inhabited the conquered lands. This was a far cry from the more than 250,000 Indians the American government claimed to govern.31 Further, the resources of the state ­were similarly small in absolute terms, though they represented the upper limits of what the Argentine state could deploy and ­were themselves dependent in significant part on foreign capital. While the Argentine Congress appropriated $1.6 million pesos in 1878 for the conquest campaign, in 1877 the US government spent over $4.7 million on Indian governance.32 In his report to Congress as Minister of War in 1879, Roca compared the Argentine outlay to that of ­England in its recent war in Abyssinia where it spent £50 million.33 Roca also noted that his ministry had been bud­geted roughly $5 million pesos fuertes in 1879, a drop of over $2 million pesos from both 1876 and 1877.34 Additionally, he noted the manpower prob­lem faced by the Argentine military. The army, which was authorized to a strength of 8,000 men, had lost 1,940 men in 1878 to demobilization and a refusal to reen­ ere thus ­limited resources—in terms of men and money—­ list.35 ­There w which the republic could dedicate to its conquest of the desert. Such limitations notwithstanding, that conquest evinced three key, interlinked ele­ments making it central to the state-­building proj­ect of the late nineteenth ­century. The first was the assertion of the republic’s sovereignty over land—­man’s dominion over nature.36 The success of that assertion would enable land to be made productive. Such a transformation would tame the natu­ral world to the world of capital, the second ele­ment of the conquest. The third ele­ment was the triumph of civilization over barbarism and savagery, one accomplished through the eradication of the indios. Collectively, ­these ele­ments provided the rationale for the nomenclature of this violent affair. The conquest of the desert was a framing device employed by Argentine elites to denote that the lands conquered w ­ ere barren—of plants, 163

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

nNnNnN Though the conquest undertaken between 1875 and 1885 was bloody, in truth the Argentine interior remained full of indios. The fate of t­ hese ­peoples varied. General Julio  A. Roca reported to Congress that his 164

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e­ xpedition of 1879 resulted in the death of 1,313 armed indios, as well as 10,539 ­women and ­children and a further 2,330 warriors taken as prisoner, totaling “14172 Indians conquered on the Pampas.”40 Roca’s numbers may have been on the low side, with other reports putting the number of indios south of Mendoza between the Rio Grande and the Limay River at 19,250, with 2,075 warriors.41 As opposed to Avellaneda, who saw the conquest as a strug­gle against the desert rather than the in­ dios, Roca was rather more sanguine.42 Something had to be done with ­these ­people. Many ­were forcibly removed to other parts of the country, where they w ­ ere transformed into wage laborers. Some w ­ ere recognized as “tribes” with chiefs, who w ­ ere then integrated into policing the newly expanded Argentine frontier as indios amigos, though with the conquest the need for such indigenous allies was becoming redundant.43 ­Others found themselves interned in concentration camps around the country where they ­were erased from the national consciousness.44 The state-­sponsored erasure of the indigenous inhabitants of the Pampas and Patagonia was driven by multiple, sometimes conflicting impulses. The state wanted the land and, therefore, had to dispossess t­ hose already on it.45 However, modern capitalism relied not simply on possession of a good, but also on, and in many ways more importantly, surety of such possession. This was ensconced through law; law recognized title and thus owner­ship.46 Western ideas of property functioned not solely or even necessarily on ideas of ­actual possession, but more importantly on ideas of claim, which w ­ ere grounded in use and productivity.47 If one could prove their use of the land, mainly through improvement of it, barring other superior claimants (most importantly written claims) they could gain title.48 Being on the land without improving it however, would be not only insufficient, but also morally repugnant to con­temporary sensibilities. Occupying land without using it or improving it bordered on criminal negligence. It was through their failure to improve the land that indios, in Argentina and elsewhere, forfeited their normative claims to title. Without that, they w ­ ere not simply unprotected by the law, but subject to its strictures. They w ­ ere rendered trespassers on land now claimed by the state, and subsequently turned over to private citizens, of Eu­ro­pean stock, for productive use and development. Dispossessed, the indios ­were transformed into “an incarnation of the threat to private property.”49 The indios’ erasure from the desert and from the po­liti­cal imagination of the pubescent nation had a confusing pathology as well as corollary. It was predicated on their rendering as citizens—­ciudadanos. Citizenship 165

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provided a language and logic of belonging to the national body politic difficult to escape even t­oday. From Argentina’s in­de­pen­dence, “citizens ­were putatively equal—­the rule of law applied to every­one, ruled and rulers alike. This was the meaning of republicanism, and it offered a vocabulary for legitimating claims to power and denouncing power holders.”50 The conquest was about transforming “ ‘sovereign Indios’ to ‘Argentine citizens.’ ”51 They had to be brought, forcibly if necessary, into the sphere of the Argentine polity, and absorbed and raised as equal ­citizens of the Argentine state. Rather than being treated as in some way exceptional by the state, the indios ­were to be treated the same as other citizens through the universal language of the law. But such leveling came at the price of loss—­loss of the particularistic identities before the law subjects enjoyed. Indios thus had no more claim to special treatment by the republic than did criollos, mestizos, or any other such group. The leveling logic of citizenship was best expressed by the former President of the Argentine Acad­emy of History and the Chair of the Museum of National History, who wrote: Speaking of Indios nowadays is an insult. Why Indian? He is simply one more Argentine among the thirty-­seven million inhabitants of the country, with the same rights and obligations as all the rest. He does not merit any special treatment or more rights than ­others, but neither should he have any of his invalidated, infringed upon or impaired, as he has the same constitutional protections as all. He is our citizen, and more importantly, our b ­ rother. He deserves and has all of our fraternal affection. No more, no less. To be other­ wise would be indignant and discriminatory.52 But ­these words ignore the fact the indios ­were forcibly made part of the body politic of the republic. Further, though subsumed within it, they had no meaningful participation in it. Despite the promises of citizenship and po­liti­cal liberalism, the indios enjoyed neither. Instead, they found themselves erased—no longer “indios,” but rather rhetorically rendered “Argentines.” In real­ity, they had been forcibly expelled from one shore with no hope of reaching the other. They therefore floated listlessly on a wide sea of liminality ­until they ­were effectively forgotten, drowned in the depths of memory. The conquest of their land entered the national discourse as the occupation of empty land by a benevolent state. What rendered the indios’ citizenship hollow? Citizenship was a central ele­ment of the national liberal po­liti­cal proj­ect of the nineteenth 166

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­century.53 But citizenship and equality before the law ­were not the only products of that proj­ect. So too was Eu­ro­pean imperialism. And unlike citizenship, predicated on the universal rule of law and equality before it, imperialism was founded on the rule of difference. While the indios ­were po­liti­cally rendered citizens, they remained civilizationally apart. As a consequence they ­were so­cio­log­i­cally dif­fer­ent and had to be categorized and documented as such. Thus, at the same moment the po­liti­cal settlement of the latter nineteenth ­century was institutionalizing the identity of the Argentine republic, the republic was in the midst of anthropologizing its indios.54 The pro­cess of ethnicizing indigenous identity created a double bind for the indios. On the one hand, as citizens, they w ­ ere supposedly po­liti­cal participants of the republican body. On the other hand, as anthropological ­others, they substantively lay outside that body despite their formal inclusion in it. Politics was a consequence of civilization. For the indios to participate in the former, they first had to be elevated in the latter. Such elevation, however, would erase their identity as indios. The making of ciudadanos necessarily meant the unmaking of indios.55 Yet at the same time the Argentine state extended citizenship to the indios through conquest, it also ethnographically constructed and categorized them. This pro­ cess was undertaken by vari­ous state officials, who categorized the indigenous ­people as Araucanians, Tehuelche, Mapuche, Pehuelche, and so forth, domesticating them within the information order of the state and white settler society at large.56 Like their British counter­parts in South Asia and Africa, and their American counter­parts on the ­Great Plains, the Argentines w ­ ere in the midst of constructing an ethnographic state in order to assert control over the indigenous population, as well as more clearly define themselves against such subjugated, and subsequently forgotten, ­peoples.57 Closely associated with this effort was the cata­loguing of the natu­ral world the indios inhabited. The scientific expeditions that both preceded and accompanied the conquest of the desert, most famously t­ hose of Francisco P. Moreno and Estanisloa Zeballos, led, respectively, to the creation of Argentina’s national parks and the classification of its indigenous ­peoples.58 For both, the production and deployment of knowledge had a sterilizing effect.59 The land was turned virginal—­untouched and in need of preservation.60 The ­people, no longer a threat—­their “barbarism” defeated by the state’s civilization—­were made part of the natu­ral world. This had multiple ramifications. First, it set them outside of history, which 167

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was a ­human, as opposed to natu­ral, phenomenon. Second, it made them amenable to the same type of objective classification, manipulation, and display as the natu­ral world. It is for this reason that objects of the natu­ral world and indigenous p ­ eoples ­were so often displayed together, such as the ethnographic museum in La Plata or the museum of Carmen de ­Patagones.61 Third, it created the need for their preservation, or rather the preservation of the image of them the state and society could best use to its purpose. The po­liti­cal imaginary of the expanding republic was not the only one at play on the Pampas. The indios subjugated through the conquest had their own visions of po­liti­cal order in this contested space, and the place of both criollos and indios in that order. The caciques of the Pampas and Patagonia with whom the Argentine state interacted had sophisticated and complex relations with that state, as well as with one another. Much of this was a product of a long history of interaction between state authorities and indios that stretched back to the earliest days of the Iberian penetration into the Rio de la Plata. The postin­de­pen­dence period was marked by both continuities and discontinuities with the imperial past. As importantly, it was conditioned by the relative strengths and weaknesses the vari­ous actors enjoyed vis-­à-­vis one another. Further, rather than a space of divide and distinction, the frontier was historically a space of connection, where the porous social, po­liti­cal, and economic bounds ensured that the indios and Argentines ­were closely entwined. Indeed, ­there was a strong undercurrent of interaction and intermingling—­a mestizo po­liti­cal society—­upon which indios at least partly constructed their visions of po­ liti­cal order. To assert the primacy and exclusivity of its po­liti­cal order, the Argentine state would have to unravel the lived real­ity of the frontier. For much of the postin­de­pen­dence period, po­liti­cal infighting among the criollos ensured that indios enjoyed the upper hand.62 Instability plagued the Argentine state, with the federalists and unitarians continually and violently at odds with one another. Due to the fractured nature of the Argentine po­liti­cal authority, the indios often found themselves treating with more than one party to power. As a consequence, they ­were as liable to successfully pursue strategies of divide and rule as they w ­ ere to be subject to them. The negotiated relationship the indios enjoyed with Argentine state authorities is best evidenced by the series of tratados (treaties) executed with vari­ous caciques.63 The proclivity of Argentine authorities to mediate relations with the indios through their tratados resembled the practice of their contempo168

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raries, such as the United States and Canada.64 Over time, the language, and thus claims, of criollo authorities changed, reflecting the power dynamics between the Argentine state and the indios of the interior. Whereas ­earlier tratados largely framed the indios as equals, l­ater ones framed them within the po­liti­cal universe delimited by the republic. The indios ­were no longer equals external to the Argentine po­liti­cal sphere, but rather subjects within it.65 Of course, for much of the time, such claims by republican authorities ­were aspirational rather than ­actual. And the ambiguous language of many of the treaties allowed for multiple, in some cases mutually exclusive, interpretations of t­ hese documents, sometimes intentionally. But as the pro­cess of the organización nacional took root, republican forces strengthened, and the language, intent, and meaning of ­these tratados changed. It ultimately required the vio­lence of Roca’s conquest to fully fulfill the aspirations of the newly empowered, stable, and belligerent republic. That conquest marked the effective death of the tratados as meaningful ­legal documents. As with the indios themselves, the conquest served to eradicate any memory or tradition of compromise the tratados represented. Unlike its North American contemporaries, or its colonial antecedent, the Argentine republic had no appetite for ­legal pluralism. Instead, it opted for a l­ egal monism that recognized only the national l­ egal system and the rights it enshrined.66 The pro­cess of national organ­ization established the singular and universal rule of law throughout the republic. Consequently, indigenous rights, hitherto recognized in the tratados, dis­ appeared along with the understanding of t­hese accords being between sovereign authorities. Instead, they w ­ ere remade and remembered as agreements between sovereign and subject. Just as po­liti­cally the indios ­were erased from the desert, juridically their previously recognized sovereign character was also expunged from memory. The timing and substance of this move mirrored that of Argentina’s northern neighbor, the United States, which in 1871 ended the practice of Congressionally sanctioned sovereign treaties with American Indian tribes.67 Any made thereafter, such as that with the Chiricahua Apache, ­were merely an executive act, and as such not a l­egal agreement between sovereigns but rather a policy statement between sovereign and subject, which could be altered at ­will by the former. It is striking that Argentina and the United States both mediated their relations with indigenous ­peoples through the medium of treaties, and, at roughly the same time in the 1870s, fundamentally reassessed and devalued the meaning of t­hose 169

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treaties. As with frontier governmentality, it speaks to the emergence at the moment of globally ubiquitous governmental practices that states developed along their limits. ­These changing practices—­delineating formerly sovereign-­to-­sovereign relations as sovereign-­to-­subject relations—­were definitional of the states themselves. They marked the end of a tolerance for, or indeed embrace of, a layered and highly variegated world of sovereign pluralism. In its place, a flattened world marked by single unitary sovereigns emerged in the republican imaginations.

nNnNnN The abandonment of the practice of tratados with the conquest marked a new epoch in relations with the indios. Moving forward, Argentina’s treatment of the indios followed one of three trajectories.68 The first was the settlement of conquered indios onto agricultural colonias (colonies), best understood as collective farms.69 ­These ­were not reservations in the North American sense. The colonias w ­ ere not sovereign but rather w ­ ere governed by the laws of the republic.70 The inhabitants of t­ hese colonias ­were Argentine citizens. They ­were no longer indios in the eyes of the state. The government was uninterested in conserving tribes, which w ­ ere anachronistic to civilization and thus only prevented indios from advancing themselves.71 Rather, the state privileged the protection of families, meaning nuclear families. Roca denounced the reservation system of the United States as dangerous as it allowed “the Indian the ability to conserve and transmit his language, customs and spirit of the tribe.”72 Instead, to facilitate the civilizing of the “savage” indios, the Argentine state would “distribute t­hose Indian prisoners, respecting the integrity of their families, among the rural population where u ­ nder work that rejuvenates and the life and spirit of dif­fer­ent customs, that influence . . . ​the native language as a useless instrument, they obtain a rapid transformation into a civilized ele­ment and productive force.”73 The colonias ­were viewed by the state as a place where the “regenerative regimen of work and civilization” could be instilled in the conquered indios.74 The original proposal for colonias put forth by President Roca in 1885 assigned thirty hectares per ­family of five, along with one league square of common pasturage.75 While this scheme provided a general outline, during the succeeding years Congress tended to enact individual programs of settlement of vari­ous caciques and tribes. In 1887, Congress enacted a grant of 20,000 hectares to the conquered tribes south of the Limay River.76 Manuel Namuncurá and his followers ­were granted eight 170

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leagues in Neuquén in 1894, while Valentin Saygüeque and his followers ­were granted twelve leagues of land in Chubut, four of which ­were reserved for him.77 ­There was considerable debate ­whether ­these colonias should be isolated from the surrounding criollo populations, or integrated with it. By placing indios in agricultural colonias, at most as part of a ­family unit, the hope was that they could be mixed with, and thus civilized by exposure to, the criollo population.78 The indios would be civilized by being turned into property ­owners and ­family members. The colonias ­were to be governed by an Indian commissioner, aided by five members elected from the community.79 While Roca’s proposal sparked a lively debate in Congress, it ultimately passed. The state undertook to provide title and support for the indios settled on ­these colonias, including animals, for between one to five years, ­after which they ­were on their own. In lieu of the state support, vari­ous bodies of the Church stepped in, akin to Grant’s peace policy in the United States.80 ­These settlements w ­ ere not set up immediately following the conquest, but rather came into being ­toward the close of the nineteenth ­century. Most of ­these settlements broke down soon a­ fter the turn of the ­century through lack of funds, or the diversion of indios’ ­labor elsewhere.81 The colonias in a way resembled the American Indian reservations ­after the Dawes Act.82 Both the Argentine and American schemes sought to turn the indios into individual property ­owners, and through that into po­liti­cal personages as citizens of the republic. The American scheme differed in two impor­tant re­spects. First, citizenship was not automatically bestowed on Indians en masse ­until the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. And second, while the Dawes Act did produce the Indians as property o ­ wners formally, it did not trust them to be such substantively. Instead it inserted a mediatory stage where the newly in­ven­ted Indian property owner, ignorant of what to do with his possession, would have his interests overseen by the authorities of the republic.83 This wardship relationship was completely lacking in Argentina. The creation of the colonias and decision to view the newly conquered and settled indios as citizens, though not fully civilized ones, happened at an impor­tant moment in the pro­cess of the organizaciòn nacional. With the settlement of the Indian question and conquest of the interior lands secured by the mid-1880s, the republic could now look to the massive influx of Eu­ro­pean immigrants. In comparison to the 200,000 immigrants arriving per year, the indios encapsulated by the colonia scheme numbered roughly four thousand.84 Yet debate about what to do with ­these indios 171

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far outweighed their numerical importance. How the republic treated ­these conquered indios provided a definitional statement about itself. The conquest of the lands occupied by the indios and their forcible integration into the republican order as native-­born citizens indicated the unitary order of the national proj­ect, which left l­ ittle room ­either for ­legal or cultural pluralism. And it provided a template for the integration and assimilation of the waves of Eu­ro­pean immigrants soon to crash onto the country’s shores. The second trajectory, suffered by many for at least some time, was exile to penal colonies best described as concentration camps, the most famous being the island of Martin Garcia in the ­middle of the Rio de la Plata. In 1885, the fa­cil­it­ y held 181 “indios” and 106 “familias.”85 Clearly vis­i­ble from Buenos Aires, at its height the fa­cil­i­ty ­housed upward of three thousand.86 ­These not only w ­ ere prison facilities, but also served as l­abor reservoirs.87 Many of the indios interned in them ­were forcibly recruited as laborers throughout the country.88 Internment in t­ hese facilities appears to have been transitory, with the indios ­later resettled elsewhere, often on colonias. Unlike the colonias, which ­were run by the Ministry of the Interior, ­these prison camps fell ­under the auspices of the Ministry of the Army and Navy. ­These concentration camps had con­temporary counter­ parts elsewhere in the world, such as in the United States, Australia, and British India.89 And they would ­later be replicated in other colonial arenas such as South Africa. The third and final trajectory sent indios directly into the Argentine ­labor pool, particularly as domestic ­labor. Many of the men interned in places like Martin Garcia w ­ ere forced to leave their families ­behind. ­These families had no means to eco­nom­ically support themselves save entry into the ­labor market. Many of the w ­ omen became domestic servants. Many of the ­children ­were taken from them and ­adopted, legally or other­wise, by white settler families. An outcome of enforced economic need, this also quickened the transformation of Indian youths into citizens, denuding them of their cultural and ethnic heritage. ­Those absorbed as domestic ­labor ­were relocated, often with ­little choice, to other parts of the country as agricultural laborers. They w ­ ere integrated into the economic order as objects, in the hope this would transform them into citizens. The Argentine state raced headlong into the transformation of the newly conquered indios into citizens and cap­i­tal­ists (or rather capital in the form of subjugated wage laborers). In many ways, this assimilationist blueprint was the ultimate aim of American Indian policy, and yet it was 172

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realized more readily and more quickly by the republic of the southern ­ holesale commitment to the logic cone.90 Why? What does Argentina’s w of liberalism—­liberty, equality, and fraternity (or rather citizenship and market participation)—­say about the Argentine state, its aims, and abilities? If anything, it points to the Argentine republic’s relative weakness. It did not establish a ward relationship with the indios ­because it could not maintain and enforce such a relationship. Further, its assimilationist agenda was less than it appears at first blush. The Argentine state did not commit to the education of the indios, as the US government did with Carlisle School and its progeny. While it encouraged, like Grant’s peace policy, the Catholic Church to assume a role in Indian welfare, it provided l­ittle if any support—­material or other­wise—­for that role.91 Consequently, Argentina’s policy was less one of assimilation than it was of eradication—­the eradication of difference by the presumption of equality before the law, citizenship, and capitalism. Such assumptions, however, did not render realities. Rather, they elided and occluded them.

nNnNnN But what of the attitudes of the indios themselves? What ­were the visions, strategies, and tactics the caciques employed in dealing with the vari­ous criollo governments? What was their po­liti­cal lexicon as well as their po­ liti­cal vision of the pos­si­ble regarding their expansionary neighbor? Three chiefs of par­tic­u­lar importance give insight into t­hese questions.92 The first, Manuel Namuncurá, was the son of one of the most famous caci­ ques of the nineteenth c­ entury, Juan Calfacurá, and was an impor­tant leader in his own right. The second, Valentin Saygüeque, was the most impor­tant cacique in Patagonia. His defeat in 1879 opened the way for colonization of Argentina’s southern reaches. The final chief, Casimiro Bigua, sometimes referred to by criollo authorities as Patagón Casimiro, pre­sents a stunning visual language of po­liti­cal being and belonging. Manuel Namuncurá succeeded his f­ ather, Juan Calfacurá, as the leader of the indios inhabiting the Salinas Grandes. Calfacurá, who had been both ally and ­enemy of Rosas in his day, assembled the largest confederation of indios on the Pampas.93 At its height, Calfacurá’s confederation could gather upward of five thousand mounted warriors. This has led to what are now rather dated claims about an “inland empire” of indios.94 By the time of his death in 1873, Calfacurá’s lands and p ­ eople w ­ ere ­under  pressure from an Argentine state now unified and at peace. His son, Namuncurá unsuccessfully faced off against that state, succumbing 173

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Figure 6.1. ​Cacique Manuel Namuncurá. No. 303589. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

to its power in 1878, though only surrendering in 1884.95 Nonetheless, Namuncurá was viewed by the Argentine state as “the most power­ful and influential of the caciques of the Pampa,” a power derived from his ability to call upon 1,500 mounted warriors.96 Namuncurá and his ­father constructed and maintained a sophisticated indigenous polity in the Salinas Grandes. While the confederation built 174

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by the latter was in many ways necessarily fleeting, the under­lying po­liti­cal structures upon which it was erected proved themselves surprisingly resilient. The most intriguing, and arguably impor­tant, of ­these structures is what subsequently became known as the archive of the chieftancy of the Salinas Grandes.97 Discovered in 1879 during expeditions against the remnants of Namuncurá’s crumbling confederacy, the archive consisted of at least three boxes of materials, which included correspondence with vari­ous agents of the national government, peace treaties, and even photo­ graphs. The discovered material constituted an archive, the archive of the government or chieftancy of the Salinas Grandes. . . . ​­There ­were (and it was completed ­after the find by a donation of documents which Coronel Levalle had e­ arlier taken from the Indios), the communications changed from power to power between the Argentine government and the Araucanian chiefs, the papers of the commanders of the frontier, the bills of traders who had served the vandals, the list of indigenous tribes and their chiefs, dependents of the chieftancy of the Salinas, the seals of governors recorded in metal, the proofs of complicity of the savages in the civil wars of the Republic alternately in ­favor and against the parties; and in the midst of ­these curious materials which did not lack a dictionary of the Spanish language, which had served the Indios to interpret the communications of the Argentine government, of the military commanders, of their spies (this archive proved that they ­were numerous) and of the merchants, with whom they maintained current accounts religiously paid (due to this awe), as can be seen between the markets of Paris and Buenos Aires.98 The papers included documents signed by “presidents, ministers and other dignitaries,” a fact that for some observers lowered the state’s prestige.99 It may be for this very reason that though the existence of Namuncurá’s and other caciques’ archives has long been known, they have equally long been ignored. The forces of the Argentine republic had stumbled onto a visage of a state form much like their own, but one authored and maintained by the “barbarians” of the desert whom the republic had conquered to civilize. The indios not only maintained an archive of correspondence, but also used it to their advantage in their relations with Argentine authorities. They archived rec­ords, and thus an institutional memory to be referenced. Clearly, ­these caciques understood the importance of writing, memory, and 175

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the archive in the exercise of state power. And they proved themselves ­adept in utilizing the written word in ways that flustered and unnerved criollo state authorities. Lucio Mansilla, one of the ­great chroniclers of the indios midcentury, related his experience with the cacique Mariano Rosas: Look, ­brother [said Mariano], why d ­ on’t you tell me the truth?—­I have told you the truth I answered.—­Now we ­will see, ­brother. And having said that, he got up, entered the awning and returned carry­ing a box of pine, with a corresponding lid. He opened it and took out some cloth sacks. This was his archive. Each sack contained official notes, letters, drafts, papers. He knew e­ very paper perfectly. He could point with his fin­ger to the paragraph he wanted to reference. Sifting through his archive, he took a small bag, opened the string which had been very wrinkled, revealing it had been handled many times. It was La Tribuna of Buenos Aires. In it, he had marked an article about the g­ reat oceanic railroad. He passed it to me, saying “Read, ­brother.”100 The contents of the archive of Manuel Namuncurá, Mariano Rosas, and Valentin Saygüeque—­amongst ­others—­were in Spanish. Though many of the caciques ­were neither literate nor conversant in Spanish, ­there ­were impor­tant exceptions to this, such as Bernardo Namunará, Manuel’s cousin and brother-­in-­law.101 Indeed, ­there was a long tradition during the colonial period where the Crown encouraged indios to learn Spanish. Religious missions ­were established promising not only conversion, but education as well. ­After the collapse of imperial authority and its replacement by its republican progeny, the newly empowered criollo elite took a dim view of educating unconquered indios.102 Thus, although the liberal national proj­ect of the nineteenth ­century sought to turn the indios into citizens, state authorities viewed their civilizational transformation with de­cided ambivalence. A previous imperial pattern of cultural exchange was thus supplanted by a national one of cultural eradication based in liberal republican chauvinism. The use of Spanish arguably put the caciques at a marked disadvantage, reflecting the power in­equality of their relations with the criollo authorities.103 Though the Argentine state was not in a position to enforce its ­will over the indios ­until the last quarter of the nineteenth c­ entury, it was power­ful enough to effectively entice the caciques to engage in a po­ liti­cal arena, the limits of which ­were defined by the Argentines. ­After all, it was the indios who mimicked Eu­ro­pean state form in the construction 176

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and maintenance of an archive, and in the use of Spanish. This is not to say t­ here ­were not indigenous traditions of memory and recording. Rather, it is to say that the caciques of the Salinas Grandes made a tactical decision that t­ hose traditions ­were illegible to Argentines, and thus of l­imited value in mediating relations with them. So the caciques accommodated themselves to the forms of po­liti­cal intercourse familiar to the criollos, seeking and often gaining advantage within a system authored by Argentine state authorities to replicate and maintain their own authority. The existence of ­these archives, stunning as they ­were to Zeballos and ­others, is no less stunning a statement of po­liti­cal imagination t­ oday. Not only did the caciques maintain a continuing correspondence with Argentine authorities in Spanish—­a necessity as the indigenous languages ­were not written—­more importantly they recorded and ordered that correspondence into an archive. This is a state-­constructing activity, and one borrowing the forms of state from the literate society t­ hese caciques faced. They nonetheless adapted this state practice to their own circumstances. While most states’ archives required a central repository in the form of a physical building, the nomadic lifeways of the indios did not. Instead, the physical repository of the documents needed to be something mobile, like the indios themselves. Thus the wooden boxes found by Lavalle and ­later Zeballos.104 Archives are knowledge-­generating spaces.105 From them emerge information ­orders that both frame and maintain po­liti­cal worldviews, in this case that of the caciques.106 The archive offered them a fixed past that could be referenced to the indios’ advantage, allowing them to construct their own narratives vis-­à-­vis the Argentine state. The written archive, though in a foreign language and mimicking the forms of knowledge power of ­those threatening them, meant the caciques ­were not disadvantaged relative to this state. Rather, it enabled the indios to meet the Argentines on a relatively equal footing, at least epistemically. Such an ability caught the Argentines off guard and could only be profoundly disquieting as it challenged the fundamental belief of literate Argentine civilization facing illiterate Indian “barbarism” on the Pampas and in Patagonia. For the indios and their caciques, the archive served as a weapon of asymmetrical re­sis­tance to the expanding republic. Yet for Namuncurá and his followers, that re­sis­tance ultimately proved futile. By 1884, the Secretary of War, Benjamin Victoria, confidently wrote to Congress that “the old king of the Pampa, the formerly feared and power­ful Namuncurá, is now a farmer on an Indian agricultural colony.”107 177

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nNnNnN The caciques of the Salinas Grandes ­were not alone in the construction and maintenance of an archive, though the uses to which they put that archive differed from their contemporaries. Calfacurá and his heir, Namuncurá, used the form of Argentine politics to construct a rival po­liti­cal order. In contrast, the Patagonian cacique Valentin Saygüeque sought to mold a place for himself and his ­people within ­those politics.108 Saygüeque maintained one of the longest-­running, uninterrupted correspondences with the Argentine state of any nineteenth-­century cacique.109 He first appeared in an 1857 treaty between his pre­de­ces­sor and the government of Buenos Aires.110 U ­ ntil his subjugation in 1879, he regularly corresponded with a variety of Argentine officials.111 In much of that correspondence, Saygüeque evinced a po­liti­cal vision of himself and his ­people within the Argentine state proj­ect as equals with other citizens of the republic.112 Saygüeque clearly articulated his idea of po­liti­cal participation within the Argentine proj­ect in his voluminous correspondence with Coronel Barros, the commander at Carmen de Patagones, one of the southern outposts of the republic on the Atlantic coast at the outlet of the Río Negro. Following the river upstream to its source, one arrived in the Pais de las Manzanas (country of the apples), Saygüeque’s domain.113 Interestingly, he did not claim to be sovereign of ­these lands, at least not in his correspondence. Rather he claimed in effect to be their governor. He signed all his correspondence “Valentin Sayhueque, Gobernación del Pais de Las Manzanas.”114 ­Here, in a form familiar to and resonant with his Argentine correspondents, this cacique clearly asserted his claim to a place in their po­liti­cal universe. As “governor,” he was a ruler whose authority had been delegated by a national sovereign, one constituted by its ­people and founded on nineteenth-­century values of po­liti­cal liberalism and republicanism. As interestingly, that claim was acknowledged and accepted by his Argentine correspondents who addressed him by that title. In his letter of August 19, 1879, Conrado Villegas, then a commander of the military frontier of Río Negro and Neuquén, Carmen de Patagones, addressed Saygüeque as “al Gobernador del Pais de las Manzanas Cacique Don Valentin Saygüeque [to the Governor of the Country of the Apples Chief Valentin Saygüeque].”115 Saygüeque’s correspondence reflected his understanding of a relationship first formed by treaty in 1857 between his pre­de­ces­sor Llanquitruz and Buenos Aires. Among the articles of that tratado, the cacique was 178

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Figure 6.2. ​Cacique Saygüeque. No. 289894. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

­ ppointed a lieutenant coronel with a monthly salary of 1,200 pesos and a charged with defending the interests of the government of Buenos Aires in the lands he controlled.116 Saygüeque reaffirmed this relationship in a treaty in 1863.117 Based on t­ hese treaties, Saygüeque asserted his authority as the designated governor of the Pais de las Manzanas. Thus his signature “Gobernador / Gobernación del Pais de las Manzanas.”118 Initially, 179

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

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currents of racism, likewise the product of the time’s intellectual ­tumult.122 Indios did have a place within the Argentine po­liti­cal imaginary—as subservient allies, indios amigos. But even the space for that role was quickly receding by the time the inhabitants of the Pais de las Manzanas w ­ ere forcibly integrated into the republic. Thus, the only option for the po­ liti­cal identity of indigenous ­peoples was ciudadanos—­citizens of the republic. The promise of equality this status held, but adamantly refused to realize, was predicated on the erasure of difference—on the conquest of the desert and the eradication of its inhabitants. Saygüeque’s bold claim to power within the Argentine republic, though humored while he lay outside of it, was repudiated once he was forced into it. With the conquest of the Pais de las Manzanas, its p ­ eoples ­were spread throughout Argentina. Some w ­ ere sent as laborers to other parts of the country; some ­were resettled in agricultural colonias where they would be made model agrarian citizens. ­Others, including Saygüeque himself, w ­ ere sent to concentration camps, such as the island of Martin Garcia.123 Clearly, his ­imagined role within the national body politic, though using the language and imagery of the Argentine po­liti­cal proj­ect, did not fit with the interests of the republican elites, with the rhe­toric of their civilization versus barbarism motif, or with the expediencies of an expanding cap­it­ al­ist realm. Like so many subalterns who sought a place within the nineteenth-­century Eu­ro­pean liberal order by explic­itly claiming its promises, Saygüeque was rebuffed by its racism, something inherent in that order. While Namuncurá experienced the defeat of his challenge to the Argentine po­liti­cal order on the one hand and Saygüeque the rejection of his claim to a place within it on the other, Casimiro Bigua died before he could suffer ­either.124 His death in 1873, two years prior to the beginning of the conquest of the desert, spared him the humiliation and repudiation borne by ­these other caciques. A Tehuelche chief of Patagonia, he had long been an indio amigo of the vari­ous Argentine governments. He was conversant in Spanish and “knew how to be civilized amongst the whites.”125 Casimiro clearly i­magined and successfully asserted a place for himself within the Argentine po­liti­cal proj­ect. In 1866, President Bartolomé Mitre granted him the honorary rank of lieutenant coronel in the Argentine army, deputizing him to establish an Argentine colony along the Strait of Magellan in order to contest Chile’s claims to the area.126 Yet the most arresting assertion Casimiro made on the Argentine po­liti­cal imaginary was not a written one, but rather a visual one. 181

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Many caciques ­were photographed over the course of their lives.127 As was the norm with con­temporary photography, all such photo­graphs w ­ ere staged, mostly for ethnographic effect.128 But the most striking one of Casimiro is the one staged with clear republican significance. It is the headshot of the cacique wearing a dark wool tunic and liberty cap. The tunic, made of lambswool, reflects the new global cap­i­tal­ist cir­cuits the Pampeano and Patagonian countryside had been integrated into by the latter half of the nineteenth c­ entury. By this time sheep farming had eclipsed ­cattle raising in importance and was one of the driving f­actors b ­ ehind the conquest of the desert. More in­ter­est­ing, however, was Casimiro’s choice of headwear.129 No clearer visual statement of republican values was pos­si­ble than the liberty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap. Since the days of the French Revolution, the progenitor of the Argentine republic, this piece of civic fashion had served as a power­ful po­liti­cal statement.130 And it was one that, in the wrong hands or on the wrong heads, proved gravely concerning.131 The Phrygian cap, being such a clearly recognizable and evocative symbol of liberty and republicanism, was ­adopted as the central image on the republic’s coat of arms. In donning the cap and staring unflinchingly into the camera’s lens, Casimiro was making a clear, legible, and, though he might not have realized it, arguably permanent po­liti­cal statement. He was staking his claim visually as a citizen of the republic, a ­brother of liberty. He was assuming the visual language of the foreign po­ liti­cal order he interacted with, and in so d ­ oing indicated his place within that order. In this, he was largely successful. But that success rested precariously on his physical remove from the republican po­liti­cal order. While recognizing him from afar, as President Mitre did in the treaty of 1866, the po­liti­cal willingness of the criollo elite would have ebbed as the distance separating Casimiro and his lands from the realizable claims of the authorities in Buenos Aires receded. His claim was recognized de jure ­because it cost ­little to do so. In fact, it bolstered the republican po­liti­cal order against its Chilean adversaries in a realm of mutual contention, and thus advantaged the Argentine elites to extend it to this Tehuelche cacique. However, when the space intervening between the de jure claims and their de facto recognition dis­appeared, as they did l­ ater with Saygüeque, so too did the criollo willingness to extend ­either. Casimiro Bigua’s evocation of a larger po­liti­cal imaginary points to the global linkages both coloring and animating the conquest of the desert. Beyond po­liti­cal ideas of liberty, the conquest was driven by foreign concerns, such as British capital. As impor­tant ­were emergent international, 182

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Figure 6.3. ​Cacique Patagón Casimiro, c. 1866. No. 289897. Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

interstate norms that the adolescent republic was keen to enforce, in large part due to its own insecurity regarding its place within the normative framework of the burgeoning international order. The actions of the Argentine government w ­ ere predicated on a comparative understanding of the po­liti­cal and strategic need to expand its borders and secure its frontiers. ­Doing so was central to the forms and pro­cesses of state construction globally ubiquitous in the late nineteenth c­ entury. For the frontier is where the state defined not only its limits, but also itself.

nNnNnN Argentina’s conquest of the desert between 1875 and 1885 was only partly about the subjugation of the indios. As importantly, it was also about the creation of the state through the pro­cess of bordering.132 In the indios, 183

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the state could not “read” a cognizable po­liti­cal authority, though it felt threatened by their continued presence. The indios and their po­liti­cal constellations w ­ ere illegible in the world of sovereign states coming to dominate the late nineteenth ­century. They ­were an anachronism of the past with no place in the po­liti­cal pre­sent. What ­were legible ­were other sovereign states that resembled Argentina—­Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and most importantly Chile. Any space intervening between t­hese states was “desert”—­a void that needed to be filled by state power. In this reckoning, the indios ­were not po­liti­cal actors themselves, but rather ­were mere placeholders for other, legible polities. Thus the con­temporary argument of “araucanization”—­namely, that the indios of the Pampas ­were not indigenous, but rather ­were natives of Chile and thus Chileans who intruded and conquered t­ hese lands during the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury.133 The real danger, however, was the intrusion of other state authorities into this wasteland. This, as much as anything, is what drew the forces of the republic into the tierra adentro. Argentine politicians ­were keen on preempting Chilean power on the Pampas and in Patagonia. By conquering and integrating this space, the republic brought its own limits up to that of another legible power, and thus secured the regional po­ liti­cal order.134 Argentina was thus usurping the “­middle ground” intervening between itself and Chile.135 The indios of the Pampas and Patagonia, like ­those of the ­Great Lakes region, ­were no longer able to leverage their position in order to keep Chile and Argentina at bay. For a long time, they had successfully done so. Indeed, much of Saygüeque’s power lay in his control of the passes through the cordillera and the virtual chokehold this granted him over regional economies.136 However, the changes wrought by the nationalization and internationalization of regional economies paradoxically meant his power over regional trade both weakened and became an increasingly acute threat to state authority. The emergence of the po­liti­cal economy as a space of governmentality inserted state authority in spaces previously occupied by alternative sources of power. This is a pro­cess seen not only along the cordillera between Argentina and Chile, but also along the frontier between British India and an emergent Afghan state in the nineteenth ­century.137 H ­ ere too one finds local holders of authority—­“tribal” khans and maliks—­whose power largely derived from their ability to control the movement of commerce between Central and South Asia. As the region integrated into the burgeoning global patterns of trade growing through the course of the nineteenth 184

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c­ entury, the economic exchange that had previously been the backbone of a local economy of plunder collapsed. Paired with a characterization of ­these ­people as wild tribesmen and the “fear” of imperial Rus­sia’s influence creeping south of the Hindu Kush, many of the same calculations driving Argentine actions into the Pampas and Patagonia in 1879 likewise drove the Raj into Af­ghan­i­stan a year previously. The conquest of the desert was contemporaneous with the Second Anglo-­Afghan War, a fact not lost on Julio Roca.138 The Second Anglo-­Afghan War was not the only frontier war against indigenous ­peoples that the conquest was contemporaneous with. In addition to the war in Af­ghan­i­stan, the Argentine expansion into the Pampas and Patagonia took place at the same time as Geronimo’s Apache War in the American Southwest and the Anglo-­Zulu War at the limits of Natal province. All t­ hese conflicts occurred on imperial peripheries, where modernizing state forms—be they national or colonial in character, but definitively imperial in design regardless—­faced off against “uncivilized” or “barbarous,” and invariably “tribal,” p ­ eoples. Further, t­ hese conflicts took place in spaces intervening between state powers, in realms that ­were ­conceived of as “buffers” between “real” po­liti­cal actors. Part of the threat that drove Argentina to action was the same as that which forced the Raj’s hand—­the ambitions of a territorially covetous and untrustworthy neighbor. For the Raj, that neighbor was, of course, Tsarist Rus­sia, with whom it was engaged in the “­Great Game” for influence and control in the heart of Eurasia. Argentina was itself playing a ­great game with its rival Chile for the vast interior spaces of Latin Amer­i­ca’s southern cone.139 The constant characterization of the indios of the Pampas as nothing more than Chilean interlopers belied the belief that, in the state’s eyes, the stateless p ­ eoples of the periphery could have not in­de­pen­dent ­will.140 They w ­ ere simply placeholders for another state—­and thus legible power. Whereas Lord Lytton wanted to create a “buffer state” in Af­ghan­i­ stan that would serve as a breakwater between British India and Rus­sian Central Asia, Roca wanted Argentina to directly abut Chile so t­ here would be no room for expansion as each had reached their “natu­ral limits.” The interconnectedness between t­hese two “­great games” was evidenced by the presence of the same personnel. T. H. Holdich, who was instrumental in demarcating the Afghan frontier with British India, ­later served as His Majesty’s Government’s arbitrator of the border dispute between Argentina and Chile.141 But more in­ter­est­ing and revealing of Argentina’s con­temporary global interconnections was the person of Ignacio Fotheringham. 185

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nNnNnN Ignacio Hamilton Fotheringham was a central figure in Argentine po­ liti­cal and military life at the end of the nineteenth ­century.142 He ended his days of public ser­vice to the republic as governor of the Chaco province and a lieutenant general in the army.143 Fotheringham, however, is a rather surprising figure in the pantheon of the Argentine republic. A relatively late arrival, emigrating from the United Kingdom in 1862 at the age of twenty-­one, he nonetheless played a central role in the violent expansion of the Argentine state into the vastness of the Pampas and Patagonia. But Fotheringham did not get his first taste of vio­lence and military life in Argentina. Rather, his exploits in the southern cone w ­ ere his military reincarnation. His first martial life was in the ser­vices of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in British India. Born outside Southampton, ­England, in 1842, he was the son of a retired army col­o­nel who had served Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, from India to Waterloo. As with many in his position, the younger Fotheringham was expected to follow in his ­father’s footsteps. Ignacio’s fortunes, however, w ­ ere not to be made in the Queen’s army, but in her navy, or rather that of her Honorable East India Com­pany.144 In 1857, he joined the Com­pany’s navy at the age of fifteen in what proved to be the waning days of the Com­pany Raj.145 Fotheringham’s autobiography makes clear t­hese ­were not his happiest days. He detested life in the Com­pany’s ser­vice and had ­little good to say of its commanders, his fellow officers, or its seamen. Fortunately for him, he was drubbed out in 1860 and shipped back to E ­ ngland at the very moment the Com­pany’s navy was being absorbed into the Royal Navy.146 On his return, and much to his relief, he found the merger left him no place in the Queen’s ser­vice. At eigh­teen, having brought disgrace to his f­amily by his dismissal, he found himself unsure of what to do. His next move only became clear in 1862, when he came of age and inherited £1,100 from his ­father’s estate. Though he initially considered ­going to Australia, Fotheringham was dissuaded from this course by ­family friends who instead encouraged him to consider Argentina. Despite his decidedly En­glish roots, Fotheringham de­cided to seek fortunes outside the confines of Britain’s global empire and embarked on the RMS Oneida for Rio de Janeiro, and thence onward to Buenos Aires. While Fotheringham was exceptional in pursuing his f­ uture outside the British Empire at the very moment its white colonies of settlement w ­ ere opening to mass 186

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

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Figure 6.4. ​La ocupación militar de Rio Negro, by Juan Manuel Blanes (1896). Museo Histórico Nacional, Argentina. From the author’s collection.

The use of Blanes’s image on this piece of sovereign currency is telling. While the military government that placed it on the bill did so to celebrate Argentina’s martial heritage, they ­were in fact documenting how that past was fundamentally entwined with the late nineteenth-­century expansion of global capitalism.151 Through the conquest, the newly unified Argentine republic was firmly embedded into a global system of capital, one dominated by the City of London. The newly gained lands promised the expansion, with animal husbandry feeding international cir­ cuits of exchange. That expansion required the building of an infrastructure of export and exploitation. But just as the young republic lacked the money to conquer the lands, so too did it lack the money to exploit them. The railroads built to export sheep’s wool and c­ attle skins ­were financed and owned by the British. The mills where the wool was turned into cloth ­were likewise owned by the British and, more often than not, located in Britain. The territorial consolidation of the Argentine nation thus marked its subjugation to the global economic order, a fact recognized on its ­legal tender. The bill also offers an answer to the question of why Argentina did not adopt the forms of frontier governmentality seen along other similarly situated global peripheries, including ones it looked to as a model for administration. The logic of global capitalism created specific opportunities and forms for its expression. Along other frontiers examined, which ­were themselves part of larger imperial constituent parts, that logic drove the development of frontier governmentality. The relatively poor lands occupied by the Pashtuns, Bedouins, Somalis, and Apaches, combined 188

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Figure 6.5. ​A 100-­peso bill, Argentina. Series S / T. From the author’s collection.

with their continued recalcitrance, militated against direct cap­i­tal­ist exploitation. The Pampas and Patagonia ­were dif­fer­ent, for two reasons. First, the land had considerably more productive value. The Pampas grasslands occupied by the likes of Namuncurá in Salinas Grandes had the potential to be transformed in lucrative grazing ranges for a globally interwoven animal husbandry industry. And the Pais de las Manzanas in Patagonia was an established zone of agricultural productivity, a fact attested to by its name. This relative wealth combined with the weakness of the Argentine state. The land was too valuable and the state too weak to encapsulate the indigenous inhabitants on unproductive lands. Second, whereas the Afghan, Iraqi, K ­ enyan, and American frontiers ­were all on the limits of larger imperial constellations—­ peripheries of the global ­imperial order—­Argentina itself was a periphery of that order. This position necessarily affected the ways it envisaged and governed its own limits. Not only ­were the arms of the Argentine state weak, but the state itself 189

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was uncertain of its position within the international order. To secure that position, Argentina needed to demonstrate to its peers (not to mention to itself) its full, uniform control of its territories.

nNnNnN Argentina’s apparent failure to follow frontier governmentality along its limits is nonetheless illustrative of its continuing legacies, and the challenge of meaningfully dealing with them. For while frontier governmentality was predicated on a rule of difference, the Argentine treatment of the indios was essentially about the rule of sameness. Juxtaposing t­hese two seemingly dichotomous experiences displays the range of possibilities and outcomes for states dealing with the p ­ eoples of the periphery. And the lesson is a troubling one. Frontier governmentality’s practice and legacy is the encapsulation of frontier p ­ eoples in their own customs and traditions. It set them apart and maintained that distance through the rule of difference. In nearly all of the cases examined in the preceding pages, p ­ eoples subject to this regime of rule ­were rendered imperial objects by it. And while in the postcolonial pre­sent they may have been formally integrated into the body politic as citizens, the substance of that integration remains for the most part substantively unrealized, or in some cases outright denied. At first blush, Argentina’s imposition of a single, universal order—­one of citizenship—­would seem the answer to the debilitating legacy of frontier governmentality. The p ­ eoples subject to it are largely excluded from the po­liti­cal order. To right this wrong, make their status as equal members of the polity a real­ity. Yet the experience of the indios ­under Argentina’s rule raises flags of caution. On the one hand, while the indios ­were legally enfranchised, they ­were socially ostracized and consciously erased. Their formal elevation as ciudadanos in the late nineteenth c­ entury was as hollow as that of other ­peoples of the periphery in the postcolonial, late twentieth c­ entury. On the other hand, their production as citizens was both a destructive and constructive act. In the former instance, it destroyed their identity as indios by simply negating it. In the latter, it subsumed them in the body politic of the republic as citizens, rendering them anew. Given this Janus-­faced character of citizenship, does its extension bode well as a solution for the legacies of frontier governmentality and the ­peoples of the periphery? ­After all, although citizens, the indios of Argentina have had a rough time of t­ hings. Argentina’s experience should give pause to anyone, including the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, who thinks 190

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the solution is simply making the ­peoples of the periphery fully and meaningfully citizens. This is at one and the same time sobering and bitterly disappointing. It is sobering as it points to the fact that ­there are no easy fixes to the legacies of frontier governmentality; it is bitterly disappointing as it questions ­whether ­there are any fixes at all. Argentina’s experience of expansion—­its conquest of the desert—is both a frustrating and illuminating chapter in the story of frontier governmentality. Happening at the same moment as many of the other episodes documented in this book, and sharing many of the same administrative ideas, as well as, in the person of Fotheringham, at least some of the same administrative personnel, Argentina’s story should be of the erection of frontier governmentality along its limits. The fact that it is not can only be understood at one level as a disappointment. Yet Argentina’s conquest cannot be left t­ here, for its story is not illustrative of the conceptual failings of frontier governmentality. Rather it is illustrative of the limits of the model’s applicability. And by demonstrating t­ hose limits, the story in turn reveals something in­ter­est­ing about Argentina, and other similarly situated states in the con­temporary international system. Argentina should have constructed a regime of rule along its limits in the form of frontier governmentality. All the ingredients ­were in place, save one—­the resilience of the state institutionally. Argentina was simply too weak to construct, maintain, and enforce frontier governmentality along its limits. Such a recognition has significant implications, for it suggests that though frontier governmentality may have been a regime of state absence, it could only convincingly be done by states that could opt for that absence. Frontier governmentality then was a consciously chosen and consciously constructed system of administration available only to the states with the wherewithal to maintain it. Argentina, with its empty desert vastness, which was nonetheless full of ­people, was not one of ­those states. In its stead then, the southern republic opted for the assimilative option of weakness. And in so d ­ oing it erased, rather than encapsulated, the “savage” indios of the interior from the national consciousness without affecting the same from the national territory.

191

Conclusion A Long History of Vio­lence

T

his book tells the tale of the construction, maintenance, and policing of a form of state order in the nineteenth-­century world that has lasting consequences ­today. Frontier governmentality emerged from the 1870s onward as a near-­universal strategy for the management of recalcitrant ­peoples inhabiting marginal lands on the edges of authority. Though dispersed to the far corners of the globe, ­peoples of the periphery with seemingly similar irreconcilable cultural dispositions—­ “savagery,” “barbarism,” and a pronounced lack of “civilization”—­were subjected to the same regime of rule along the frontier. That regime had multiple sites of inception, and from them quickly grew into imperial adolescence as it spread around the world through the ­careers of colonial officials. While the story told h ­ ere is largely one of sameness—­parallel patterns and practices of frontier governmentality in geo­graph­i­cally and, in some cases, temporally far-­removed spaces—it does not seek to elide the disjunctures, discontinuities, and differences between t­hese diverse instances. While acknowledging t­ hose, striking continuities as well as a discernable coherence of design and purpose nevertheless render this a unified if not unitary tale. That tale is most convincingly told through a series of arresting parallels structuring the history of frontier governmentality. One of the most salient of ­these is the timing of the vio­lence so central to it. In the frontier spaces examined ­here, four ­were at war at the same moment and, importantly, at the moment preceding or immediately succeeding the establishment of their respective regimes of frontier governmentality. The Second 192

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Anglo-­Afghan War (1878–1880), the Anglo-­Zulu War (1879), the Argentine conquest of the desert (1875–1885) and the American Apache campaigns—­specifically Victorio’s War (1879–1881) and Geronimo’s War (1886)—­occurred si­mul­ta­neously. Though each of t­ hese conflicts ­were necessarily conditioned by their own individual circumstances, they nonetheless have more in common than a date on the calendar of imperial conquest. All ­were frontier wars involving imperial powers in acts of or­ga­nized vio­lence against indigenous frontier dwellers who occupied the intervening space between recognizable state forms. The tribesmen of the North-­West Frontier, and Af­ghan­i­stan more generally, sat astride the passes separating British India and Tsarist Rus­sia. The Zulus stood between the British Cape and Natal colonies and the Boer republics seen as increasingly menacing. The indios of the Pampas and Patagonia occupied the no-­man’s-­land between an expansionary Argentine republic and Chile on the far side of the cordillera, the passes through which they controlled. And the Apache navigated a nebulous netherworld between the United States and Mexico, for a time successfully using the ill-­defined border between the two against the state order that sought to confine them. Yet the kinetic intensity of ­these wars was framed by a deeper structural vio­lence at the heart of frontier governmentality. Frontier governmentality pre­sents a subversive and radically dif­fer­ent way of understanding the modern world. ­These pages argue that frontiers are not places, but rather practices manifest in par­tic­u­lar spaces. The significance of this claim goes well beyond simply a clever conceptual trick. The constituent praxis of frontier governmentality continues to have impor­tant implications t­ oday. Sovereign pluralism challenges the accepted orthodoxy of a world in which sovereignty is unqualified and indivisible, instead pointing ­toward one where gradations of authority mark its exercise. In an age of sovereign absolutism, where states ­either have it or they do not, suggesting the lack of absolute sovereignty as not a sign of “state failure” but rather design legacy contests our understanding of the modern state system.1 Frontier as practice also challenges the binary spatial categories of “center” and “periphery,” instead replacing such markers of place with sinews of relationships. Further, this work provocatively considers the relationship between the past and the pre­sent, more specifically the colonial past and the postcolonial pre­sent. To what extent the latter is not simply beholden to, but actually a continuing manifestation of the former, seems a question rarely seriously considered. 193

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It has been nearly 150  years since the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) was first promulgated to govern the wild tribesmen of British India’s North-­West Frontier. Despite the passage of time, the fall of the colonial order, and the assumption of authority along the Afghan borderland by an in­de­pen­dent state of Pakistan, it was not u ­ ntil May 2018 that the law was fi­nally put into abeyance with the passage of the twenty-­fifth amendment to the constitution of Pakistan.2 Only now, seventy years a­ fter the British frontier administration that conceived, authored, and enforced the law withdrew from the subcontinent is the Pakistani state ready to remove its strictures on the lives of the frontier’s inhabitants. It has yet to be seen ­whether Pakistan w ­ ill carry through with its announced intention of repealing the FCR and fully integrating the tribal agencies and their populations into the state’s body politic.3 But the re­sis­tance, which has met the demands of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, bodes ill for such an outcome.4 Regardless, one remains skeptical that the abrogation of the form of frontier governmentality ­will cripple the ongoing legacies of its substance. Nearly all of the other spaces this book has examined abandoned formal constraints before the end of the twentieth ­century. In Iraq, following the Baathist coup in 1958, the Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) was removed from the books. The partition of Palestine in 1948 ended the Collective Responsibility Ordinance as the Israeli military placed the Negev u ­ nder its l­egal jurisdiction.5 The K ­ enyan Parliament rescinded the Special Districts Administration Ordinance in 1997, while the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 aimed to regularize Native Americans’ status within the US republic. In all of t­ hese spaces, the postcolonial order sought to undo the forms of rule rendered by the colonial one. And in all of t­ hese spaces they largely failed. Despite the formal renunciation of the colonial order, the postcolonial one remains in its grip, at least along the peripheries. The lasting legacies of frontier governmentality have proven more pernicious and durable than the formal state structures enforcing it. ­Those legacies include poverty, po­ liti­cal disenfranchisement, marginalization, and, above all, vio­lence. The grandchildren of t­ hose once subjected to the l­ egal regimes of rule, such as the FCR, the TCCDR, and the Collective Punishments Ordinance, entailed by frontier governmentality continue to suffer the fate of their forefathers. To speak of frontier governmentality in the modern world, then, is to speak of a long history of vio­lence.

194

Conclusion

That history is not simply composed of incidents of a­ ctual vio­lence, which abound in the construction, defense, and operation of frontier governmentality both past and pre­sent. Rather, the p ­ eoples of the periphery have been victims of more varied forms of vio­lence than just the occasional, spectacular exercise of state force. They have been targeted by ceaseless episodes of epistemic vio­lence—­vio­lence exercised not through acts of ­doing, but rather through acts of definition. Frontier governmentality was predicated on indirect rule through the use of indigenous “customs and traditions.” The state reserved for itself the right to say what ­those legible customs and traditions w ­ ere. This act of definition was itself an act of vio­lence. The state silenced the voices of the subjugated, filling that silence with the dictates of a state-­sanctioned social real­ity that had varying degrees of resonance with the a­ ctual lived daily experiences of  ­those subject to it. The power to construct, define, and adjudicate ­“authenticity” was, and remains, one of the most intimate though often unrecognized legacies of vio­lence along the frontier. But the epistemic vio­lence of frontier governmentality was exerted through more than the seemingly innocuous power of definition. It was more maliciously manifest in the “othering” and dehumanizing of its objects. One of the most insidious and lasting exercises was the rhetorical debasement of the ­people of the periphery as “savage,” “barbaric,” and “uncivilized.” The use of such language by politicians and publics alike to describe the frontier and its inhabitants, even t­oday, goes largely uncontested. And its meaning is both clear and intended: that ­those subject to frontier governmentality—in the past and its continuing legacies in the pre­sent—­deserve their fate b ­ ecause of their unwillingness, if not inability, to join the modern, civilized world. The harm of the epistemic vio­lence exercised on such ­peoples long outlasts the scars of ­actual vio­lence disfiguring previous generations. So to speak of a long history of vio­lence is to reference not only the continued occasional bloodletting that the ­peoples of the periphery suffer, but also, and as importantly, the incessant daily diminution of their h ­ uman dignity exercised through a bureaucratic, legalistic, and po­liti­cal vocabulary that intentionally constructs them as something “less than” and thus disposable. That long history of vio­lence has a palpable pre­sent around the world. The Afghan / Pakistan borderlands remain gripped in a seemingly never-­ ending cycle of conflict from which ­there appears no escape. Within the jurisdictional realm of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),

195

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the Pakistani army has mounted no fewer than ten offensives against militants associated with the so-­called War on Terror since 2001.6 The vio­ lence has increasingly spilled over into areas of regular administration. The short-­lived occupation of the Swat Valley by the Tehriki-­Talibani-­ Pakistan in 2009 led to a destructive military response, which heightened the damage considerably.7 That conflict is no longer confined to the rural outlands of Pakistan’s frontier. Rather, it has invaded its major cities as well. The 2014 Army School attack in Peshawar, which left nearly 130 dead, most of them ­children, provided yet another data point for the metrics of brutality, which is frontier governmentality’s most pronounced legacy.8 As with the administrative structures of frontier rule, the fighting in Pakistan sadly finds its replicants along the periphery of the postcolonial global order. The kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok in northern Nigeria in 2014 at the hands of Boko Haram is an outgrowth of an ongoing insurgency that in many ways resembles that of Pakistan’s Taliban. On the other side of the African continent, al-­Shabab remains a spoiler on the Somali po­liti­cal scene, reaching into neighboring ­Kenya with horrifying effect. The attack on Garissa University in 2015 that killed 147 students provides a disturbing reminder. It is noteworthy that, in all three of ­these cases, the targets of attack ­were educational institutions and their students. And all three occurred on frontiers of the former imperial order and the edges of ­today’s state-­based authority. But physical vio­lence is only one type shaping the legacy of frontier governmentality. For other ­peoples of the periphery, epistemic rather than physical vio­lence has been the main bludgeon, with equally devastating effects on their lives. The Bedouin of the Negev in Israel remain second-­ class, if not third-­class, citizens at best. Their settlements go unrecognized by the state and lack the provision of basic infrastructure, such as roads, ­water access, or schools.9 They remain without po­liti­cal clout. The Israeli Defense Force’s continued presence and role in governance over what the state defines as a strategically impor­tant area hampers, if not outright denies them, meaningful ­ ­ legal recourse. They, like the inhabitants of ­Pakistan’s FATA, remain objects of state action rather than fully integrated citizens of the republic. And for the San Carlos Apache, their postcolonial fate has been no less dire or any less colonial. Despite the extension of US citizenship in 1924 and the promise of the Indian Reor­ga­ni­za­tion Act of 1934, the so-­called Indian New Deal meant to reverse the damage of the assimilation policy, 196

Conclusion

the Apache and other American Indians remain both subject to the vio­ lence of the past and pre­sent as well as objects of state action. With an unemployment rate of 53.6 ­percent and median ­house­hold income of $26,875, San Carlos is one of the poorest reservations in the United States, placing it near the bottom of nearly all socioeconomic indices.10 Drugs, addiction, and poverty remain definitional features of reservation life. ­These are part of the inheritances of frontier governmentality, themselves best epitomized by the current controversy surrounding Oak Flat.11 In the Tonto National Forest, Oak Flat is considered sacred tribal territory, a fact the US government recognized when it placed the land ­under the tribe’s protection in 1955. However, the recent discovery of the largest unexploited copper deposit in the Western Hemi­sphere by Resolution Copper, an international mining conglomerate led by Rio Tinto, has endangered this sacred space. When the tribe rejected Resolution Copper’s offered land swap ­because of the land’s religious significance, Congress used its plenary powers to force it through over the tribe’s objections. Arizona’s then se­nior senator, John McCain, inserted the swap as a rider to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama signed.12 Once again the Apache have found themselves the objects of state-­sponsored vio­lence—­the vio­lence of taking. Yet vio­lence is only one destructive legacy of frontier governmentality shaping the modern-­day lives of ­peoples of the periphery. The legally liminal spaces t­ hese ­people inhabit—­the tribesmen of the FATA, though Pakistani citizens, have up to now been excluded from constitutional ­legal protections—­have handicapped their meaningful access to normal ave­nues of judicial recourse.13 And when they do succeed in getting their day in court, a myriad of l­egal impediments unique to them invariably stand in their way. Terrorism laws or the jurisprudence of tribal sovereignty deflect the claims of tribesmen and ­women into ­legal eddies that prove difficult if not impossible to escape. In t­ hese situations, the l­ egal continuities between the colonial and postcolonial ­orders justified by claims of stability, surety, and order serve to perpetuate the peripheral status—­indeed, the effective ­legal objecthood of ­those formerly subjected to the systems of frontier governmentality. The liberal promise of the law continues to be denied them while its punitive sanction remains in force. The spaces of the periphery subjected to frontier governmentality remain incredibly impoverished. The ­peoples inhabiting them are among the poorest in what are in most cases already poor states. The vio­lence 197

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

of ­these spaces—­actual and epistemic, state and social—­compounds this impoverishment. Just as colonial states refused to extend normal administrative order to ­these spaces, postcolonial states have in the main also refused to extend the physical infrastructure of development and modernity ­here, save in instances where it served to facilitate the state’s purposes. The subjects of frontier governmentality, even if legally integrated on paper, remain physically cut off from the rest of the body politic. But while states have refused to invest in t­hese spaces, they have facilitated the extraction of resources—­natu­ral as well as ­human—­out of them. The fate of San Carlos exemplifies this. If Resolution Copper is ultimately allowed to exploit Oak Flat, with a 7,000-­foot-­deep open-­pit mine, it w ­ ill simply be the latest installment in a long history of resource extraction and environmental destruction. On the other side of the reservation, Phelps Dodge did in Morenci during the twentieth c­entury what Resolution Copper hopes to do in Oak Flat during the twenty-­first.14 The wealth generated by such extractive industries inevitably leaves, while the destruction remains. 198

Conclusion

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

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proved insufficient. Pashtuns moved through Britain’s South Asian as well as global empire. In the postcolonial period, they became a centrally impor­tant body in building the economic miracle of the Gulf from the 1970s onward.19 They remain a pillar of the wage economy ­there to this day. In Argentina, the subjugation of Indian l­ abor facilitated their erasure from the national consciousness. Conquered indios w ­ ere put to work first on colonias and then subsequently on the farms and in the domestic spaces ­ ere imof white settlers throughout the country.20 Some, like Saygüeque, w prisoned on the island of Martin Garcia, in the ­middle of the Rio de la Plata. Authorities sold their ser­vices as prison l­abor in Buenos Aires, advertising them in local newspapers.21 This was Argentina’s version of the carceral state. For ­others, like the Apache, such ­labor mobility—­enforced or other­wise—­was circumscribed by racism, hindering their integration into wider cir­cuits of ­labor. They thus remain locked in their proverbial and physical lot, consequently doomed to an ever-­downward spiral of poverty. ­There was one alternative economic strategy frontier dwellers could avail themselves of in their encapsulated peripheries. They could turn t­ hese spaces into centers of “illicit” economies—of goods, bodies, and finance. Historically, the tribal agencies of the British Indian frontier ­housed a burgeoning arms trade as well as served as a conduit for bodies into Central Asian cir­cuits of slavery.22 ­Today, they are hubs in the international drug trade, a designation shared by many of the other frontiers examined h ­ ere.23 Such a move ­toward the “illicit” economy not only has placed ­these spaces outside of acceptable economic intercourse, but also rendered them centers of danger in the eyes of state authorities. The un­regu­la­ted trades in weapons, drugs, and bodies have been captured by or­ga­nized crime as well as terrorist organ­izations who profit off them. Consequently, the peripheral and menacing character of t­hese spaces has been reinforced by economic exclusion. While the formal systems encapsulating the ­people of the periphery have, in the main, been deconstructed and done away with—­even in Pakistan it now appears that the FCR may have seen its last light of day—­ their legacies and consequences remain. It is difficult to see ­those victimized by ­these legacies escaping them. This is ­because the aftereffects of frontier governmentality, like the practice itself, are not design flaws of the system, but rather intended outcomes. Frontier governmentality intentionally peripheralized, encapsulated, and marginalized ­those subject to it. By so d ­ oing, it ensured such positions of liminality would be both 200

Conclusion

enforced and maintained through vio­lence and through time. And that is precisely what the historical rec­ord reflects. While the lasting legacies of frontier governmentality continue to adversely impact the lives of t­ hose who w ­ ere the object of it, as well as their descendants, its implications through both time and space have been no less impor­tant or disruptive for o ­ thers. And while the consequences in the main have a ­human face, and thus a personal victim, the continuing effects of frontier governmentality resonate on an altogether dif­fer­ent register on the state. For it is the state, and the state system its individual members collectively construct, that most conspicuously bear the marks of frontier governmentality. The adverse effects and legacies of frontier governmentality on ­peoples and states are the intentional outcomes of a purposefully planned system of exploitation and regime of rule. The emergence of frontier governmentality and its widespread practice and replication at the moment of the construction of the modern state system tells us something profoundly revealing about that system. The claims of sovereignty, or rather sovereign exclusivity, at the heart of the modern global order are false. For too long, sovereignty has been thought of by politicians, po­liti­cal scientists, prac­ti­tion­ers, and even some historians in absolute terms.24 The Leviathan’s authority ­either is complete and unqualified, or the Leviathan is not, ultimately, the Leviathan. But such ideal types poorly fit the exigencies of the po­liti­cal moment, or the real­ity of the historical rec­ord. Few if any states resemble the ideal archetype of a sovereign Westphalian state. Sovereignty is a language of state, one that is historically conditioned if not contested. It is impor­tant to take the languages states used to describe and justify their rule seriously, if not literally. The divorce of rhe­toric from real­ity can reveal as much about states, their ambitions, and their self-­understandings as can the marriage of ­these ele­ments. The fact that states clothed their assertions of power, as well as the status of the peripheral p ­ eoples with whom they dealt through the practice of frontier governmentality, in the dually reinforcing language of sovereignty and in­de­pen­dence was neither inadvertent nor inconsequential. For it reveals a world in which t­hose making such sovereign claims both implicitly and explic­itly recognized their gradation, rather than uniformity. Sovereignty was plural, as opposed to singular, for the British Raj as it was for the American and Argentine republics. And it remains so ­today. While the former clearly acknowledged this fact through the doctrine of paramountcy, the latter attempted to obfuscate it with the language of 201

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

Conclusion

governmentality—­was central to the modern state and remains an integral part of the interstate system ­today. Frontiers and the outlands they entailed often proved centers of state power.26 As such, they ­were pregnant with centrifugal forces that could, and in many cases did, rip a number of polities—­empires as well as states—­asunder. At the same time, t­hose forces ­were often generative of new polities. From Roman to the Mughal empires, and innumerable ones between, the forces on the frontier often played critical roles not simply in the succession of power, but also in the genesis of new entities and state forms. While this phenomenon seems to have lessened in the modern age, especially from the nineteenth c­ entury onward, nonetheless the frontier has remained a center of state power, and thus a definitional ele­ment of the evolution and character of the state itself.27 This complicates the traditional dichotomous picture of the politics of “center / periphery,” where decisions and actions taken at the po­liti­cal center reverberate outward to the edges. Clearly, reverberations are not unidirectional—­they travel inward as well, meaning the periphery influences the center. But what and where ­were ­these centers? While certainly ­there existed within the polities discussed ­here spaces where the webs of politics, economics, and society w ­ ere undoubtedly thicker than o ­ thers, that does not necessarily mean the sinews connecting them with other spaces of empire ­were anything but tenuous. Indeed, if centers w ­ ere historically the ­actual, and not simply the titular, basis of power, then the disruptive potential of the “man on the spot” would be an ele­ment of fiction. The language of center and periphery, implicit or explicit, tends to obscure more than it reveals. Within each of the realms discussed ­here, though ­there may have been a formal loci of po­liti­cal authority, the centers of po­liti­cal power ­were necessarily multiple, dynamic, and interactive. While Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj, frontier officers w ­ ere as likely to look to Lahore as they w ­ ere to the plains of Bengal. At times they even played the long game of appealing directly to London. To capture that dynamic interaction, one need recognize the relationships between centers themselves ­were conditioned by inequalities of power. It is more fruitful to conceptualize dynamic relationships of space and authority between dif­fer­ent locales rather than fixed categories of center and periphery. Just as frontier governmentality collapses the dyadic spatial categories of center and periphery, it also collapses the temporal categories of colonial and postcolonial. The colonial world was the clearly demarcated formal colonial spaces of nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century Eu­ro­pean 203

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empires—­British India, ­Kenya, Nigeria, and the like. But it was also constituted by the spaces historians have termed areas of informal empire.28 They could be merely informal in a ­legal sense, such as mandatory Palestine and Iraq. Or the subjugation to Eu­ro­pean rule could rest upon more veiled, but no less penetrating, subservience to imperial authority. Argentina was an integral if informal part of the British Empire in the late nineteenth ­century, one whose colonial status was authored, maintained, and ratified by the centrality of British capital coursing through the veins for the republic’s economy.29 All of this is fairly uncontroversial. But another order of the colonial world entailed the nation-­states of the nineteenth-­ century world, most notably the republics of the Amer­i­cas, which rhetorically authored a new course shorn of the imperial baggage of their former Eu­ro­pean masters. In this category rests both Argentina and the United States. Though ­these republics conceived of and represented themselves as anticolonial, they ­were in fact the colonial enterprises of white settlement. What separated their self-­understandings and repre­sen­ta­tions of ennobling republicanism from corrupting imperialism was the global color line of the nineteenth ­century. Colonialism against other whites was clearly wrong (the Irish did not count in this calculus). But the subjugation of the darker, brutish world was neither objectionable nor, when carried out by republicans, colonial. Yet the settlement of their republican interiors w ­ ere proj­ects of internal colonialism, which bore many of the hallmarks of their explic­itly colonial contemporaries such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, Tsarist Rus­sia, and even Japan. This means that frontier governmentality was a colonial practice. As such, it is likely to be found along the periphery of colonial empires throughout the nineteenth-­century world. And though not explored h ­ ere, ­there are hints of frontier governmentality’s global replication elsewhere along the edges of authority. Practices of governance along the frontiers of German South-­West Africa bore an uncanny resemblance to ­those documented ­here.30 French rule guided by the hand of Hubert Lyautey along the rimlands of North Africa—in Morocco and Algeria—as well as in Indochina, self-­consciously emulated Sandeman in par­tic­u­lar, and the larger system he personified more generally.31 Japa­nese colonialism southward in Taiwan and northward among the Ainu bears a striking resemblance to the forms of power and authority deployed in the American Southwest and along the Afghan frontier.32 Likewise, Rus­ sian governance of the ­peoples of the Central Asian steppe, the Caucasus, and Siberia closely paralleled British Indian governance of the Pashtun 204

Conclusion

tribesmen, as well as American governance of its native American “domestic dependent nations.”33 The United States had an oceanic as well as continental empire. And parts of that oceanic empire undoubtedly suffered the same forms of frontier governmentality as that inflicted internally. John Clum, reflecting on his days at San Carlos, consciously compared his strug­gles and actions with ­those of former President Taft when he headed McKinley’s efforts at governing the Philippines.34 The American influence in the spread of frontier governmentality extended beyond its own imperial domain. And it was largely brought about not through the official chain of transmission seen in the imperial careering of the British Empire, but rather through the global spread of American missionaries. The YMCA, ­later charged with the US Southwest reservations, provided an impor­tant administrative link between the US reservation system and how the Chinese republicans ruled their Yunnan borderlands.35 And Argentina was far from the only state in Latin Amer­i­ca facing the question of how to deal with the recalcitrant indios.36 ­These examples hint at the fact that frontier governmentality was not simply a globally ubiquitous phenomenon ­because of the spread of British imperial power in the nineteenth-­century world, but rather ­because of the spread of imperial presence. The collapse of “colonial” versus “national” categories in the nineteenth-­ century world forces consideration of how colonial sovereignty not only informs sovereignty in the postcolonial world but is indeed definitional of it—­especially when that sovereignty is less absolute and exclusive in real­ity than it is in rhe­toric, or assumed to be in the system’s design. The colonial world’s acknowl­edgment of the gradation of sovereignty created space for what would t­oday be termed nonstate actors: in­de­pen­dent tribes, princely states, and the like. They populated a richly prismatic system whose order was once maintained by imperial paramountcy. ­Today, we have a system in which such actors continue to exist and exercise authority, but where they have no recognized position ­because of their lack of formal sovereignty in its strictly constructed and wholly unrealistic sense. The state system has no meaningful way to deal with, much less integrate, t­ hese nonstate actors, save as threats to the system that must be subjugated by the state actors who are the only legitimate participants in it. The consequence of this failure to recognize the colonial in the postcolonial is a continuing history of vio­lence. The colonial order was founded on vio­lence. The postcolonial order is maintained by it. The lack of space in the international order for nonstate actors means that more often than 205

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not they are judged as threats to that order and are dealt with harshly. Such an outcome reflects not simply a willful historical ignorance on the part of policymakers and prac­ti­tion­ers alike, but also a profound lack of po­liti­cal imagination. The inability to conceive of a po­liti­cal order with multiple currencies of power, not simply the gold standard of sovereignty, marks a historical aberration, and what surely must be a passing one at that. Though we presently live in an era marred by the resurgence of ugly and exclusivist nationalism, championed by claims of sovereignty, the age of sovereignty rests on flimsy historical foundations.37 The postcolonial world coexists alongside, and in many cases within, the national world of states, though its presence is unacknowledged and purposely ignored. As a consequence, the pervasive power of the colonial inheritance over the postcolonial world goes unrecognized. The imperial order persists, and the win­dow onto its hollowness lays along the global periphery.

206

notes

archives consulted

acknowl­e dgments

index

Notes

introduction 1. ­These attacks ­were all widely covered by the domestic and international press. See, for example, “­Kenya Attack: 147 Dead in Garissa University Attack,” BBC News Online, 3 April 2015, http://­www​.­bbc​.­com​/­news​/­world​-­africa​-­32169080, accessed on 22 January 2018; “Taliban Massacre 131 Schoolchildren,” Dawn Online, 17 December  2014, https://­www​.­dawn​.­com​/­news​/­1151361, accessed on 22 January 2018; “Nigerian Parents Say at Least 234 Schoolgirls Kidnapped by Extremists,” CBS News Online, 21 April  2014, https://­www​.­cbsnews​.­com​/­news​ /­nigerian​-­parents​-­say​-­234​-­schoolgirls​-­kidnapped​-­by​-­extremists​/­, accessed on 22 January 2018. 2. For a con­temporary example of the policy of enclosure, see Gary Fields, En­ closure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 3. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Germania, ed. Elisabetta Risari (Milan: Fabbri Centauria, 2017). 4. John S. Galbraith, “The ‘Turbulent Frontier’ as a ­Factor in British Expansion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2, no. 2 (1960): 150–68. 5. As such, it partly answers Alexandre Kedar’s call for a critical comparative history. Alexandre Kedar, “Expanding ­Legal Geographies: A Call for a Critical Comparative Approach,” in The Expanding Spaces of Law (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 95–119. 6. See the “Fragile States Index” from the Fund for Peace, at http://­fundforpeace​ .­org​/­fsi​/­, accessed on 16 December 2019. See also Dag Tuastad, “Neo-­Orientalism and the New Barbarism Thesis: Aspects of Symbolic Vio­lence in the ­Middle East Conflict(s),” Third World Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2003): 591–99. 7. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist ­History 209

NOTES TO PAGES 7–15 of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 8. Thomas Simpson, “Modern Mountains from the Enlightenment to the Anthropocene,” Historical Journal 62, no. 2 (2018): 553–81. 9. Cf. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 10. It is sometimes referred to as la campaña del desierto (the campaign of the desert) to differentiate it from an e­ arlier period of conquest in the 1830s.

1. frontier governmentality 1. Jurgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth ­Century (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015). 2. Kerry Goettlich, “The Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of International Relations 25, no. 1 (2019): 203–28. 3. Perhaps the best example of this is George Nathaniel Curzon, Frontiers: The Romanes Lecture, 1907, Delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, November 2, 1907 (Oxford, 1907). 4. On the relationship between borders and frontiers, see Ladis  K.  D. Kristof, “The Nature of Frontiers and Bound­aries,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43, no. 3 (1959): 269–82; John Idriss Lahai and Tanya Lyons, Af­ rican Frontiers: Insurgency, Governance and Peacebuilding in Postcolonial States (London: Routledge, 2016); Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford: Berg, 1999). 5. Some of the classic works on frontiers and borders include Igor Kopytoff, The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Socie­ties (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989); and Peter Sahlins, Bound­aries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California, 1991). ­There is a rich and expanding lit­er­a­ture on the idea of borderlands. See, for example, Michiel Baud and Willem van Schendal, “­Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (1997): 211–42; Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-­States and the ­Peoples in between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 814–41; and Pekka Hämäläinen and S. Truett, “On Borderlands,” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (2011): 338–61. 6. See Chapter 4. 7. This is evocatively demonstrated in the case of the US southern border by Rachel St. John’s history of it. Rachel C. St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western  U.S.-­Mexico Border (Prince­ ton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 2011). 8. See Mark Rifkin, “The Frontier as (Movable) Space of Exception,” Settler Colonial Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 176–80. While I agree with his emphasis on mobility, I disagree with his embrace of Agamben’s “state of exception.” 9. Korf and Raeymaekers refer to them as “spatially dynamic.” Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers, “Introduction: Border, Frontier and the Geography of 210

NOTES TO PAGES 15–19 Rule at the Margins of the State,” in Vio­lence on the Margins: States, Conflicts and Borderlands, ed. Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 11. 10. Zvi Ben-­Dor Benite, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Nicole Jerr, eds., The Scaf­ folding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Con­ cept, Columbia Studies in Po­liti­cal Thought / Po­liti­cal History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). For an in­ter­est­ing and subversive take on such sovereign acts, see Frances Negrón-­Muntaner, ed., Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism across Indigenous Nations and Latinx Amer­ic­ a (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2017). 11. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–104; Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-­ Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 12. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 101. 13. See, for example, Arjun Appadurai, “Number in the Colonial Imagination,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Van Der (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 314–40. 14. Kenneth W. Harl, “Along the Hindu Kush: Warren Hastings, the Raj and the Northwest Frontier,” Historically Speaking (September 2012): 19–23. 15. R. D. Choksey, Mountstuart Elphinstone: The Indian Years, 1795–1827 (Bombay: Popu­lar Prakashan, 1971), 101. 16. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and Its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India: Comprising a View of the Afghaun Na­ tion, and a History of the Dooraunee Monarchy (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown [u.a.], 1815); B. D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­ stan, ed. Megan Vaughan and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Imperial and Post-­ Colonial Studies Series (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 17. Roberto Stefan Foa and Anna Nemirovskaya, “How State Capacity Varies within Frontier States: A Multicountry Subnational Analy­sis,” Governance 29, no. 3 (2016): 411–32. 18. See generally Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1965). On the intellectual genealogy of indirect rule as imperial policy, see Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), 148–78. See also Chapter 3. 19. See Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). I markedly disagree with Jurgen Osterhammel’s characterization that the nineteenth-­century world saw t­ hese older forms of po­liti­cal order swept away by a unitary sovereign order. Rather, I argue t­ hese older forms w ­ ere central to the construction of that sovereign order and remain deeply embedded within it to this day. Cf. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World. 20. See Lauren A. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in Eu­ro­pean Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); 211

NOTES TO PAGES 19–22 A. L. Stoler, “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,” Public Culture 18, no. 1 (2006): 125–46. 21. See, for example, Alex Maroya, “Rethinking the Nation-­State from the Frontier,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 267–92; Luke Glanville, “The Myth of ‘Traditional’ Sovereignty,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 1 (22 March 2013): 79–90; Charles S. Maier, Once within Bor­ ders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017). 22. See, for instance, Anne  L. Clunan, “Ungoverned Spaces? The Need for Reevaluation,” in Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, ed. Anne L. Clunan and Harold A. Trinkunas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 3–16; Glanville, “Myth of ‘Traditional’ Sovereignty”; Maier, Once within Borders. 23. Benton, Search for Sovereignty. 24. Eric Lewis Beverley, “Frontier as Resource: Law, Crime, and Sovereignty on the Margins of Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 2 (3 April 2013): 241–72. On the idea of po­liti­cal subjecthood, see Benjamin de Carvalho, “The Making of the Po­liti­cal Subject: Subjects and Territory in the Formation of the State,” Theory and Society 45, no. 1 (2016): 57–88. For the colonial construction of such l­egal categories, see Samera Esmeir, Juridical Humanity: A Co­ lonial History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 25. Standing Bear v. Crook, [5 Dill. 453.] I Circuit Court, D. Nebraska (1879). See Chapter 5. 26. See, for example, Tracy Banivanua Mar, “Frontier Space and the Reification of the Rule of Law: Colonial Negotiations in the Western Pacific,” Australian Fem­ inist Law Journal 30, no. 1 (2009): 23–29. 27. Faisal Chaudhry, “Rethinking the Nineteenth-­Century Domestication of the Sharī’a: Marriage and F ­ amily in the Imaginary of Classical ­Legal Thought and the Genealogy of (Muslim) Personal Law in Late Colonial India,” Law and History Re­ view 35, no. 4 (2017): 841–79; Eleanor Newbigin, The Hindu ­Family and the Emer­ gence of Modern India: Law, Citizenship and Community, Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 28. On the realms “public” versus “private” law in colonial India, see David Washbrook, “Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 649–721. 29. David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43 (October 1995): 191–220. 30. Lisa Ford notes that “in law, sovereignty is practiced through jurisdiction.” Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous ­People in Amer­i­ca and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 2. 31. On the multiple types of judicial subjecthood within the imperial realm, see generally Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 32. I thank Anil Seal for this turn of phrase.

212

NOTES TO PAGES 23–24 33. Raiding played a central role for many of t­hese frontier tribal economies. C. A. Bayly refers to “tribal breakouts” financing the Durrani Empire in the eigh­ teenth ­century. C. A. Bayly, “Beating the Bound­aries: South Asian History, c. 1700– 1850,” in South Asia and World Capitalism, ed. Sugata Bose (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 35–37. On the Afghan po­liti­cal economy of plunder, see Hopkins, Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­stan, chap. 2; Jagjeet Lally, “Beyond ‘Tribal Breakout’: Afghans in the History of Empire, ca. 1747–1818,” Journal of World His­ tory 29, no. 3 (2019): 369–97. On the American Southwest, see Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 34. Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); John P. Clum, “Apaches as Thespians in 1876,” New Mexico Historical Review 4 (1931): 80–98; Abhilash Mehdi, “Infrastructural Contingencies and Contingent Sovereignties in the Indo-­Afghan Frontier,” Modern Asian Studies (forthcoming); Radikha Singha, The Coolie’s ­Great War: Indian ­Labour in a Global Conflict, 1914–­1921 (London: C. Hurst and Co. Publishers Ltd, 2019). 35. Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). 36. T.  R. Moreman, “The Arms Trade and the North-­West Frontier Pathan Tribes, 1890–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, no.  2 (1994): 187–216; B. D. Hopkins, “Race, Sex and Slavery: ‘Forced L ­ abour’ in Central Asia and Af­ ghan­ i­ stan in the Early Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 2 (2007): 629–71. 37. Jonathan Goodhand, “Bandits, Borderlands and Opium Wars: Afghan State-­Building Viewed from the Margins” (Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2009). 38. It was not just the inhabitants of frontier spaces that w ­ ere violent, but the spaces themselves. Julie Evans, “Where Lawlessness Is Law: The Settler-­Colonial Frontier as a ­Legal Space of Vio­lence,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 30, no. 3 (2009): 3–22. 39. David T. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas: A Conjectural History of Facundo Scotland on the Pampas,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83, no. 6 (2006): 789–813. 40. See generally Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natu­ral Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Barbarians, Savages and Empires, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Terry Jay Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Bruce Buchan, “The Empire of Po­liti­cal Thought: Civilization, Savagery and Perceptions of Indigenous Government,” History of the ­Human Sciences 18, no. 2 (2005): 1–22. 41. ­There ­were, however, some late nineteenth-­century writers who insisted this difference between savage and barbaric was an impor­tant one. Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture Volume I (New York: Dover Publications, 2016), chap. 2. 42. On this point, see Beverley, “Frontier as Resource.” 43. Goettlich, “Rise of Linear Borders in World Politics.” For a consideration of how that compares to the postcolonial world, see John Cash and Catarina Kinnvall,

213

NOTES TO PAGES 25–27 “Postcolonial Bordering and Ontological Insecurities,” Postcolonial Studies 20, no. 3 (2017): 267–74. 44. Thomas Simpson, “Bordering and Frontier-­Making in Nineteenth-­Century British India,” Historical Journal 58, no. 2 (2015): 513–42. 45. On Af­ghan­i­stan’s history as a “buffer state” in this manner, see Hopkins, Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­stan. 46. Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-­ Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 47. The classic exposition of a rolling frontier of Eu­ro­pean imperialism can be found in Bengal in the eigh­teenth ­century. P.  J. Marshall, “British Expansion in India in the 18th ­Century: A Historical Revision,” History 60 (1975). 48. For the postcolonial manifestations and consequences of this argument in South Asia, see Elisabeth Leake, “At the Nation-­State’s Edge: Centre–­Periphery Relations in Post-1947 South Asia,” Historical Journal 59, no. 2 (2016): 509–39.

2. governing british india’s unruly frontier Parts of this chapter have appeared previously as Benjamin D. Hopkins, “The Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 2 (2015): 369–89. I thank the editors of JAS for their willingness to have the material reprinted. 1. Robert Nichols, “The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement,” presented at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Washington, DC, 27 February  2019, https://­sigur​.­elliott​ .­gwu​.­edu​/­2019​/­02​/­05​/­ethics​-­and​-­leadership​-­2​-­2​/, accessed on 7 June 2019; Farooq Yousaf, “Pakistan’s ‘Tribal’ Pashtuns, Their ‘Violent’ Repre­ sen­ ta­ tion, and the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement,” SAGE Open 9, no. 1 (2019): 1–10. 2. Pathan is the colonial nomenclature for the Pashtun. The Pashtun are variously referred to as the “Pashtun” or “Pakhtun,” a difference that is largely based on spoken dialect. The southern speakers of Pashtu speak the “softer” dialect and are generally referred to as Pashtun, while the northern speakers of Pakhtu speak the “harder” dialect and are generally referred to as Pakhtun. The term “Pashtun” is sometimes intentionally elided with “Afghan,” a move with significant po­liti­cal implications for Af­ghan­i­stan. While recognizing the importance, complexity, and stakes of terminology, it is not my central concern ­here. 3. Seven agencies constitute the FATA—­Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, and North and South Waziristan. They have legally merged with the surrounding province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa following the passage of the twenty-­ fifth amendment to the constitution in June 2018, though the realization of this ­legal merger is ongoing. On the recent history of the FATA during the Global War on Terror, and in par­tic­u­lar their subjection to drone warfare, see Madiha Tahir, “The Containment Zone,” in Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, ed. L. Parks and C. Kaplan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 220–40; Syed Sami Raza, “­Legal Sovereignty on the Border: Aliens, Identity and Vio­lence on the Northwestern Frontier of Pakistan,” Geopolitics 24, no. 2 (2019): 344–65. 214

NOTES TO PAGES 28–32 4. The FCR also applied to the Frontier’s Baluch inhabitants. Further, its reach included the districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and Dera Ghazi Khan. ­These six districts, along with Laboul and Spiti, ­were all subjects of the 1874 Scheduled Districts Act, which basically said all listed districts would not be subject to the normal acts and regulations of British India. This act simply stated what did not apply to ­these spaces. Individual acts and regulations like the FCR had to be applied through notification in the gazette. Failure to do so, as seen below, had significant ­legal consequences. 5. Amir Wasim, “President Signs KP-­FATA Merger Bill into Law,” Dawn, 31 May 2018, https://­www​.­dawn​.­com​/­news​/­1411156, accessed on 7 June 2019. 6. See, for example, D. S. Richards, The Savage Frontier: A History of the Anglo-­ Afghan Wars (London: Macmillan, 1990); Michael Callen et al., “Choosing Ungoverned Space: Pakistan’s Frontier Crimes Regulation,” Working Paper, 2018, available at https://­scholar​.­princeton​.­edu​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/­jns​/­files​/­cgrs​_­2018​_­choosing​ _­ungoverned​_­space​.­pdf, accessed on 15 March 2019; Michael Humphrey, “Hypergovernance: Managing Disorder in the ‘Uncompleted’ Postcolonial State of Pakistan,” Arab Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2009): 144–57; Reza Ahmad Rumi, “Pakistan: Ungoverned Spaces,” in “Telling the Story”: Sources of Tension in Af­ghan­is­ tan & Pakistan: A Regional ­ Perspective (2011–16), ed. Emma Hooper (Barcelona: CIDOB Edicions, 2016), 179–200. 7. Comparison of the frontier to the Scottish Highlands has a long pedigree dating back to Mountstuart Elphinstone’s An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul. 8. See, generally, Magnus Marsden and Benjamin D. Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). On the construction of British understandings of this space, see B. D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­stan, ed. Megan Vaughan and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Imperial and Post-­Colonial Studies Series (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 9. Paul Titus, “Honor the Baloch, Buy the Pushtun: Ste­reo­types, Social Organ­ ization and History in Western Pakistan,” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 3 (1998): 657–87. 10. Baluchistan is the largest and poorest province of Pakistan. It has seen a long-­recurring and violent insurgency against the Pakistani state since the 1970s. 11. Its claim to po­liti­cal authority beyond this point, however, remained ­until the Third Afghan War (1919), a­ fter which Af­ghan­i­stan claimed full sovereign in­de­ pen­dence, including control over its own foreign relations. 12. “Appendix A: Extract Paras. 3 to 10 and 20 to 24 from Frontier Memorandum,” 1880, No.  186, Foreign Department, Po­liti­cal A, National Archives of India, New Delhi (hereafter cited as NAI). 13. Their liminal position, at one and the same time inside and outside the grasp of imperial sovereignty, was constitutionally dif­fer­ent from the position held by the subjects of India’s princely states. 14. Af­ ghan­ i­ stan’s in­ de­ pen­ dence was recognized only in 1921 following the Third Anglo-­Afghan War. Ann Wilks, “The 1921 Anglo-­Afghan Treaty: How Britain’s ‘Man on the Spot’ ­Shaped This Agreement,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (2018): 1–20. 215

NOTES TO PAGES 32–35 15. Lord Lansdowne, “The North-­West Frontier of India” (Hansard, UK Parliament, 1898), col. 802. 16. Lansdowne, “North-­West Frontier of India,” col. 813. 17. Lansdowne, “North-­West Frontier of India,” col. 778. 18. Lansdowne, “North-­West Frontier of India,” col. 776. 19. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th  February, 1898,” (Hansard, 1898), col. 499. 20. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” cols. 528–29. 21. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” col. 588. 22. The Commons debate implicitly compared the tribesmen’s status with the Irish, with the Liberal opposition equating them and the government differentiating them. 23. The Parliamentary debate was occasioned by a massive uprising along the northern reaches of the frontier in 1897, which Winston Churchill made famous through his Story of the Malakand Field Force. Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London: Cooper, 1989). 24. R.  C.  J. Cocks, “Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, no. August 1822 (2018): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb /17808. 25. See, generally, Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010); Lauren  A. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in Eu­ro­pean Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 246–50. Maine’s ideas of “traditional society” ­ were globalized through the imperial ­careers of colonial bureaucrats. Maria Misra, “Colonial Officers and Gentlemen: The British Empire and the Globalization of ‘Tradition,’ ” Journal of Global His­ tory 3, no. 2 (10 July 2008): 1–28. 26. C. L. Tupper, Indian Po­liti­cal Practice: A Collection of Decisions by the Gov­ ernment of India in Po­liti­cal Cases (Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 1974), cols. 44–45. The continued sway of Maine’s opinion is evidenced by the fact his memo was reproduced by Tupper in his volume Indian Po­liti­cal Practice, which was meant to serve as a reference guide for administrators. At the time of its publication, Tupper was the Secretary of Foreign and Po­liti­cal Affairs for the Government of India. The volume was originally published by the Government Printing Press. 27. Benton, for example, seemingly characterizes the Indian princely states as “hill polities” that w ­ ere backward and uncivilized in the eyes of imperial administrators, and consequently w ­ ere best left to their own devices. But such a characterization flattens the differences within the “hills,” which w ­ ere as significant as ­those between the “hills” and the “plains.” Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 241–42. In  this, Benton mimics Tupper’s surprisingly unnuanced view of the po­liti­cal topography of British India. Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 244–45. Cf. Eric Lewis Beverley, “Frontier as Resource: Law, Crime, and Sovereignty on the ­Margins of Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no.  2 (3  April  2013): 241–72; Eric Lewis Beverley, “Securing Empire’s Borderlands: Reflections from South Asia,” Journal of Modern Eu­ro­pean History 16, no. 4 (August 2018): 353–369. 216

NOTES TO PAGES 35–37 28. See, for instance, Ian Copland, The British Raj and the Indian Princes: Paramountcy in Western India, 1857–1930 (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1982). 29. On the concept of “layered sovereignty,” see Benton, Search for Sovereignty, chap. 5; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 17–18; A. L. Stoler, “On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,” Public Culture 18, no. 1 (2006): 125–46. On its relation to British India’s princely states, see Eric Lewis Beverley, Hyderabad, British India and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sover­ eignty, c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 30. Copland, British Raj and the Indian Princes. 31. See, for example, Lauren Benton, “Colonial Law and Cultural Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 3 (1999): 563–88; Lauren A. Benton and Richard Jeffrey Ross, eds., ­Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850 (New York: New York University Press, 2013); Benton, Search for Sovereignty; Burbank and Cooper, ­Empires in World History Power; Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper, “Rules of Law, Politics of Empire,” in Benton and Ross, ­Legal Pluralism and Empires, 279–94. 32. ­There are exceptions to this. For instance, in Law and Colonial Cultures as well as her newer work Rage for Order, Benton does look at the l­egal status of Australian aborigines. Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: L ­ egal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chap. 5; Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous P ­ eople in Amer­i­ca and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 33. ­There ­were princely states in the region, including Chitral, Dir, Kashmir, and Gilgit. Karine Gagné, “Building a Mountain Fortress for India: Sympathy, Imagination and the Reconfiguration of Ladakh into a Border Area,” South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies 40, no. 2 (2017): 222–38; Sultan-­i-­Rome, Swat State (1915–1969) from Genesis to Merger: An Analy­sis of Po­liti­cal, Administrative, Socio-­Political, and Economic Developments (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009). 34. See Benton’s discussion about this. Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 238–41. 35. Tupper, Indian Po­liti­cal Practice. 36. Drafted by Henry Maine, then l­egal member of the Viceroy’s Council, the authority was rather benignly known simply as “Statute of 1870.” Charles Lewis Tupper, “India and Sir Henry Maine,” Journal of the Society of Arts 46, no. 2365 (1898): 392, 396. See also Robert Nichols, The Frontier Crimes Regulation: A His­ tory in Documents (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013). 37. Beginning with the Khyber Agency, the British created five tribal agencies—­ Malakand, Khyber, Kurrum, North Waziristan, South Waziristan—­which became the FATA following the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Prior to the advent of the agencies, which ­were run by po­liti­cal agents, ­these areas ­were known as “nonregulation” areas and ­were ­under the administration of the Deputy Commissioners. Lal Baha, N.-­W.F.P. Administration ­under British Rule, 1901–1919, Historical 217

NOTES TO PAGES 37–38 Studies (Muslim India) Series (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978), 7–9. 38. It has been characterized as “almost hermetically separated from the ordinary court structure.” François Tanguay-­Renaud, “Post-­Colonial Pluralism, ­Human Rights and the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law 6 (2002): 555. 39. “The Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1872, V/11/2779B, Punjab Government Gazette, India Office Rec­ords (hereafter cited as IOR), London, sec. 6. 40. H. A. B. Rattigan, ed., “Regulation No. IV of 1887: The Punjab Frontier Crimes Regulation,” The Bengal regulations, the acts of the Governor-­General in Council, and the frontier regulations, made ­under the thirty-­third of Victoria, chap. 3, applicable to the Punjab with notes and an index: Vol. III containing acts from 1887 to end of 1895 (1899), sec. 3(1). 41. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 70. 42. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 69–72. 43. Anand Yang, “Dangerous Castes and Tribes: The Criminal Tribes Act and the Magahiya Doms of Northeast India,” in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed. Anand Yang (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 108–27; Sandra Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 227–61; Andrew Major, “State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the ‘Dangerous Classes,’ ” Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (1999): 657–88; Elizabeth Kolsky, Colo­ nial Justice in British India, Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Sumit Guha, “States, Tribes, Castes,” Economic and Po­liti­cal Weekly l, no. 46 / 47 (2015): 50–57; Anastasia Piliavsky, “The Criminal Tribe in India before the British,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2 (2015): 323–54. Colonial constructions of “tribe” w ­ ere neither monolithic nor flat, but often reflected sophisticated understandings of local socie­ ­ ties. Vinita Damodaran, ­“Colonial Constructions of the ‘Tribe’ in India: The Case of Chotanagpur,” Indian Historical Review 33, no. 1 (2006): 44–75. 44. Sec. 1 and 3, respectively. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” Punjab Govern­ ment Gazette, 1872, 20–21. 45. This system was known as nanbati chaukidar. See §35[1]. 46. H. A. B. Rattigan, ed., “Regulation No. III of 1901: The Frontier Crimes Regulation,” The Bengal regulations, the acts of the Governor-­General in Council, and the frontier regulations, made ­under the thirty-­third of Victoria, chap. 3, ap­ plicable to the Punjab with notes and an index: Vol. IV containing India acts from 1896 to 1902 (1903), sec. 33. 47. Sec.  36[a]. “Fanatical” vio­lence was specifically targeted by the Government of the Punjab in the Murderous Outrages Act, first promulgated in 1867. See Elizabeth Kolsky, “The Colonial Rule of Law and the ­Legal Regime of Exception: Frontier ‘Fanat­i­cism’ and State Vio­lence in British India,” American Historical Review 120, no. 4 (2015): 1218–46; Mark Condos, “ ‘Fanat­i­cism’ and the Politics 218

NOTES TO PAGES 39–40 of Re­sis­tance along the North-­West Frontier of British India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 3 (2016): 717–45; Mark Condos, “Licence to Kill: The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in Colonial India, 1867–1925,” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 2 (2016): 479–517. 48. Sec. 4. 49. “Regulation No. IV of 1887” (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1888), sec. 10(1). 50. T.  C. Hodson, India Census Ethnography, 1901–31 (New Delhi: Usha, 1987), 106. 51. See Chapter 3. 52. Quoting the District Magistrate of Peshawar, Mr.  W.  R.  H. Merk. E.  W. Parker, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1891” (Lahore: “Civil and Military Gazette” Press, 1892). 53. “Correspondence,” 1887, L / P&J/202/776, Po­liti­cal & Judicial, IOR, pp. 295–96. 54. Lepel Griffin, “Offg. Secy to the Govt., Punjab, to Secy. to Govt. of India,” September 1871, No. 206, Foreign Department, Po­liti­cal A, NAI; “Regarding the State of Crime in the Peshawar Division,” July  1887, No.  102–23, K.W. No.  1, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 55. W. M. Young, “Young to the Officiating Commissioner and Superintendent, Peshawar Division,” 15 February 1886, L / P&J/202/776, Po­liti­cal & Judicial, IOR, 307–17. 56. Rattigan, “Regulation No. III of 1901: The Frontier Crimes Regulation,” secs. 3–20. The fact that criminal sanction became more disciplined as well as more punitive reflected larger trends within British India. Taylor  C. Sherman, State Vio­lence and Punishment in India, Royal Asiatic Society Books (London: Routledge, 2010). 57. This was also true of the Customary Law Codes the colonial government went to g­reat lengths to compose. ­ These codes almost exclusively dealt with ­matters of civil law. See, for instance, J. G. Lorimer, “Customary Law of the Main Tribes in the Peshawar District,” in The Frontier Crimes Regulation: A History in Documents, ed. Robert Nichols (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 194–253. 58. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1872, sec. 8. 59. On the idea that Pathan identity was predicated on per­for­mance (i.e., “­ doing Pashto”), see Fredrik Barth, “Pathan Identity and Its Maintenance,” in Ethnic Groups and Bound­aries: The Social Organ­ization of Cultural Difference, ed. Fredrik Barth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), 117–34. 60. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly En­glishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth ­ Century, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Ajay Skaria refers to the “gendering of wild tribes.” Ajay Skaria, “Shades of Wildness: Tribe, Caste, and Gender in Western India,” Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 3 (1997): 734. 61. Rattigan, “Regulation No. IV of 1887: The Punjab Frontier Crimes Regulation,” sec. 20(1). 219

NOTES TO PAGES 40–45 62. Benton and Ford, Rage for Order. 63. ­These men ­were the “knowledge entrepreneurs” of Martin Bayly’s work. Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, Interna­ tional Relations, and the Anglo-­Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 64. E. I. Carlyle, “Warburton, Sir Robert (1842–1899),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28677. See also Akbar Ahmed, “Colonial Encounter on the North West Frontier Province,” Eco­ nomic and Po­liti­cal Weekly 14, no. 51–52 (1979): 2092–97. 65. See, for example, C. H. Atkins, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1896” (Lahore: “Civil and Military Gazette” Press, 1897). 66. Quoting Mr. Cunningham, District Magistrate and Deputy Commissioner of Hazara. E.  W. Parker, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1888” (Lahore: W. Ball & Co., 1889). Conversely, C.  E.  F. Bunbury, the District Magistrate for Peshawar, complained that the FCR, and in par­tic­u­lar the ability to refer ­matters to jirgahs, had a demoralizing effect on both police and magistrates, some of whom would refer issues to jirgahs in order to lighten their administrative load. Atkins, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1896.” 67. Atkins, “Report on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Punjab and Its Dependencies during the Year 1896,” para. 41. 68. H.  M. Plowden, “Report of the Frontier Committee: Remarks by H.  M. Plowden, Esquire, Judge, Chief Court, Punjab, on the Draft Frontier Regulation,” July 1887, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI, para. 17. 69. This stands in stark contrast to the ­earlier practices of settler colonialism, which rested on the nexus between sovereignty, territory, and jurisdiction. Ford, Settler Sovereignty, 1–29. 70. Sec. 1(4). 71. Sec. 1(6). 72. H.  M. Durand, “Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department, to the Secretary to the Government of the Punjab,” January 1888, No. 30, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 73. Curzon, Frontiers: The Romanes Lectures 1907 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 40. 74. That in­de­pen­dence was not confirmed ­until 1921. Wilks, “1921 Anglo-­ Afghan Treaty.” 75. Indeed, the colonial judiciary ruled that the Punjab government’s initial notification for the 1887 notification was faulty and vacated it. The government quickly reissued the notification and made its effect retroactive. 76. On the territorialization of power, see Matthew Edney, Mapping an Em­ pire: The Geo­graph­i­cal Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Hopkins, Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­stan. 77. All five cases appearing in the All India Reports dealt with the issue of jurisdiction, with two of them—­Hari Singh and Bhola Roma—­directly dealing 220

NOTES TO PAGES 45–50 with the issue notification. Hari Singh s / o Mangal Singh v. Emperor, vol. 32, All India Reporter (hereafter cited as AIR) 65 (1945); Nur Mohammad and ­others v. Emperor, AIR 396 (1944); Bhola Ram v. Emperor, AIR 355 (1915); Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan, AIR 338 (1934); Mt. Sabhai v. Emperor, AIR 436 (1932). 78. B. H. Baden-­Powell, C. A. Roe, and Mr. Browne, “Latif, Wali Khan vs. The Empress,” January 1888, No. 8, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 79. H. M. Plowden, “Mr. Henderson for the Crown, and Mr. Bridges Lee for opposite party, Empress vs. Muhammad Umar Khan, et  al.,” November  1888, No. 146, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 80. On the issue of an “in­de­pen­dent” judiciary, see Abhinav Chandrachud, An In­de­pen­dent, Colonial Judiciary: A History of the Bombay High Court during the British Raj, 1862–1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015). 81. Bhola Ram v. Emperor, AIR. 82. A. H. Benton, “Sessions Judge, Peshawar Division to the Commissioner and Superintendent, Peshawar Division,” July  1887, No.  118, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 83. W. G. Waterfield, “Commissioner and Superintendent, Peshawar Division, to the Deputy Commissioner, Kohat,” January  1888, No.  16, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 84. “Administration Report of the Northwest Frontier Province from 9th November 1901 to 31st March 1903,” NWFP Administration Reports (London, 1903), sec. 44; H. H. Risley, Census of India, 1901: Vol. I, India: Ethnographic Appen­ dices, Being the Data upon Which the Caste Chapter of the Report Is Based, vol. 1 (Calcutta: Office of the Supt. of Government Printing, 1903). 85. Plowden, “Report of the Frontier Committee,” para. 35. 86. Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan, AIR. 87. See, for instance, B.  P. Caton, “Social Categories and Colonisation in Panjab, 1849–1920,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, no.  1 (1 February 2004): 33–50. 88. On Elsmie, see G.  R. Elsmie, Thirty-­Five Years in the Punjab (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1908); F. H. Brown, “Elsmie, George Robert (1838–1909),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33015. 89. §14 “Notification,” June 1870, No. 170, Foreign Department, Po­liti­cal A, NAI. §§11–15 of the Rules are the relevant portion that formed the basis of the 1872 version of the Frontier Crimes Regulation. 89. “Notification.” 90. H. M. Durand, “Rules for the Administration of the Agrore Valley,” 1870, Nos. 169–171 K. W., Foreign Department, Po­liti­cal A, NAI; Lord Mayo, “Memorandum: Policy to be ­adopted ­towards offending tribes on the Huzara frontier,” 1870, Nos. 105–107 K. W., Foreign Department, Po­liti­cal A, NAI. 91. Cf. Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement, Le Monde d’outre-­Mer Passe et Pre­sent. Primiere Serie: Etudes XIX (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1963). 92. ­There is a local history to ­these settlements, which is best discussed by Robert Nichols. Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier: Law, Land and Society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 7. 221

NOTES TO PAGES 51–54 93. Clive Dewey, “The Influence of Sir Henry Maine on Agrarian Policy in India,” in The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A Centennial Reap­ praisal, ed. Alan Diamond, First (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 353–75. 94. Charles Boulnois, Notes on Customary Law as Administered in the Courts of the Punjab (London: Stevens and Sons, 1878), 204–5; Dewey, “Influence of Sir Henry Maine,” 371. 95. The IPC was, of course, preceded by a number of other penal codes, some of which ­were in effect at the time of the Permanent Settlement. 96. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 49–74. 97. M. E. Yapp, “Tribes in the Khyber, 1838–1842,” in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Af­ghan­i­stan, ed. Richard Tapper (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 150–91. 98. See, generally, Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 99. See Christian Tripodi, “Good for One but Not the Other: The ‘Sandeman System’ of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-­West Frontier 1877–1947,” Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 767–802. 100. Sandeman’s was not the only school of frontier administration. That championed by Sir Robert Warburton was often contrasted with Sandeman’s approach. See the debate regarding the so-­called Baluchistan versus Punjab system in Parliament. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” cols. 601–6. While the Sandeman and Warburton systems differed in their details, their general thrust was the same. See, generally, Christian Tripodi, Edge of Empire: The British Po­liti­cal Officer and Tribal Administration on the North-­West Frontier, 1877–1947 (London: Routledge, 2016). 101. “Administration Report of the North-­West Frontier Province for 1903–04,” 1904, V/10/370, NWFP Administration Reports, IOR. 102. For a history of the establishment of tribal frontier militias, see Government of the Punjab, ed., “Report on the Administration of the Punjab and Its Dependencies for the Year 1870–71” 1871, V/10/329, Punjab Administration Report, IOR, para. 157. 103. “Commons Sitting of Monday, 14th February, 1898,” col. 602. 104. ­There is a long history of vio­lence against bania merchants along the Frontier, much of it clothed in religious rhe­toric. The “Hindustani Fanatics” regularly kidnapped and often killed t­ hese merchants. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 75–100. 105. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Connecting Histories in Af­ghan­i­stan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). Such economic dislocations have a modern counterpart with the migration of Frontier inhabitants to Pakistan’s cities, and farther abroad. For a discussion of the effect ­these migrations and their associated remittances have on tribal structure, see Mariam Abou Zahab, “Kashars against Mashars: Jihad and Social Change in the FATA,” in Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy along the Afghanistan-­Pakistan Frontier, ed. Benjamin D. Hopkins and Magnus Marsden (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2013), 93–106. 222

NOTES TO PAGES 54–56 106. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–104. 107. This was also colonial governing practice on the North-­East Frontier. Sudatta Sikdar, “Tribalism vs. Colonialism: British Capitalistic Intervention and Transformation of Primitive Economy of Arunachal Pradesh in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Social Scientist 10, no. 12 (1982): 15–31. 108. Maj. H. P. Burn, “Burn to Lumsden,” 30 August 1850, No. 15, Foreign Department, Secret Consultations, NAI. 109. See Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures. 110. Saurabh Pant, “The Frontier Crimes Regulation in Colonial India: Local Critiques and Per­sis­tent Effects,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no.  4 (2018): 789–805; Farooq Yousaf, “Pakistan’s Colonial Legacy,” Interven­ tions 21, no. 2 (2019): 172–87. 111. “Frontier Crimes Regulation,” 1890, V5361, The Baluchistan Code, IOR; C. U. Aitchison, “Foreign Department—(Political),” 2 November 1876, L / P&S/7/11​ /217, Po­liti­cal & Secret, IOR, pp. 309–20. 112. Reeju Ray, “Interrupted Sovereignties in the North East Frontier of British India, 1787–1870,” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (2019): 582–605. See also Scott Relyea, “Lamas, Empresses and Tea: Early Twentieth-­Century Sino-­British Encounters in Eastern Tibet,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46, no. 2 (March 2018): 257–85. Ideas and practices of frontier governmentality seemed to pervade colonial and proto-­colonial governance of Southeast Asia as well. Andrew Walker, The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thai­ land, China, and Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999). 113. On the North-­East Frontier and its governance, see, generally, Thomas Simpson, “Bordering and Frontier-­Making in Nineteenth-­Century British India,” Historical Journal 58, no. 2 (2015): 513–42; Debojyoti Das, “Colonial Construction of a Frontier: Debating the Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar-­Naga Hills,” Economic and Po­liti­cal Weekly 53, no.  7 (2018): 52–61; David Vumlallian Zou and M. Satish Kumar, “Mapping a Colonial Borderland: Objectifying the Geo-­ Body of India’s Northeast,” Journal of Asian Studies 70, no.  1 (2011): 141–70; Bert Suykens, “State-­Making and the Suspension of Law in India’s Northeast: The Place of Exception in the Assam-­Nagaland Border Dispute,” in Vio­lence on the Margins: States, Conflicts and Borderlands, ed. Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 167–92. 114. H. K. Barpujari, Prob­lem of the Hill Tribes North-­East Frontier, 1873– 1962: Vol. III, Inner Line to McMahon Line (Gauhati, Assam: Spectrum Publications, 1981), 10. 115. For example, the cross-­border relations of tribes in the Kachin Hills with Chinese authorities was noted as a justification for the promulgation of the Kachin Hills Regulation. 116. See Tamina Mahmud Chowdhury, Indigenous Identity in South Asia: Making Claims in the Colonial Chittagong Hill Tracts (London: Routledge, Taylor 223

NOTES TO PAGES 57–59 & Francis, 2017), chap. 2; Hopkins, “Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” 374–75. 117. “Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Pro­gress and Condition of India during the Year 1892–93” (London, 1894), 159. 118. “Regulation No. V of 1896: The Chin Hills Regulation, 1896, with Rules Framed Thereunder, and Notifications,” May 1897, L / P&S / 18 / B146, Po­liti­cal & Secret, IOR; “Regulation No. I of 1898: A Regulation to Amend the Kachin Hill-­ Tribes Regulation, 1895,” May 1898, L / P&S / 18 / B147, Po­liti­cal & Secret, IOR. 119. “Burma Frontier Tribes Regulation,” Pub. L. No. Regulation No. II of 1896, 280 (1896), 280–81. 120. C. P. Ilbert, “Regarding the State of Crime in the Peshawar Division,” 26 October 1886, Foreign Department, Frontier A, NAI. 121. It also has a postcolonial legacy shaping the region. Rajashree Mazumder, “Illegal Border Crossers and Unruly Citizens: Burma-­Pakistan-­Indian Borderlands from the Nineteenth to the Mid-­ Twentieth Centuries,” Modern Asian Studies (2019): 1–39; Marcus Franke, “Wars without End: The Case of the Naga Hills,” Diogenes 53, no. 4 (2006): 69–84. 122. Pum Khan Pau, “Administrative Rivalries on a Frontier: Prob­lem of the Chin-­Lushai Hills,” Indian Historical Review 21, no. 1 (2007): 200–201. 123. Skaria, “Shades of Wildness.” 124. Barpujari, Prob­lem of the Hill Tribes, 104–5. 125. In 1871, Robert Sandeman and his system of administration for Baluchistan ultimately triumphed over his bureaucratic bugbear and superior, William Mereweather, at the Mithankot conference. Marsden and Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier, 59–60. 126. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Cf. Kolsky, “Colonial Rule of Law.” 127. See Chapter 3. 128. See Chapter 5. 129. On Taiwan, see Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (2002): 388–418; Paul D. Barclay, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018). On China, see Andres Rodriguez, “Building the Nation, Serving the Frontier: Mobilising and Reconstructing China’s Borderlands during the War of Re­ sis­tance (1937–­1945)” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2011), 345–­76. On Argentina, see Chapter 6. 130. Derek Gregory, “Dirty Dancing: Drones and Death in the Borderlands,” in Parks and Kaplan, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, 29. 131. On Agamben and colonialism, see Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignall, eds., Agamben and Colonialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). 132. See Benton’s discussion of an Agambenian analy­sis in Benton, Search for Sovereignty, chap. 6. On the idea of “protection” and the colonial rule of indigenous ­peoples, see Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-­Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 224

NOTES TO PAGES 59–65 133. For a recent critique of the con­temporary FATA and the FCR, see Maira Hayat, “Empire’s Accidents: Law, Lies, and Sovereignty in the ‘War on Terror’ in Pakistan,” Critique of Anthropology, 18 July  18 2019, https://­journals​.­sagepub​ .­com​/­doi​/­10​.­1177​/­0308275X19850686, accessed on 25 October 2019. 134. “Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants,” Asia Report (Islamabad / Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2006). 135. Rumi, “Pakistan: Ungoverned Spaces.” 136. Some scholars refer to this phenomenon as “postcolonial colonialism.” Martin Sokefeld, “From Colonialism to Postcolonial Colonialism: Changing Modes of Domination in the Northern Areas of Pakistan,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 4 (2005): 939–73.

3. the imperial life of the frontier crimes regulation 1. “Proposed special legislation for tribal areas,” 1924, Cabinet Office Papers, CAB 24/165/54, The National Archives, London (hereafter cited as TNA). 2. In “Proposed special legislation for tribal areas,” Samuel wrote, “3. The powers prescribed in sections 2 and 3 are modelled on provisions in legislation issued in ‘Iraq since the British Occupation for dealing with tribes. The object of section  4 is to make effective the imposition of a punitive police post on a lawless tribe. The object of section 5 is to prevent the initiation of blood feuds, the fear of which deters the police in many cases from dealing rigorously with offenders in tribal areas.” 3. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation” (London: British Library, 1915); “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” 1915, Po­liti­cal & Secret, L / P&S10 / 617 / P3889 / 1916, IOR. 4. See generally Eric Stokes, The En­glish Utilitarians and India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1959). 5. On the Mesopotamian campaign, see generally Charles Townshend, Desert Hell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 6. On forms of Ottoman rule in frontier spaces, see Nilay Özok-­Gündogan, “Ruling the Periphery, Governing the Land: The Making of the Modern Ottoman State in Kurdistan, 1840–70,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the ­Middle East 34, no.  1 (2014): 160–75; Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Ebubekir Ceylan, “Carrot or Stick? Ottoman Tribal Policy in Baghdad, 1831–1876,” International Journal of Con­temporary Iraqi Studies 3, no. 2 (2009): 169–86; Isa Blum, “Contesting the Edges of the Ottoman Empire: Rethinking Ethnic and Sectarian Bound­aries in the Malesore, 1878–1912,” Interna­ tional Journal of ­Middle East Studies 35 (2003): 237–56. 7. For a brief biography of Dobbs, see J.  E. Shuckburgh, “Dobbs, Sir Henry Robert Conway (1871–1934),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2006), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32842. 8. Following the war, Dobbs returned to India and negotiated the Anglo-­ Afghan treaty of friendship, which fully recognized Af­ghan­is­tan’s in­de­pen­dence. Ann Wilks, “The 1921 Anglo-­Afghan Treaty: How Britain’s ‘Man on the Spot’ 225

NOTES TO PAGES 66–69 S­ haped This Agreement,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (2018): 1–20. In 1923, he was named High Commissioner to mandatory Iraq, a position he held ­until 1929. 9. “The Baluchistan Code” (1890). 10. Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 94. For an overview of Cox’s c­ areer, see Robert Pearce, “Cox, Sir Percy Zachariah (1864–1938),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32604. On the British occupation and subsequent mandatory period, see generally Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914–1932 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 11. Ali Hammoudi, “ ‘The Pomegranate Tree Has Smothered Me:’ International Law, Imperialism & L ­ abour Strug­gle in Iraq, 1917–1960” (York University, 2018), 24–31. 12. The dead hand of Henry Maine had a long temporal reach. See Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010). 13. Cf. this type of protection against modernity with Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford’s discussion of protection of aboriginal ­peoples as a colonial justification of rule. Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 14. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation.” 15. “Note on procedure devised for the regulation of criminal and civil disputes arising between tribesmen or in which tribesmen are concerned in the Occupied Territories,” 1916, Secret & Po­liti­cal, L / P&S/10/617/4168/16, IOR. 16. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” sec. 15. 17. “Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation,” 1918, Po­liti­cal & Secret, L / P&S/10/619 / P1427 / 1919, IOR. 18. “Annex to C.P. 152 (24). Herbert Samuel to the Duke of Devonshire,” 30 November  1923, Cabinet Office Papers, CAB 24 / 165, 367–68, TNA. The ordinance itself is included in the file. 19. Matthew John Longland, “A Sacred Trust? British Administration of the Mandate for Palestine, 1920–1936” (University of Nottingham, 2013), 206. 20. Longland, A Sacred Trust?, 207. 21. Norman Bentwich, “Palestine,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and In­ ternational Law 10, no.  3 (1928): 175; Naomi Shepard, Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 197; Falah Ghazi, “The Pro­ cesses and Patterns of Sedentarization of the Galilee Bedouin, 1880–1982” (Durham University, 1982), 239. See also Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth Kark, “Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: Influence on the Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870–1948,” New ­Middle Eastern Studies 1 (2011): 15. 22. Longland, A Sacred Trust?, 207. Quoting Albert Abramson, a District Commissioner in the Palestinian mandate. Leo Amery, then Colonial Secretary, noted the collective responsibility was “congruent with Arab customs.” Citing Amery to Sir Gilbert Clayton (Chief Secretary), 4 August 1925, CO 733 / 87. Amery was ­later Sec226

NOTES TO PAGES 69–71 retary of State for India during World War II (1940–1945) when he u ­ ndoubtedly became acquainted with the Frontier Crimes Regulation, if he had not been already. 23. Shepard, Ploughing Sand, 197–98. 24. Emmanuel Marx, Bedouin of the Negev (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 33. 25. Mansour Nasasra, The Naqab Bedouins: A ­Century of Politics and Re­sis­ tance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), chap. 3. 26. Quoting Lord Oxford, Nasasra, Naqab Bedouins, 66. 27. See Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). For a sense of the ongoing debate about the place of Negev Bedouin in Israel, see, for instance, Akiva Bigman, “Why the Bedouin’s Claims to the Negev Are Outrageous,” The Tower, January 2014, accessed at http://­www​.­thetower​.­org​/­article​/­why​-­the​-­bedouins​ -­claims​-­to​-­the​-­negev​-­are​-­outrageous​/­, accessed on 5 June 2019. 28. On TransJordan and the colonial imprimatur on the mandatory state, see Joseph  A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 29. Yoav Alon, “The Tribal System in the Face of State-­Formation Pro­cess: Mandatory TransJordan, 1921–46,” International Journal of ­Middle East Studies 37, no. 2 (2005): 224. 30. Alon has a useful comparative discussion of British policies in Iraq and TransJordan. According to him, the main distinction was that while in the former the British tried a kind of divide and rule between urban nationalist and rural tribesmen, in the latter the lack of an urban populace, making nearly every­one “tribal,” meant such tactics could not be followed. The absence of a meaningful urban / rural divide arguably made TransJordan more similar to the Afghan frontier than to mandatory Iraq. Alon, “Tribal System,” 221–22. 31. This was perhaps best exemplified through the Organic Law, which created a Legislative Council that reserved seats for, and thus preserved the power of, tribal shaykhs. Alon, “Tribal System,” 223. 32. The Bedouin tribal courts employed by the Palestinian mandate w ­ ere also used to ensure the smooth functioning of “interterritorial tribal relations” between Palestine and TransJordan. Nasasra, Naqab Bedouins, 67–71. 33. They ­were F.  G. Peake, the commander of the Arab Legion, and Amir Shakir, who was charged with tribal governance. Robert Fletcher, British Imperi­ alism and “the Tribal Question”: Desert Administration and Nomadic Socie­ties in the ­Middle East, 1919–1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 120. 34. See generally James Lunt, “Glubb, Sir John Bagot [Known as Abu Hunaik; Called Glubb Pasha] (1897–1986),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/40128. Glubb’s ascendancy over the desert Bedouin was assured with the death of Amir Shakir, Amir Adbullah’s ­brother who had been charged with desert administration, in 1934. Tancred Bradshaw, ed., The Glubb Reports: Glubb Pasha and Britain’s Empire Proj­ect in the ­Middle East, 1920–56 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 35. 35. Glubb was critical of the Iraqi government’s desert policy, especially with regards to Saudi raiding. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 17–18. 227

NOTES TO PAGES 71–75 36. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports,18–19. Robert Fletcher, while acknowledging the importance of India as an administrative exemplar, warns against “exaggerating the power of Indian examples or ‘pre­ce­dents’ over the rest of the empire without exploring how they ­were transmitted and enacted.” He goes on to minimize, if not dismiss, the influence of Sandeman on Glubb. Yet this chapter is meant to directly answer Fletcher’s welcome and well-­considered admonition of the need to document the lines of transmission, as opposed to generally asserting the influence of India on the “tribal question” around the Empire. Fletcher, British Imperialism and “the Tribal Question,”50. 37. “A monthly report on the administration of the TransJordan deserts for the month of March  1935,” Foreign Office Rec­ords, FO 371 / 19016 / E3536, TNA. Reprinted in Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 46–47. 38. This remained a small force through the 1930s, numbering roughly 180 men. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 36. 39. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 35; Alon, “Tribal System,” 225–27. 40. Both Alon and Bradshaw discuss the impoverishment suffered by the desert Bedouin through the 1930s. Bradshaw, Glubb Reports, 35; Alon, “Tribal System,” 225. 41. P. J. Cain, “Character and Imperialism: The British Financial Administration of Egypt, 1878–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 34, no. 2 (2006): 177–200; Roger Owen, “The Rapid Growth of Egypt’s Agricultural Output, 1890–1914, as an Early Example of the Green Revolutions of Modern South Asia: Some Implications for the Writing of Global History,” Journal of Global History 1, no. 1 (2006): 87. 42. See generally Fletcher, British Imperialism and “the Tribal Question.” 43. James Lunt, “Peake, Frederick Gerard (1886–1970),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35429. 44. Longland, “A Sacred Trust?,” 207. See also “The Collective Punishment Ordinance,” 1912, Southern Nigeria Ordinances 1910–1912, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as LOC). 45. See generally Margery Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937); A. H. M. Kirk-­Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008); Margery Perham, “A Re-­statement of Indirect Rule,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 7, no. 3 (1934): 321–34. 46. Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th  ed. (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1965). 47. On Lugard’s reliance on Indian models of administration, see Michael Fisher, Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 471–74. Interestingly, Lugard himself suggested the replication of village panchayats in the Sudan. Frederick D. Lugard, The Diaries of Lord Lugard, ed. Margery Perham (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1959), 90. 48. Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority, 1898–1945, Volume 2 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968), 149; Lugard, Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 200, n. 1. 49. Perham, Lugard, 469–70.

228

NOTES TO PAGES 75–78 50. On the Malaya comparison, see Kirk-­ Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945).” ­There has also been significant debate within African historiography regarding other instances of indirect rule in Africa preceding Lugard, which he drew upon. See, for example, Norman Etherington, “The Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-­Century Natal,” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Po­liti­cal Theory 47, (October 1976): 11, 18. 51. Among his most vociferous posthumous critics was I. F. Nicholson, who authored a damning critique that largely attributed Lugard’s success to his wife’s campaign in the press. Nicholson wrote that “as [Charles] ­Temple said of Lugard’s ‘writing, writing, writing,’ its main purpose was to mystify and mislead, and a long sustained attempt to fathom its meaning involves risk of brain damage.” I. F. Nicholson, The Administration of Nigeria, 1900–1960: Men, Methods and Myths (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 206. 52. Po­liti­cal Memorandum (1906), in A. H. M. Kirk-­Greene, ed., The Princi­ples of Native Administration in Nigeria: Selected Documents 1900–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); Nicholson, Administration of Nigeria, 1900– 1960, 147–48. 53. “The Unsettled Districts Ordinance,” 1911, Southern Nigeria Ordinances, LOC; “The Unsettled Districts Ordinance,” 1912, Southern Nigeria Ordinances, LOC. 54. Perham, Lugard, 40. See Memo VII “Native Courts,” in Kirk-­Greene, Princi­ples of Native Administration in Nigeria, 136–48. 55. Kirk-­Greene, Princi­ples of Native Administration in Nigeria, 146–47. 56. He was invalided back to ­England in 1881. On his return, he remained with his regiment in Peshawar u ­ ntil he moved to Umballa in 1884 as a transport officer. Perham, Lugard, 40–46. Lugard’s ser­vice rec­ord is available at the National Archives, WO 76/384/6. A summary of his Indian ser­vice is provided in the annual The Indian Army List. 57. Perham, Lugard, 121, 149; Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria. 58. Miss Margery Perham, “Some Prob­lems of Indirect Rule in Africa,” Journal of the Royal African Society 34, no. 135 (1935). 59. The prominent role of Kano in the genesis of Lugard’s system cannot be ignored. 60. Kirk-­Greene, “Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry, Baron Lugard (1858–1945).” 61. He likely also encountered the Collective Punishment Ordinance operating in Palestine. 62. ­There was a previous Native Courts Ordinance dating from 1900. Perham, Lugard, 40. For a discussion of the Nigerian ­legal system ­under Lugard, see Frederick Lugard, “The Judicial System in Nigeria,” 1932, Lugard Papers, L56 / 7, Bodleian Library Special Collections, Oxford. 63. For a history of this frontier space, see Keren Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in ­Kenya (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017); Vincent B. Thompson, “The Phenomenon of Shifting Frontiers: The Kenya-­Somalia Case in the Horn of Africa, 1880s–1970s,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 30, no. 1 / 2 (1995): 1–40; Julie MacArthur, “Decolonizing

229

NOTES TO PAGES 78–83 Sovereignty: States of Exception along the Kenya-­Somali Frontier,” American His­ torical Review 124, no. 1 (2018): 108–43. 64. “Special Districts Administration Ordinance,” 1934, The Official Gazette of the Colony and Protectorate of K ­ enya, Vol. 36 / No. 19, CO 542 / 32, TNA. 65. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I” (Nairobi, 1934), 93, 96. 66. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (­Kenya),” 1929, Colonial Office Rec­ ords, CO 533/392/14, TNA. 67. Joseph Byrne, “Diary of the visit of Sir Joseph Byrne,” 1932, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 533/425/22, TNA. 68. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I,” 91. 69. Hannah Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa: Conflict and Colonial Development on the Margins c. 1930–60,” Journal of African History 58, no. 3 (2017): 387. 70. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (­Kenya),” 1931, Colonial Office Rec­ ords, CO 533/407/2, TNA. 71. “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance,” 1932, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 533/427/6, TNA. 72. “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance” (London, 1932). 73. The Official Gazette of the Colony and Protectorate of K ­ enya, February 1 (Nairobi: Government Press, 1836), 213–15; “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. II” (Nairobi, 1935), 989–90. 74. The draft regulation listed which sections ­were “practically extracts from the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901.” Appendices to the draft included a “Comparative ­Table of Sections,” which listed the other colonial laws the draft was drawn from. Also included was a copy of the 1901 FCR. “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance,” secs. 5–4, 11, 28–46. 75. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I,” 96. The Attorney General was responding to two members of Indian origin, the Hon. Shamsud-­Deen and the Hon. J. B. Pandya who w ­ ere against the law due to its repressive Indian origins. “Legislative Council Debates, Vol. I,” 93–94. 76. Marginal note on the draft regulation by J. W. Flood, “Frontier Districts (Administration) Ordinance,” 5. 77. They would continue to be viewed as such through the postcolonial period as well. Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa.” 78. Byrne, “Diary of the visit of Sir Joseph Byrne.” 79. See, for example, “Impositions u ­ nder Collective Punishment Ordinance (­Kenya),” 1935, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 533/458/21, TNA. 80. Charles Chenevix Trench, Men Who Ruled ­Kenya: The ­Kenya Administra­ tion (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993), 129. 81. “Tribal Police System,” 1931, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 533/416/15, TNA. The relatively poor pay l­imited recruitment to men of social standing and relative means, imbuing the force with an esprit de corps as well as a function in social policing and hierarchy. 82. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Tanganyika),” 1928, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 691/96/11, TNA; “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Somalia),” 1933, Colonial Office Rec­ords, CO 535/100/4, TNA. 230

NOTES TO PAGES 83–85 83. In a cover letter, the Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, did, however, note Tanganyika’s resemblance to the ­Kenyan Code. “Collective Punishment Ordinance (Tanganyika),” 3–4, 7, 9. 84. Norman Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theo­philus (1817–1893),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25353. Jeremy Martens offers a cogent, if overstated critique of the focus on Shepstone the man as progenitor of the personalized system of administration. Jeremy Martens, “Decentring Shepstone: The Eastern Cape Frontier and the Establishment of Native Administration in Natal, 1842–1849,” South African Historical Journal 67, no. 2 (2015): 180–201. A related issue is the extent to which Shepstone’s system marked an innovative break from or instead a continuity with past practice. ­Favoring the latter, see John Lambert, Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (South Africa: University of Natal Press, 1995). 85. On the latter assessment, see in par­tic­u­lar D. Welsh, The Roots of Segrega­ tion: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845–1910 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971). For a succinct description of the Shepstone system, see Norman Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” in Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, ed. Andrew ­Duminy and Bill Guest (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989), 170–92. 86. Arguably the best statement of the Shepstone system appears in the evidence he offered to the Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs in 1883. His testimony ran nearly eighty transcribed pages. See “Report and Proceedings, With Appendices of the Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs” (Cape Town, 1883). 87. While Shepstone and his system may have preceded Sandeman and the FCR by twenty years, he was nonetheless influenced by an impor­tant British Indian connection. Sir Henry Pottinger was the governor of the Cape Colony at the time Shepstone headed the Locations Commission in 1847. Along the eastern Cape frontier, Pottinger introduced what was in effect a form of the British Indian residency system. He was very familiar with that system, having himself been the resident to the court of Sindh in the 1820s, which lay along the British Indian frontier with the lands that would l­ater become Af­ghan­i­stan. Martens, “Decentring Shepstone,” 195–96. 88. For the most comprehensive recent biography of Shepstone, see Jeff Guy, Theo­philus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-­Natal Press, 2014). Shepstone authored a volume on the “Natal tribes” based on interviews with native in­for­mants. Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 90–91, 99–100. His focus on the ethnography of Natal is reminiscent of British Indian scholar administrators, such as Mountstuart Elphinstone. 89. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 88. 90. Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theo­philus (1817–1893).” 91. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-­Century Natal.” Variations of Shepstone’s system ­were subsequently applied to Transkei and Zululand. 231

NOTES TO PAGES 85–87 Sean Redding, Sorcery and Sovereignty: Taxation, Power, and Rebellion in South Africa, 1880–1963 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 96–100; Hamilton, Ter­ rific Majesty, 130–67. 92. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 89. 93. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 25. 94. Jeremy Martens characterizes Shepstone’s system of indirect rule as “decentralized despotism,” fitting with con­temporary ideas that “savage” socie­ties required despotic rule. Jeremy Martens, “Enlightenment Theories of Civilization and Savagery in British Natal: The Colonial Origins of (Zulu) African Barbarism Myth,” in Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Pre­sent, ed. Benedict Carton, John Laband, and Jabulani Sithole (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-­ Natal Press, 2008), 126. See also Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 103. Such beliefs had an Asian doppelganger in the form of “Oriental despotism.” 95. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 97–101. 96. J. C. Myers, Indirect Rule in South Africa: Tradition, Modernity and the Costuming of Po­liti­cal Power, ed. Toyin Falola, Rochester Studies in African History and Diaspora (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), chap. 1; Clifton Crais, “Custom and the Politics of Sovereignty in South Africa,” Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (2006): 721–40. 97. KwaZulu was another Bantustan that was located in Natal. While “granted” self-­government ­under the apartheid system, it was not declared in­de­ pen­ dent like Transkei. See also Clifton Crais, “Chiefs and Bureaucrats in the Making of Empire: A Drama from the Transkei, South Africa, October  1880,” American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003): 1034–56. 98. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-­Century Natal,” 13; Martens, “Decentring Shepstone,” 193. 99. This was formally changed with the advent of a Native High Court established by the Native Administration Act of 1875. Substantively, however, this new judicial venue made ­little difference. Thomas V. McClendon, White Chief, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845–1878 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2010), 121–22. 100. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 89. 101. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 164. See also McClendon, White Chief, Black Lords, 122. 102. McClendon, White Chief, Black Lords, 123. 103. Etherington, “Shepstone, Sir Theo­philus (1817–1893).” 104. It was additionally criticized on other grounds, including that “it inhibited the imposition of a work ethic, monogamy, a need for clothing, commodities, and civilization.” Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 99. 105. Much of that l­abor was actually provided by Indian coolies imported by the colonial regime. 106. Lugard likewise enforced a hut tax in Nigeria. 107. Etherington argues the ability of the Africans to pay t­ hose taxes, and thus the fiscal health of the Natal state was predicated on their relative increase in purchasing power and economic prosperity. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the

232

NOTES TO PAGES 87–89 Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” 175. See also Martens, “Enlightenment Theories of Civilization and Savagery in British Natal,” 126. 108. Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 184. Just as with the American Indians, the Africans’ misuse of the land was used to justify its taking. Welsh, Roots of Segrega­ tion, 42. Etherington notes that the Trust was established over the objections of settlers who wanted the Africans to receive individual title, likely in the expectation they could quickly be deprived of it. Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-­Century Natal,” 18. 109. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” 178. On the long history of indigenous dispossession due to “unproductive” use of land in Africa, see David Boucher, “Invoking a World of Ideas: Theory and ­Interpretation in the Justification of Colonialism,” Theoria 63, no. 147 (2016): 6–24. 110. Minute by the Secretary for Native Affairs on the late operations against Langalibalele and Tribe, 12 June 1874, p. 1875, LIII, C. 1121. Quoted in Etherington, “Origins of ‘Indirect Rule’ in Nineteenth-­Century Natal,” 20, n. 26. 111. On the Transvaal annexation, see Bridget Theron, “Theo­philus Shepstone and the Transvaal Colony, 1877–1879,” African Historical Review 34, no.  1 (2002): 204–27. 112. This does not include the potentially hostile Orange F ­ ree State to Natal’s west, partially buffered by the Basutoland protectorate. 113. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 92. 114. On the evolution of frontiers in southern Africa, see Noël Mostert, Fron­ tiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa ­People (New York: Knopf, 1992). 115. Frere had been both the Commissioner to Sindh, which included Baluchistan at the time he held the office, as well as the Governor of Bombay. John Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884), Colonial Governor,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093 /ref:odnb/10171. 116. Etherington, “The ‘Shepstone System’ in the Colony of Natal and beyond the Borders,” 187. 117. Martens, “Enlightenment Theories of Civilization and Savagery in British Natal,” 127. 118. See Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowl­ edge, International Relations, and the Anglo-­Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 119. It was repealed by the Statute Law (Repealed and Miscellaneous) Amendment Act of 1997. 120. Whittaker, “Frontier Security in NorthEast Africa.” On more recent, con­ temporary effects of frontier governmentality in Northeast K ­ enya, see Jeremy Lind, “Devolution, Shifting Centre-­Periphery Relationships and Conflict in Northern ­Kenya,” Po­liti­cal Geography 63 (2018): 135–47; Jeremy Lind, Patrick Mutahi, and Marjoke Oosterom, “ ‘Killing a Mosquito with a Hammer’: Al-­Shabaab ­Vio­lence and State Security Responses in ­Kenya,” Peacebuilding 5, no. 2 (2017): 118–35.

233

NOTES TO PAGES 90–94 121. Amatzai Baram, “Neo-­Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Tribal Policies 1991–96,” International Journal of ­Middle East Studies 29, no. 1 (1997): 1–31.

4. the colonial specter of “savagery” 1. ­There is some fascinating work on the role of defeat in the British imperial mindset. See generally Stephanie Barczewski, Heroic Failure and the British (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). 2. See generally John Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884), Colonial Governor,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10171. 3. Frere wrote, “I may note in passing that, though I belong to an old Tory ­family, I have myself been especially employed as much by Liberal as by Conservative Administrations, and, like my companions in the Indian ser­vices, have been trained to take, as my examples in public life, ­those who placed the honour and welfare of E ­ ngland above all other considerations, and to serve our Sovereign and country apart from all questions of party politics, as En­glishmen above and before all ­things, ­whether we w ­ ere Tories, Radicals, or Whigs. It was therefore a new experience to me to find myself looked upon as a party tool.” Bartle Frere, Af­ghan­i­ stan and South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: State Library, 1969), 24. 4. This view is very much indebted to the stadial view of civilization, an intellectual idea pop­ u­ lar­ ized by the Scottish Enlightenment of the late eigh­ teenth ­century. See, for instance, Nathaniel Wolloch, “The Civilizing Pro­cess, Nature, and Stadial Theory,” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 245–59. 5. He went on: “But ­whether the civilized man, with his gin, his greed and his dynamite, is r­ eally very superior to the savage is another question, and one which would bear argument, although this is not the place to argue it. . . . ​Savagery is only a question of degree.” Henry Rider Haggard, “Cetywayo and His White Neighbours Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal” (Hamburg: Tredition, 2011), liii. Quoted in Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 115. 6. This was true across Britain’s global empire, and not just in South Africa and Af­ghan­i­stan. See, for example, Lisa Ford’s discussion of civilization and savagery along the frontier of New South Wales in the early nineteenth ­century. Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous ­People in Amer­ic­ a and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 76–83. 7. The focus on property has a long intellectual history in Eu­rope, manifest in multiple ways. E ­ arlier phi­los­o­phers and l­egal theorists justified the taking of lands from indigenous ­peoples based on the idea they did not properly use ­these lands as ordained by God. David Boucher, “Invoking a World of Ideas: Theory and Interpretation in the Justification of Colonialism,” Theoria 63, no. 147 (2016): 13–14. On attitudes t­ oward property, dispossession, and vio­lence in the colonial ­encounter, see Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 234

NOTES TO PAGES 94–98 I contend that by the nineteenth ­century this idea of use had become codified and embodied by individuated ­legal owner­ship. 8. While in the Rus­sian case, this may partly have been driven by religious, missionary zeal, Frere noted that in the British case this was something “studiously discouraged and generally distrusted by our politicians.” Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 29. Generally, Frere was very much in ­favor of Christian proselytization, a fact demonstrated both in his writings and in his patronage and support of David Livingstone’s missionary activities. F.  V. Emery, “Geography and Imperialism: The Role of Sir Bartle Frere (1815–1884),” Geo­graph­i­cal Journal 150, no. 3 (1984): 346–47. 9. This was the philosophy undergirding the Bengal Permanent Settlement of 1793. See generally Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement, Le Monde d’outre-­Mer Passe et Pre­sent, Primiere Serie: Etudes XIX (Paris: Mouton & Co., 1963). 10. ­There ­were, of course, exceptions to this, such as the ryotwari and mahal­ wari systems in British India. But they resulted from administrative expediency rather than ideological commitment to an alternative model. In any case, they w ­ ere suboptimal outcomes and further evidence of the sad civilizational state of colonized p ­ eople. 11. ­ These two are often paired in studies of frontiers. See, for example, David  J. Weber and Jane  M. Rausch, Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in Latin American History (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994). 12. “Remember the Rights of the Savage,” speech delivered by William Gladstone in Dalkeith on 26 November 1879, Liberal History, http://­www​.­liberalhistory​ .­org​.­uk​/­history​/­remember​-­the​-­rights​-­of​-­the​-­savage​/­, accessed on 11 April  2018. See generally H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1875–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 41–60. 13. Though it is not centrally impor­tant for the discussion in this chapter, the fact that Gladstone characterized the Afghan hill tribes as enjoying “more or less po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence” is both striking and in keeping with the colonial practice that made t­hese ­ people “imperial objects,” as discussed in ­ earlier chapters. 14. Frere writes, “The storm of Midlothian invective was directed not only against the Afghan policy of the late Government, but against all they had done and allowed in South Africa, and I, as one of their officials, was to be discreditably connected with their Afghan policy, in order to diminish any weight which might other­wise attach to my opinions as an actor in South Africa.” Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 24. 15. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 14. 16. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 6–7. 17. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 15–16. On colonial ideas of Zulu savagery, which ­were supposedly closely tied with the difiqane, see Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Chris­tian­ity, Co­ lonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 169. 18. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 16. 235

NOTES TO PAGES 98–101 19. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 17. 20. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 18. 21. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 17. 22. Emery, “Geography and Imperialism,” 347. I mention “public intellectual,” ­because one of Frere’s many positions in public life was that of founding member and President of the Royal Geo­graph­i­cal Society. Frere himself explic­itly stated this as a princi­ple of relations between civilized and uncivilized ­people. H. B. E. Frere, “On the Laws Affecting the Relations between Civilized and Savage Life, as Bearing on the Dealings of Colonists with Aborigines,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of G ­ reat Britain and Ireland 11 (1882): 351. 23. Frere was, of course, speaking hypothetically as the Rus­sians did not annex the territories between their own empire and British India. This was, a­ fter all, the central competition of the so-­called ­Great Game. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 29. 24. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 34. 25. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 7. 26. Imperial policy along British India’s North-­West Frontier was classically divided between the “Forward School,” which supported regular armed intervention beyond the British Indian frontier, and ­those supporting “masterly activity” or a policy of restraint that l­imited imperial actions beyond the settled districts. For a discussion of t­hese, see Mark Condos and Gavin Rand, “Coercion and Conciliation at the Edge of Empire: State-­Building and Its Limits in Waziristan, 1849– 1914,” Historical Journal 61, no. 3 (2017): 695–718. 27. Frere, Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 73–76; H. B. E. Frere, “Memorandum.—­ Sind and Punjab Frontier Systems,” Po­liti­cal and Secret Memoranda (London, 1876). 28. Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884), Colonial Governor.” 29. Frere, “On the Laws Affecting the Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.” 30. Emery, “Geography and Imperialism,” 348. See also Frere, “On the Laws Affecting the Relations between Civilized and Savage Life.” 31. See, for example, Ray Allen Billington, The American Frontier Thesis: At­ tack and Defense (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1971); Chris Rojek, “F. J. Turner’s ‘Frontier Thesis’: The Ruse of American ‘Character,’ ” Eu­ro­ pean Journal of Social Theory 20, no. 2 (2017): 236–51. For an example of the influence of Turner’s frontier thesis on other areas, see Igor Kopytoff, The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional ­African Socie­ties (Bloomington, IN: ­Indiana University Press, 1989). 32. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, vol. 30 (New York: Henry Holt and Com­pany, 1921), 3. 33. Turner, Frontier in American History, 2–3. 34. Turner, Frontier in American History, 3–4. 35. Turner, Frontier in American History, 4. 36. Turner, Frontier in American History, 11. 236

NOTES TO PAGES 101–105 37. This vision, of course, presupposes that Indians ­were not agriculturalist, something patently false. 38. Turner, Frontier in American History, 14. 39. Turner, Frontier in American History, 13. 40. Turner, Frontier in American History, 10. 41. Turner, Frontier in American History, 32. 42. Turner, Frontier in American History, 14–15. Turner’s body and disease motif mark his prose, with him comparing the spread of American civilization to germ theory. Turner, Frontier in American History, 3. 43. The fact that Turner placed cities at the apogee of civilization, and due to their industrial / cap­i­tal­ist character, is something Sarmiento echoed in his writing. See below. 44. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early Amer­i­ca (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 45. “First Annual Message,” 3 December  1901, https://­millercenter​.­org​/­the​ -­presidency​/­presidential​-­speeches​/­december​-­3​-­1901​-­first​-­annual​-­message, accessed on 13 May 2019. Roo­se­velt himself thought the frontier had been vanquished. He used his message to Congress to call for the dissolution of tribal bonds and tribal funds, instead treating Indians as individuals and preferably citizens. 46. For a recent discussion of Sarmiento’s changing role in the construction of Argentina’s national memory and self-­understanding, see Brendan Lanctot, Be­ yond Civilization and Barbarism: Culture and Politics in Postrevolutionary Ar­ gentina. (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015). 47. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism, trans. Mary Mann (New York: Hurd and Houghton / Riverside Press, 1868), 11; Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo, o Civili­ zacion i Barbarie (Montevideo: Biblioteca Latino-­Americana, 1888), 52. I use Mary Mann’s first En­glish translation from 1868 for ease of reference. Where her translation notably varies from the original Spanish text, I note this. 48. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 11; Sarmiento, Facundo, 52. 49. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 40; Sarmiento, Facundo, 97. 50. See William H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Al­ berdi, Sarmiento, Mitre (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996). 51. Though it would take another twenty years to fully realize that victory with the final unification of the republic. Quiroga was assassinated in 1835 by another caudillo. 52. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 13; Sarmiento, Facundo, 56. 53. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 14; Sarmiento, Facundo, 57. 54. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 18; Sarmiento, Facundo, 63. 55. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 118; Sarmiento, Facundo, 35. 56. T. Hartley Crawley, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, wrote in 1838 that “the principal lever by which the Indians are to be lifted out of the mire of folly and vice in which they are sunk is education.” Quoted in Kristine L. Jones, “Civilization and Barbarism and Sarmiento’s Indian Policy,” in Sarmiento and His Argen­ tina, ed. Joseph T. Criscenti (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 36. 237

NOTES TO PAGES 105–108 57. Diana Sorensen Goodrich, Facundo and the Construction of Argentine Cul­ ture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 9; David T. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas: A Conjectural History of Facundo Scotland on the Pampas: A Conjectural History of Facundo,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 83, no. 6 (2006): 790. See generally Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natu­ral Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 58. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 16; Sarmiento, Facundo, 61. 59. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 15; Sarmiento, Facundo, 59. 60. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 18; Sarmiento, Facundo, 63. 61. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 10; Sarmiento, Facundo, 51. 62. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 1; Sarmiento, Facundo, 38. 63. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 25; Sarmiento, Facundo, 75. 64. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 2, 9; Sarmiento, Facundo, 38, 50. 65. Quoted in Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello, “Introduction: Sarmiento between History and Fiction,” in Sarmiento: Author of a Nation, ed. Tulio Halperin Donghi et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 6. His language of the colonial state “absorbing” the indios is noteworthy, as to a significant extent this is what accounted for their extermination (see Chapter 6). 66. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 12; Sarmiento, Facundo, 53. 67. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 796. 68. On Scott and the Highlands, see Kenneth McNeil, Scotland, Britain, Em­ pire: Writing the Highlands, 1760–1860 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007), 83–116. 69. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 803. 70. For Sarmiento’s claim of personally traveling to the Arab world, see Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 43, n. 1; Sarmiento, Facundo, 100–101. In Beckman’s words, his knowledge of both is “eminently textual.” Ericka Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas: Medievalism and Orientalism in Sarmiento’s Facundo,” Chasqui 38, no. 2 (2009): 43. 71. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 8; Sarmiento, Facundo, 48. 72. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 7; Sarmiento, Facundo, 47. His language echoed that of another lowland Scot, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who imputed the “republican ideals” of the Afghans he documented to the elevated geography they inhabited. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1991). For a more modern take on the idea of generative geographies, see James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 73. Haberly argues that Sarmiento’s reference to the Orient did not mark him as an Orientalist, but rather was a function of the sources available to him. But such an assertion ignores the idea that Sarmiento’s sources, though l­imited, w ­ ere nonetheless structured by Orientalism. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 808. See also Carolina Alzate, “Modos de la Metáfora Orientalista en la Hispanoamérica del Siglo XIX. Soledad Acosta, Jorge Isaacs, Domingo F. Sarmiento y José María Samper / Modes of the Orientalist Meta­phor in Nineteenth-­Century Hispanic 238

NOTES TO PAGES 108–115 Amer­i­ca. Soledad Acosta, Jorge Isaacs, Domingo  F. Sarmiento and José María Samper,” Taller de Letras no. 45 (2009): 131–43. 74. Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas,” 42. She notes that “nineteenth ­century colonial proj­ects had established Orientalism as a readily available vocabulary of temporal and spatial otherness” (43). 75. Sarmiento comments that “we may h ­ ere call to mind the noteworthy resemblance between the Argentines and the Arabs.” Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 48, n. 1; Sarmiento, Facundo, 100–101. 76. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 16; Sarmiento, Facundo, 61. 77. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 17; Sarmiento, Facundo, 62. 78. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 23; Sarmiento, Facundo, 71. 79. See generally James Donald Fogelquist, “Cooper y Sarmiento: El Tema de la Civilization y la Barbarie,” Cuadernos Americanos 234, no. 1 (1981): 95–112. 80. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 25; Sarmiento, Facundo, 76. 81. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 26; Sarmiento, Facundo, 76–77. 82. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 60–61; Sarmiento, Facundo, 127. 83. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 793. 84. See generally Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas.” 85. Haberly, “Scotland on the Pampas,” 805. This sentiment is echoed by Beckman, “Troubadours and Bedouins on the Pampas,” 41–42. 86. It was also a constituent ele­ment of state sovereignty. See Andrew Fitzmaurice, Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Jennifer Pitts et al., “Empire and L ­ egal Universalisms in the Eigh­ teenth C ­ entury,” American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (2012): 92–121. 87. The real­ity was invariably, and quite markedly, dif­fer­ent.

5. ruling the chiricahua apache in amer­i ­c a’s desert southwest 1. Mark Bowden, “The Hunt for ‘Geronimo,’ ” Vanity Fair, November 2012, http://­w ww​.­v anityfair​.­c om​/­n ews​/­p olitics​/­2 012​/­1 1​/­i nside​-­o sama​-­b in​-­l aden​ -­assassination​-­plot, accessed on 25 October 2019. 2. For similar interpretations applied to the American West, see Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Vio­lence: The My­thol­ogy of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006); Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-­Hating and Empire-­Building (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997). 3. D. A. Barber, “Bin Laden’s Death Sparks Concern for Arizona Intelligence Base,” 2 May 2011, https://­suite​.­io​/­d​-­a​-­barber​/­5d8k2ek, accessed on 25 October 2019. 4. It subsequently became the headquarters of the 10th  Cavalry Regiment, better known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” 5. See generally Michael L. Tate, “John P. Clum and the Origins of an Apache Constabulary, 1874–1877,” American Indian Quarterly 3, no. 2 (1977): 99–120; Douglas Firth Anderson, “ ‘More Conscience Than Force:’ U.S. Indian Inspector 239

NOTES TO PAGES 115–118 William Vandever, Grant’s Peace Policy, and Protestant Whiteness,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2010); John Bret Harte, “The San Carlos Indian Reservation, 1872–1886: An Administrative History” (University of Arizona, 1972). 6. Clum was initially approached for the position by J. H. Ferris, the Secretary of the Board of Home Missions of the Dutch Reformed Church, in a letter dated 22 November 1873. John P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 1930, AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, pp. 1–2, Papers of John P. Clum, University of Arizona Library Special Collections, Tucson (hereafter cited as UAL). 7. The Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs included a detailed list of which Indian agencies had been assigned to which religious bodies. See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874” (Washington, DC, 1874), 178; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875” (Washington, DC, 1875), 172; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876” (Washington, DC, 1876), 278; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877” (Washington, DC, 1877), 318. On Grant’s “peace policy,” see David Sim, “The Peace Policy of Ulysses S. Grant,” American Nineteenth C ­ entury History 9, no. 3 (2008): 241–68; Robert H. Keller, American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 1869–1882 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983). 8. Clum authored a number of articles in both the New Mexico Historical Review and Arizona Historical Review detailing his tenure at San Carlos, as well as discussing a number of the personalities with whom he interacted while ­there. 9. Both New Mexico and Arizona had territorial governments, but ­these had greatly circumscribed powers in comparison with their state counter­parts. 10. See Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996); Bertha  P. Dutton, Navahos and Apaches, the Athabascan P ­ eoples (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-­Hall, 1976). 11. For a discussion of relations between indigenous p ­ eoples and the Spanish imperial and then Mexican government in this region, see Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-­Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 12. Scott Rushforth, “Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of Chiricahua National Monument and Fort Bowie National Historic Site. National Park Ser­vice Task Agreement J1233040013” (Denver, 2010), 9–14; Brian DeLay, “In­de­pen­dent Indians and the U.S.-­Mexican War,” American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (2007): 35–68. 13. “Treaty with the Apaches,” in British and Foreign State Papers, 1852–53 (London: William Ridgeway & Sons, 1864), vol. XLII. The treaty was subsequently ratified by the Senate and signed by President Franklin Pierce in March 1853. For a treatment of Mangas Coloradas, see Edwin  R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011). 14. “Treaty with the Apaches,” sec. 10. 15. Janne Lahti, Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the South­ west Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 120–21. 240

NOTES TO PAGES 118–123 16. This is not quite the same as the “­middle ground,” which Richard White considered in his works. Richard White, The ­Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the G ­ reat Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 17. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas. 18. The policy was partially born out of the ­Great Peace Commission of 1867– 1868, which itself was a response to concerns of a general Indian war engulfing the plains. Jill St.  Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867–1877 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 19. St. Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy, 11. 20. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,” 296; Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 2. Clum’s views both s­ haped and echoed ­those of his superiors in Washington, who used the same language to describe the Apache. See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 41. 21. Edwin R. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 15–27. 22. See generally C. L. Sonnichsen, “Who Was Tom Jeffords?,” Journal of Ari­ zona History 23, no. 4 (1982): 381–406; Harry G. Cramer III, “Tom Jeffords—­ Indian Agent,” Journal of Arizona History 17, no. 3 (1976): 265–300. 23. The other three ­were the San Carlos / White Mountain reservation in Arizona and the Mescalero and Ojo Caliente (Warm Spring) reservations in New Mexico. On the history of Apache reservations, see Matthew Babcock, “Blurred Borders: North Amer­i­ca’s Forgotten Apache Reservations,” in Contested Spaces of Early Amer­i­ca, ed. Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 163–83. 24. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 135. 25. See, for instance, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1878” (Washington, DC, 1878), 8. This tradition continues ­today with the issue of the Oak Flat land swap. See also the Conclusion. 26. On the Western Apache, which the Chiricahua are related to but distinct from, see Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places. 27. On the policy of concentration at San Carlos, see John P. Clum, “Concentration of the Apaches,” n.d., AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, Papers of John  P. Clum, UAL. See also Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” chap. 6. 28. Clum provided a discussion of his actions following the breakout in his annual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. See “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 34–35. 29. Though the papers of the agency w ­ ere destroyed by fire in 1924, Clum’s personal papers are h ­ oused at the University of Arizona. In the main, this collection is composed of private correspondence with his f­amily, particularly his wife, Mary, and ­later press clippings, as well as drafts of articles published in assorted journals, including the New Mexico Historical Review and Arizona Historical Re­ view. In the main, the papers have surprisingly ­little to say of substance of his time as agent at San Carlos, although they include a number of pieces both boosting 241

NOTES TO PAGES 123–126 and defending his actions ­there. They are available as Papers of John P Clum 1860–1970, AZ 003, UAL. Additionally t­here are papers held at the Arizona ­Historical Society, as well as the National Archives and Rec­ords Administration. 30. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 216. Clum proved flexible on the disarming of the Indians. He allowed the Chiricahua removed from their reservation to keep their weapons in order to avoid hostilities with them. 31. In 1874, the reservation’s population was reported as a mere 892. The ­following year it increased to 4,233 and by 1876 stood at 4,500. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,” 106; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 41; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” 12. 32. San Carlos and the White Mountain reservations ­were formally divided by an act of Congress in 1897. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian ­Affairs, for the Year 1897” (Washington, DC, 1897), 398. 33. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo, 59. 34. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” xvii. 35. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 288. 36. Robert N. Watt, “Apaches Without and Enemies Within: The US Army in New Mexico, 1879–1881,” War in History 18, no. 2 (2011): 166. 37. Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” 169, 184–85, 295, 347, 414, 737. 38. William E. Dodge Jr., controlling partner of the Phelps Dodge corporation, was on the Board of Indian Commissioners, which oversaw Grant’s peace policy and the governance of the San Carlos reservation. 39. Clum detailed his relationship with the military in his private papers. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 8–12. 40. Clum kept clippings from the Arizona Citizen celebrating his days as agent in his private papers. See AZ003, Box 2, Folder 10, Papers of John P. Clum, UAL. 41. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 215–20; John  P. Clum, “Apache Misrule,” Arizona Historical Review 3 (1931): 64–71. 42. See generally Magnus Marsden and Benjamin  D. Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), chap. 2. 43. Letter from Sandeman dated 19 April  1891. Quoted in Thomas Henry Thornton, Col­on ­ el Sir Robert Sandeman: His Life and Work on Our Indian Fron­ tier (London: John Murray, 1895), title page. 44. Tate, “John P. Clum and the Origins of an Apache Constabulary;” John P. Clum, “The San Carlos Apache Police,” Arizona Historical Review 3, no. 2 (1930): 12–25; John P. Clum, “The San Carlos Apache Police,” Arizona Historical Review 3, no. 3 (1930): 21–43. 45. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” 11.

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NOTES TO PAGES 126–130 46. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,” 58, 297; “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 42. 47. Clum offered an overview of police activities and responsibilities in his annual reports. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 215–16. 48. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” xviii, 4. 49. The scouts who tracked down the Chiricahua renegades, including Geronimo, w ­ ere in the main Western Apache, with a large contingent of White Mountain Apache. Joyce Evelyn Mason, “The Use of Indian Scouts in the Apache Wars, 1870–1886” (Indiana University, 1970), 335. This partly explains the tense relations between the Chiricahua and White Mountain Apache, who had both been relocated to the San Carlos reservation as part of the concentration policy. 50. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1878,” 7. At least off the reservation, the Indians w ­ ere paid for their ­labor. On the reservation, the agents forced them to work on public proj­ects to receive their rations. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1875,” 42, 220, 230. 51. See generally Law Enforcement Ser­vices, “Indian Law Enforcement History” (Washington, DC, n.d.). 52. Oakah L. Jones, “The Origins of the Navajo Indian Police 1872–1873,” Ari­ zona and the West 8, no. 3 (1966): 225–38. 53. Clum’s successor, H. L. Hart, wrote glowingly of the police, stating they ­were “the greatest executive assistance an agent could possibly have.” “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1878,” 8. See also John P. Clum, “Es-­Kim-­in-­Zin,” Arizona Historical Review 2 (1929): 53–72; Clum, “San Carlos Apache Police” (1930). 54. The statute set the pay scale for an Indian policeman at $5 per month, well below the $15 Clum offered at San Carlos. The low pay quickly became an issue in the functioning of such police forces. Law Enforcement Ser­vices, “Indian Law Enforcement History,” 6. 55. Law Enforcement Ser­vices, “Indian Law Enforcement History,” secs. 8–10. The year 1883 proved the high point of this experiment, when Congress appropriated $82,000 and authorized one thousand privates and one hundred officers. 56. John R. Wunder, “Retained by the P ­ eople”: A History of American Indians and the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 57. See generally David  E. Wilkins, “Federal Policy, Western Movement, and Consequences for Indigenous P ­ eople, 1790–1920,” in The Cambridge History of Law in Amer­i­ca: Volume II, The Long Nineteenth ­Century (1789–1920), ed. Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 204–44. 58. Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 246. 59. United States v. Kagama, 118 US 375 (1886) at 381.

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NOTES TO PAGES 130–134 60. See, for instance, Lisa Ford, Tim Rowse, and Anna Yeatman, Between In­ digenous and Settler Governance (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013). 61. For a general background, see St. Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy, chap. 1. On the imperial inheritance of the United States with regard to Indian relations, see generally Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2007). See also Gregory Evans Dowd, “Indigenous ­Peoples without the Republic,” Journal of American History 104, no. 1 (2017): 19–41. 62. Gregory Ablavsky, “The Savage Constitution,” Duke Law Journal 63, no. 5 (2014): 999–1089. 63. Article I, Section 8, subsection 3. 64. The Indian Intercourse Act was passed in 1790, 1793, 1796, 1799, 1802, and 1834. 65. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 30 US 1 (1831) at 17. See also Jonas Bens, “When the Cherokee Became Indigenous: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Its Paradoxical Legalities,” Ethnohistory 65, no. 2 (2018): 247–67. 66. Worcester v. Georgia 31 US 515 (1832) at 551–56. 67. Johnson v. McIntosh 21 US 543 (1823) at 591–92. 68. Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-­Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). On the anomalous character of Indian sovereignty, see also Mark Rifkin, “Indigenizing Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the ‘Peculiar’ Status of Native P ­ eoples,” Cultural Critique 73 (2009): 88–124. 69. The law grandfathered in already-­signed treaties. See St. Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy, 150–52. This profoundly impor­tant change was not fully recognized ­until the turn of the twentieth ­century in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 US 553 (1903), which stripped American-­Indian relations of any pretense of parity, much less equity. The decision has long been referred to as the Indian “Dred Scott” decision. 70. David E. Wilkins, “The U.S. Supreme Court’s Explication of ‘Federal Plenary Power’: An Analy­sis of Case Law Affecting Tribal Sovereignty, 1886–1914,” Amer­ ican Indian Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1994): 349–68. 71. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1874,” 133; Harte, “San Carlos Indian Reservation,” 2, n. 1. 72. Cherokee Nation, at 17. 73. K. Tsianina Lomawaima, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Sovereignty,” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013): 333. 74. The concept of “birthright citizenship” in the F ­ ourteenth Amendment was not extended to Indians in the main case establishing it. United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 US 649 (1898). See Jill St. Germain for a discussion about the ­Fourteenth Amendment and Congress’s view of its inapplicability to Indians. St.  Germain, ­Indian Treaty-­Making Policy, 152. 75. St. Germain argues ­there w ­ ere three ele­ments—­Chris­tian­ity, education, and agriculture. St. Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy, 99–128. 76. Elk v. Wilkins 112 US 94 (1884).

244

NOTES TO PAGES 134–140 77. See generally Janet  A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887–1934 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). 78. In his 1901 First Annual Address to Congress, President Theodore Roo­se­ velt  noted t­here were only 60,000 Indians who had been granted citizenship at the  time.  “First Annual Message,” 3 December 1901, https://­millercenter​.­org​/­the​ -­presidency​/­presidential​-­speeches​/­december​-­3​-­1901​-­first​-­annual​-­message, accessed 13 May 2019. 79. See generally Wunder, “Retained by the ­People.” 80. Roo­se­velt called for the end of Indian marriage laws. See his “First Annual Message.” 81. Robert Weil, “The ­Legal Status of the Indian” (Columbia College, 1888), 72–73. 82. Lisa Ford refers to Indian country as a “juridically disorderly space.” Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous P ­ eople in Amer­i­ca and Aus­ tralia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 67. 83. Standing Bear v. Crook, [5 Dill. 453.] 1 Cir­cuit Court, D. Nebraska (1879). It is worth noting the Crook named as defendant in this suit was the head of the Arizona military department with whom Clum strug­gled for control of San Carlos. 84. On the issue of l­egal personhood, see Barbara Young Welke, “Law, Personhood, and Citizenship in the Long Nineteenth ­Century,” in Grossberg and Tomlins, Cambridge History of Law in Amer­i­ca: Volume II, 345–86. 85. Ex parte Crow Dog 109 US 536 (1883). 86. “The Major Crimes Act,” Pub. L. No. 1153 (1885). The Act has since been amended and ­today includes thirteen crimes. 87. United States v. Kagama, 118 US 375 (1886) at 383–84. 88. He escaped from custody before the day was out. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo, 59. 89. Clum, “Es-­Kim-­in-­Zin,” 67–71. 90. The guard­house contained “six large cells” and could “accommodate at least fifty prisoners.” “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1876,” 12. 91. The Court of Indian Offenses’ main punishments w ­ ere fines and hard ­labor. Law Enforcement Ser­vices, “Indian Law Enforcement History,” 14. Jirgahs ­after the 1887 revision of the FCR ­were able to impose sentences of transportation and whipping. The 1901 version of the FCR further augmented ­these punishments. See Chapter 2. 92. Clum, “Es-­Kim-­in-­Zin,” 67. 93. Rules for the Courts w ­ ere promulgated in a memorandum dated 10 April  1883. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1888” (Washington, DC, 1888), xxix–­xxx. A modified version of ­those rules is available online: “Rules Governing the Courts of Indian Offenses,” https://­en​.­wikisource​ .­org​/­wiki​/­Code​_­of​_­Indian​_­Offenses, accessed on 25 October 2019. 94. His reasons for resigning included his low salary ($125 per annum) and the “vacillating support” of his superiors in Washington. He initially submitted his resignation 26 February 1876, on the second anniversary of his official appointment.

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NOTES TO PAGES 140–152 However, he was persuaded to withdraw it by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs with promises of support. John  P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent, Resignation,” n.d., AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, pp. 41–42, Papers of John P. Clum, UAL. 95. Clum lived a long and colorful life. As mayor of Tombstone a­ fter departing San Carlos, he worked with Wyatt Earp. He served as a postal inspector and l­ater postmaster in Alaska from 1898 to 1909. In 1911, he requested reinstatement into the Indian Ser­vice, but was rebuffed. “Application for Superintendency, Indian Ser­ vice,” 1912–17, AZ003, Box 5, MS. 284, 2 / 12, Papers of John  P. Clum, UAL. Clum was the subject of a laudatory biography authored by his son, which was subsequently reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. Woodworth Clum, Apache Agent: The Story of John P. Clum, with Illustrations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936); R. L. Duffus, “This Man Understood the Indians,” New York Times Book Review, 2 February 1936, 6. Clum was ­later the subject of numerous tele­vi­ sion episodes and films, including most famously Walk the Proud Land (1956), where he was portrayed by Audie Murphy. 96. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 34. 97. Joseph C. Tiffany was accused of gross mismanagement and incompetence, and he was even charged in the territory’s federal court for the misappropriation of funds. His public disgrace paved the way for the army’s resumption of control over San Carlos in 1883. John Bret Harte, “The Strange Case of Joseph C. Tiffany: Indian Agent in Disgrace,” Journal of Arizona History 16, no. 4 (1975): 383–404. 98. Lahti, Wars for Empire, 214–15. 99. On the idea of “federative crisis,” see Thomas Bender, A Nation among Na­ tions: Amer­ i­ ca’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 133–35. 100. On the colonial character of US relations with Native Americans t­ oday, see J. M. Bacon and Matthew Norton, “Colonial Amer­ic­ a ­Today: U.S. Empire and the Po­liti­cal Status of Native American Nations,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 2 (2019): 301–31. 101. Cf. Mark Rifkin, “Indigenising Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the ‘Peculiar’ Status of Native P ­ eoples,” in Agamben and Colonialism, ed. Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignal (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 77–109. 102. It should be noted that the meaning of “Indian country” itself was opaque and open to a variety of l­ egal constructions and interpretations. Weil, “­Legal Status of the Indian,” 59. 103. Some historians view such comparisons dimly. Dowd, “Indigenous ­Peoples without the Republic.” 104. John  P. Clum, “Geronimo (Concluded),” Arizona Historical Review 1 (1929): 43. 105. John  P. Clum, “Apaches as Thespians in 1876,” New Mexico Historical Review 4 (1931): 80–98. He even mentioned the trip in his annual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1877,” 34.

246

NOTES TO PAGES 153–156

6. argentina’s conquest of the desert and the limits of frontier governmentality 1. See Chapter 4. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism, ed. Mary Mann (New York: Riverside Press, 1868); Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo, o civilizacion i barbarie (Montevideo: Biblioteca Latino-­Americana, 1888). 2. It is sometimes referred to as the campaign of the desert (la campaña del desierto) in order to distinguish it from the ­earlier conquista of the 1830s ­under Manuel Rosas. 3. The “organización nacional” is usually dated from roughly 1862 to 1880. See, for instance, David Rock, State Building and Po­liti­cal Movements in Argentina, 1860–1916 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Alberto Rodolfo Lettieri, La república de las instituciones: Proyecto, desarrollo y crisis del régimen político liberal en la Argentina en tiempos de la organización nacional (1852– 1880) (Buenos Aires: El Quijote Editorial, 2000). See also Martha Bechis, “La ‘organización nacional’ y las tribus Pampeanas en Argentina durante el siglo XIX,” Revista TEFROS 4, no. 2 (2006): 1–24. 4. Pedro Navarro Floria, “Las viejas fronteras revisitadas: Problematizando la formación territorial de los bordes de los estados-­nación latinoamericanos a través del caso de la Norpatagonia Argentina,” Antíteses 4, no. 8 (2011): 432. 5. Eugenia Ortiz Gambetta, Modelos de civilización en la novela de la orga­ nización nacional (1850–1880) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2012). 6. See, for example, Rob Hager, “State, Tribe and Empire in Afghan Inter-­Polity Relations,” in The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Af­ghan­i­stan, ed. Richard Tapper (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 83–118. 7. Indios amigos is, literally, “friendly Indians” or, more precisely, “allied Indians.” 8. María Cristina Guzzo, “El hibrido Argentino, el testimonio de Lucio v. Mansilla y el modelo americano” (Arizona State University, 1997). In the 1890s, ­there was a proposal that Argentina should employ the American model of reservations. Enrique Hugo Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena: El des­ tino final de los indios sometidos en el sur del territorio (1878–1930) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2010), 166–67. During the twentieth ­century, reservations w ­ ere created but they did not grant their inhabitants “sovereignty” as did their American counter­parts. Raul Diaz and Carlos Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” in Con­temporary Per­ spectives on the Native ­Peoples of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego Living on the Edge, ed. Claudia Briones and Jose Luis Lanata (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2002), 24–26. 9. For an excellent treatment of this, see Geraldine Davies Lenoble, “Filing the Desert: The Indigenous Confederacies of the Pampas and Northern Patagonia” (Georgetown University, 2016). 10. The idea of indigenous reservations has been widespread throughout the colonial and postcolonial Latin American world. See, for instance, William  Y.

247

NOTES TO PAGES 156–160 Adams, Indian Policies in the Amer­ic­ as: From Columbus to Collier and Beyond (Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2014). 11. For a discussion of Natal in South Africa, see Chapter 3. For an in­ter­est­ing comparison between Argentina and South Africa as white colonies of settlement, see P.  D. Curtin, “Location in History: Argentina and South Africa in the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1999): 41–92. 12. Mases documents the repeated referencing of the United States as a model for Argentina in Congressional debates. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 166–67. 13. “Memoria del Ministério del Interior, Washington, Asuntó indios,” n.d., Sala VII 1383 Leg. 155, Archivo Julio  A. Roca, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as AGN). 14. On the weakness of the Argentine state, see Javier Cikota, “Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880–1940” (University of California, Berkeley, 2017). Diaz and Falaschi characterize the state presence in Patagonia as late as the early twentieth ­century as “only institutional—­basically schooling and civil registration of the Indians.” Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 21. On the relative weakness of the Argentine state’s administration, see generally the work of Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Construir el estado, inventar la nación: El Río de La Plata, siglos XVIII–­XIX, Colección Historia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2007); Pierre Gautreau and Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “The Weak-­State Cadastre: Administrative Strategies to Build Territorial Knowledge in Post-­Colonial Argentina (1824 to 1864),” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geo­ graphic Information and Geovisualization 47, no. 1 (2012): 29–49. 15. ­There was, in fact, an attempted “revolution” in 1880, which was violently suppressed by conservative forces led by Roca. See, for example, Ariel Yablon, “Disciplined Rebels: The Revolution of 1880  in Buenos Aires,” Journal of Latin American Studies 40, no. 3 (2008): 483–511. 16. Vitor Izecksohn, “The War of the ­Triple Alliance and the Argentinean Unification: A Reevaluation,” História Unisinos 21, no. 3 (n.d.): 365–77. 17. Julio A. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 1878, Archivo General de Ejécito Argentino, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as AGE), 407. 18. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, “Customs of Governance: Colonialism and Democracy in Twentieth ­Century India,” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (2007): 441–70. 19. For a classic discussion of the idea of the “ethnographic state,” see Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001), chap. 3. 20. Carolyne Ryan, “Indigenous Possessions: Anthropology, Museums, and Nation-­Making in Argentina, 1862–1943” (University of Wisconsin-­Madison, 2011). 21. See Cikota, “Frontier Justice.” 22. Alberto Arturo Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties: Postcolonial Colonialism and State Making in Patagonia, Argentina and Chile, 1840s–1922” (Stony Brook University, 2012). 248

NOTES TO PAGES 160–163 23. For a summary of the relevant po­liti­cal events, see Paula Alonso, A Concise History of Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 24. Irma Bernal, Rosas y los indios (Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos [Argentina]: Ediciones Bsqueda de Aylla, 1997). 25. William  H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Al­ berdi, Sarmiento, Mitre (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); David William Foster, The Argentine Generation of 1880: Ideology and Cultural Texts (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990). 26. Articles 1, 5–7. Reproduced in Juan Carlos Walther, La conquista del desi­ erto: Síntesis histórica de los principales sucesos ocurridos y operaciones militares realizadas en la Pampa y Patagonia, contra los indios (años 1527–1885) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1970), 576–78. This law was passed to fulfill the Land Act of 1867 (Ley 215), which had called for the conquest, annexation, and settlement of the frontier. Similar to the US Homestead Act of 1862, it converted the conquered land into private property. F. J. McLynn, “The Frontier Prob­lem in Nineteenth-­Century Argentina,” History ­Today 30, no. 1 (1980): 31. For a collection of t­ hese laws, see Coleccion de leyes y decretos militares concerni­ entes al ejercito y armada de la republica Argentina, 1810 a 1896: Tomo segundo 1854 a 1880 (Buenos Aires: Compania Sud-­Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1898). Additionally, the soldiers who participated in the conquest ­were rewarded with land. For instance, as a lieutenant coronel, Ignacio Fotheringham received eight leagues of land, which he sold for six hundred pesos a league. See Ignacio H. Fotheringham, La vida de un soldado: Reminiscencias de las fronteras, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ciudad Argentina, 1998), 353. 27. The spoils of the conquest ­were highly concentrated. Thirty-­five million hectares ­were divided among a mere twenty-­four individuals. D. Aagesen, “Crisis and Conservation at the End of the World: Sheep Ranching in Argentine Patagonia,” Environmental Conservation 27, no. 2 (2000): 209. 28. See, for instance, David Rock, “The British in Argentina: From Informal Empire to Postcolonialism,” in Informal Empire in Latin Amer­i­ca: Culture, Com­ merce and Capital, ed. Matthew Brown (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 49–77. 29. A. G. Ford, “Argentina and the Baring Crisis of 1890,” Oxford Economic Papers, New Series, 8, no.  2 (June  1956): 127–50; William Miles, “The Barings Crisis in Argentina: The Role of Exogenous Eu­ro­pean Money Market ­Factors.” Review of Po­liti­cal Economy 14, no. 1 (2002): 5–29. Jeremy Adelman has also provided a compelling study of Argentina’s role in the Atlantic world of capital through the nineteenth c­ entury in Republic of Cap­ ital: Buenos Aires and the L ­ egal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 30. See Hilda Sábato, Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1840–1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 23–39. 31. “Nuestra policia sobre indios. Los nuevos y antiguos sistemas: Comparacion de los metodos de administracion,” n.d., Sala VII Leg. 155, Archivo Julio A. Roca, AGN, p. 506. Cf. “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1878” (Washington, DC, 1878). 249

NOTES TO PAGES 163–165 32. “Nuestra policia.” 33. It is unclear what war he was referring to. At the time, the British Empire was involved in both the Second Anglo-­Afghan War and the Anglo-­Zulu War. Julio  A. Roca, “Direccion al Congreso,” 1879, Sala VII Leg. 155, Archivo Julio  A. Roca, AGN, p. 457. 34. J. A. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra” (Buenos Aires, 1879), xii. 35. Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” viii. 36. Alberto Harambour, “Soberania y corrupcion: La construccion del estado y la propriedad en Patagonia austral (Argentina y Chile, 1840–1920),” Historia 2, no. 50 (2017): 555–96. 37. Abelardo Levaggi, Paz en la frontera: Historia de la relaciones diplomáticas con las comunidades indígenas en la Argentina (siglos XVI–­XIX) (Buenos Aires: Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, 2000), 435. 38. “En una palabra . . . ​el plan del Poder Ejecutivo es contra el desierto para poblarlo y no contra los indios para destruirlos,” Buenos Aires, 25/8/1875 Congresso Nacional, Camara de Senadores: Session de 1867 [hasta 1894], Buenos Aires, 1867–1894, 828–29. Quoted in Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 485. 39. ­There is significant debate within Argentine historiography, and con­ temporary politics, regarding ­whether the conquest of the desert constituted a genocide. See, for example, Perla Zusman and Sandra Minvielle, “Sociedades geográficas y delimitación del territorio en la construcción del estado-­nación Argentino,” in Colección territorio, ambiente y sociedad (Educ.ar, 2007); Diana Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide: Challenging the Hegemonic National Narrative and Laying the Foundation for Reparations to Indigenous ­Peoples,” Armenien Review 53, no.  1–4 (2012): 63–84; Mariano Nagy, “Circulación e incorporación en la frontera: Trayectorias indígenas tras la ‘conquista del desierto,’ ” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (Online), 5 October 2012, https://­journals​.­openedition​.­org​/­nuevomundo​/­64156#quotation, accessed 25, October 2019. Diaz and Falaschi argue that “ethnic extermination mechanisms . . . ​brought about ­either marginality or integrationism to the native ­peoples of Patagonia.” Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 18. Unfortunately, the Argentine state was more “effective” in its genocidal design against the ­peoples of Tierra del Fuego, such as the Selk’nam. 40. “14172 indios suprimidos de la pampa.” Additionally, Roca noted that 480 captives w ­ ere rescued: “5 caciques soberanos prisioneros y uno muerto; 1.271 indios de lanza prisioneros; 1.313 indios de lanzas muertos; 10.539 indios chusma prisioneros; 1.049 indios reducido; Cautivos rescatados: 480. Lo que da por resultado la cantidad de 14.172 indios suprimidos de la Pampa. Sin incluir en esta cifra el numero considerable de indios muertos en las persecuciones y a consecuencia del hambre en el seno mismo del desierto.” Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” vi. 41. It is unclear if the warriors ­were part of or in addition to the larger number. “Población indígena que hay sobre el territorio de faldas de Cordillera al

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NOTES TO PAGES 165–167 sud de Mendoza desde Rio Grande hasta Limay,” n.d., Salva VII 1383 Leg. 155, Archivo Julio A. Roca, AGN. 42. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 491–92. 43. Lenoble, “Filing the Desert.” 44. ­These included Puan in Buenos Aires, as well as Valcheta and Chichinales in Río Negro. Mariano Nagy, “La conquista del desierto,” http://­www​.­congresojudio​ .­org​.­ar​/­coloquio​_­nota​.­php​?­id​=­140, accessed 17 January 2018. 45. See generally Harambour, “Soberania y corrupcion.” 46. See Chapter 4. For a discussion of the po­liti­cal and ­legal revolution of the nineteenth ­century, see Adelman, Republic of Capital. 47. For a recent discussion of this, see Gary Fields, Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 48. This idea was central to the Homestead Acts in the United States, passed beginning in 1862. Similar legislation was also passed in Argentina, 1501 of 1884, called the Argentine Home Law. Claudia N. Briones and Walter Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope and Enactment of Argentina’s Manifest Destiny,” in Manifest Destinies and Indigenous ­Peoples, ed. David Maybury-­Lewis, Theodore Macdonald, and Biorn Maybury-­Lewis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 62. 49. Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide,” 65. Indian raiders ­were termed indios maleneros (Indian bandits). 50. Adelman, Republic of Capital, 285. 51. Briones and Delrio, “ ‘Conquest of the Desert,’ ” 55. 52. The original reads as follows: “Por otra parte, mencionar al indio como tal es un insulto. ¿Por qué indio? El es, simplemente, un argentino entre treinta y siete millones de habitantes, con los mismos derechos y obligaciones que todos. No merece ningún tratamiento especial ni más derechos que otros, pero tampoco ninguna tacha que lo invalide, que lo relegue o que lo menoscabe, porque tiene también todas las prerrogativas constitucionales. Es nuestro conciudadano y, por lo tanto, nuestro hermano. Merece y tiene todo nuestro fraterno afecto. No más, no menos. Lo contrario es indigno y discriminatorio.” Juan José Cresto, “Roca y el mito genocidio,” La Nacion, 23 November 2004, http://­www​.­lanacion​.­com​.­ar​/­656498​-­roca​ -­y​-­el​-­mito​-­del​-­genocidio, accessed 17 January 2018. Adelman argues that “revolutionary Buenos Aires was an Enlightenment birthright.” Adelman, Republic of Capital, 285. 53. Historians have increasingly acknowledged the decidedly illiberal tendencies of liberal nationalisms during this same period. Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-­Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Duncan Bell, ed., Reordering the World: Es­ says on Liberalism and Empire (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2018). 54. See Ryan, “Indigenous Possessions.” 55. Axel Lazzari and Diana Lenton, “Araucanization and the Nation, or How to Inscribe Foreign Indians upon the Pampas during the Last ­Century,” in Briones and Lanata, Con­temporary Perspectives, 34. 56. Hernán Feldman, “La cesura imposible: La cuestión de fronteras en la cultura Argentina (1870–1889),” MLN 124, no. 2 (2009): 404–24; Richard W. Slatta,

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NOTES TO PAGES 167–170 “Comparing and Exploring Frontier Myth and Real­ity in Latin Amer­i­ca,” History Compass 10, no. 5 (2012): 375–85; Kristine L. Jones, “Comparative Ethnohistory and the Southern Cone,” Latin American Research Review 29, no.  1 (1994): 107–18. 57. For a discussion of the rise of ethnography in Argentina in the 1870s, see Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 488–90. 58. In 1878, Zeballos wrote a tract for Julio Roca, La conquista de 15000 le­ guas, which was designed to convince members of Congress of the need for the impending expedition. Ines Yujnovsky, “La conquista visual del país de los araucanos,” Takwa 14 (2008): 108. 59. Rendering ­these spaces as national parks also denied the indios claims of owner­ship of the land. Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 22–24. 60. The same move was seen in the United States ­under the leadership of John Muir. See Gabriela A. Alvarez, “El lugar de los parques nacionales en la repre­sen­ ta­tion de una Patagonia turistica, discussion y habilitacion del paisaje patagonico durante el siglo XX,” Magallania 42, no. 1 (2014): 60. 61. The linkage between scientific classification and the indios was powerfully acknowledged by the exclusion of both from the reproduction of Blanes’s La ocupa­ ción militar de Río Negro on the 100-­peso bill. 62. ­There ­were, of course, exceptions to this, as during Rosas’s conquest of the desert in the 1830s. 63. For a fairly comprehensive list of the tratados, see Levaggi, Paz en la fron­ tera, 569–72. He includes a number of representative examples in his text. Some of ­these treaties, “tratados de paz,” documented po­liti­cal settlements between the forces of the republic and indios along the frontier. “Copia,” 26 August 1872, No. 1182, Compaña contra los Indios, AGE. ­Later, t­hese treaties assumed the form of contracts regarding the delivery of rations and staples to the tribes. See, for instance, “Solicitacion de raciones ir la tribu de Coliqueo,” 29 July 1876, No. 24-­B-7564, Frontera con los Indios, AGE. This document, r­unning through seven articles, provides a detailed list of the goods to be delivered to the tribe by state authorities. See also “Juan F. Gutierrez contrato para provisiones,” 6 November 1876, No. 2180, Frontera con los ­Indios. AGE. 64. See Jill St. Germain, Indian Treaty-­Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867–1877 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 65. For a discussion of how the treaties changed over time, as well as examples of the treaties themselves, see Claudia Briones, Mo­rita Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda: Capitulaciones, convenios y tratados con indigenas en Pampa y Patagonia, Argentina, 1742–1878 (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 2000). Briones observes that the category of “Argentine subject” resembled a previous category of “Indigenous citizens” (50–51). 66. Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 35–36. 67. See Chapter 5. 68. See generally Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 141–61; Claudia Salomón Tarquini, “Procesos de subalternización de la población indígena en Argentina: 252

NOTES TO PAGES 170–171 Los ranqueles en la Pampa, 1870–1970,” Revista de Indias 71, no.  252 (2011): 545–70. 69. For an example of a colonia and the type of bureaucratic discussion it provoked, see “Colonia General Conesa,” n.d., Sala VII Leg. 156, Archivo del Cnel Alvaro Barros, AGN. Many of the colonias w ­ ere connected with a religious congregation, which retained the title deed. Diaz and Falaschi, “Official Policies in the Seizure and Control of Indian Territories in Northern Patagonia,” 24. For example, Colonia General Conesa, which was established for the remnants of a tribe led by Cacique Catriel, fell u ­ nder the control of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. “Colonia General Conesa, Patagonia;” “Patagonia, Colonia Indigena: Decreto,” 14 February 1879; Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 412. The establishment and ­running of the colonias was detailed in the annual report of the Department of War. See, for example, Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 407–15. 70. Though ­there was a category of reservas (reserves), ­these w ­ ere dif­fer­ent legally than reservations in North Amer­ic­ a. Reservas provided the indios usufruct rights as opposed to title to land. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 164, n. 3. 71. This is in stark contrast to the emphasis on preserving “traditional society” espoused by the likes of Henry Maine. 72. “. . . ​el indio, conservando y trasmitiéndose el lenguaje, costumbres y espíritu de tribu.” Roca, “Memoria del Departmento de Guerra,” 407–8. 73. “. . . ​desaminar estos indios prisioneros, respetando la integridad de sus familias, dentro de las poblaciones rurales, donde, sometidos al trabajo que regenera y a la vida y ejemplo cotidiano de otros costumbres, que modificaran insensiblemente las propias, despojándoles hasta el lenguaje nativo como instrumental inútil, se obtendrá su transformación rápida y perpetua en el elemento civilizado y fuerza productiva.” Julio A. Roca, “Colonias indigenas, A S.E. el senor Gobernador de la Provincia de Tucuman,” 4 November 1878, AGE. Although this was addressed to the Governor of Tucuman, Roca’s efforts to expand the system of colonias during his presidency indicates his instructions ­here may be viewed as a general statement of policy. 74. Benjamin Victoria, “Memoria del Ministeria de Guerra y Marina,” 1881, AGE, xxxvi. 75. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 146. 76. “Memoria del Estado Mayor General del Ejército,” 1887, Biblioteca del Estado Mayor del Ejército, Buenos Aires (hereafter cited as BEM), 15–16. 77. Three of the eight leagues granted to Namuncurá and his followers ­were allotted to the cacique. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 169–70, nn. 17–18. 78. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 486. 79. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 146. 80. See, for example, María Alejandra Estrada, “¿Mesianismo salesiano en Patagonia septentrional? Último cuarto del siglo XIX, Pueblo General Roca?,” Re­ vista Española de Antropología Americana 41, no. 1 (2011): 97–116. 81. One significant exception to this is the Colonia Emilio Mitre, which was established in 1900 and populated by vari­ous victims of the conquest. Originally a proj­ect of Franciscan friars who sought to create an agricultural settlement for the 253

NOTES TO PAGES 171–173 indios, it lacked both ­water and state support, though not state policing. Hernández Graciela, “En tiempos del malón: Testimonios indígenas sobre la ‘conquista del desierto,’ ” Memoria Americana, no. 14 (2006): 143. See also Colonia Emilio Mitre, http://­www​.­lapampa​.­edu​.­ar​/­poblamientopampeano​/­PAGES​/­m​_­ind​_­colmitre​.­htm, accessed 17 January 2018; Claudia Salomón Tarquini, “Redes sociales y campos de negociacion en una colonia pastoral indigena (Emilio Mitre, La Pampa, principios del siglo XX),” Revista Estudios Digital, autumn 2010. 82. See Chapter 5. 83. Thomas Biolsi, “­Imagined Geographies: Sovereignty, Indigenous Space and American Indian Strug­ gle,” American Ethnologist 32, no.  2 (2005): 243; K. Tsianina Lomawaima, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Sovereignty,” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013): 333–51. 84. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 145, 158. 85. The respective totals for t­hese categories w ­ ere 1,717 and 2,236. Martin Garcia thus ­housed 10.5 ­percent of Indians and 4.74 ­percent of families. Mases, Estado y cuestión indigena, 146–47. 86. Yujnovsky, “La conquista visual del país de los araucanos,” 108; Mariano Nagy and Alexis Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín García. Entre el control estatal dentro de la isla y las prácticas de distribución de indígenas (1871– 1886),” Corpus 1, no. 2 (2011). 87. See Nagy and Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín García.” 88. Indian prisoners ­were also used as ­labor on the spot. For example, some captured indios ­were put to work as forced ­labor on Fort General Roca. “. . . ​sobre indios que debe ser ocupades a las trabajos de Gral. Roca,” 9 May 1884, No. 32– 8455, Frontera con los Indios, AGE. 89. See, for instance, “Fort Snelling Concentration Camp Dakota Prisoners, 1862–3,” American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 1–2 (2004): 170–74. Flinders Island off of Tasmania has been described as a concentration camp for aborigines. Benjamin Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide, 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (2004): 175. The Andaman Island penal colony could likewise be described as such in British India. Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colo­ nialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). This, of course, raises the question of the difference between concentration camps and penal colonies. For a more general discussion of the idea of concentration camps, see Vinay Lal, “The Concentration Camp and Development: The Pasts and F ­ uture of Genocide,” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 220– 43; Andrea Pitzer, One Long Night: a Global History of Concentration Camps (New York: ­Little, Brown and Com­pany, 2017). 90. On American assimilationist policies of the 1880s and 1890s, see E.  N. Olund, “From Savage Space to Governable Space: The Extension of United States Judicial Sovereignty over Indian Country in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Cultural Ge­ ographies 9, no. 2 (2002). 91. On the church’s activities in Patagonia, see, for example, Estrada, “¿Mesianismo salesiano en Patagonia septentrional?”

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NOTES TO PAGES 173–176 92. A kind of “who’s who” of impor­tant caciques is Meinrado Hux, Caciques huilliches y salineros (Buenos Aires: El Elefante Blanco, 2004). 93. Ingrid De Jong and Silvia Ratto, “Redes políticas an el área Arauco-­ Pampeana: La confederación indígena de Calfucurá (1830–1870),” Intersecciones en Antropología 9 (2008): 241–60; Ingrid De Jong, “Armado y desarmado de una confederación: El liderazgo de Calfucurá en el período de la organización nacional,” Quinto Sol 13 (2009): 11–45. 94. See K. L. Jones, “Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas, 1750– 1880” (University of Chicago, 1984). 95. Following his surrender, Namuncurá was integrated into the apparatus of the Argentine state. In his l­ater life, he was appointed a coronel and given three leagues of land in San Ignacio (Neuquén). His tribe was given an additional five leagues. Adalberto  A. Clifton Goldney, Monografia del indio, coronel de la na­ cion, D. Manuel Namuncurá, “garron de piedra.” (Buenos Aires, 1947). 96. “Memoria presentada por el Ministro Secretario de Estado en el Departmento de Guerra y Marina,” 1878, AGE, p. 89. 97. Estanislao Severo Zeballos, Viaje al país de los araucanos (Buenos Aires: Ediciones El Elefante Blanco, 2005), 212. 98. “. . . ​un archivo, el archivo del gobierno o cacicazgo de Salinas Grandes. . . . ​ Estaban allí (y fue completado después el hallazgo por una donación de documentos que el coronel Levalle tomara antes a los indios), las comunicaciones cambiadas de potencia a potencia entre el gobierno argentin y los caciques araucanos, las cartas de los jefes de frontera, las cuentas de comerciantes que ocultamente servían a los vándalos, las listas de las tribus indígenas y sus jefes, dependientes del cacicazgo de Salinas, los sellos gubernativos grabados en metal, las pruebas de la complicidad de los salvajes en las guerras civiles de las Republica a f­avor y encontra alternativamente de los partidos, y en medio de tan curiosos materiales no faltaba un diccionario de la lengua castellana, de que se servían los indígenas para interpretar las comunicaciones del gobierno argentino, de los jefes militares, de sus espías (este archive prueba que eran numerosos) y de los comerciantes, con los que sostenían cuentas Corrientes tan religiosamente respetadas (causa esto asombro), como pueden serlo entrar los mercados de Paris y de Buenos Aires.” Zeballos, Viaje al país de los araucanos, 212–13. 99. “. . . ​documentos dignos de la observación de la historia, suscritos por presidentes, ministros y otros altos dignatarios del Estado en que se trata de iguale a igual rebajando la dignidad del país.” Juan Guillermo Durán, Namun­ curá y Zeballos: El archivo del cacicazgo de Salinas Grandes, 1870–1880 (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Teologia, Universidad Catolica Argentina; Bouquet Editores, 2006), 52. 100. “—­Mire, hermano [dijo Mariano], por que no me habla la verdad?—­Le he dicho a usted la verdad, le conteste.—­Ahora va a ver, hermano. Y esto diciendo, se levanto, entro en el toldo y volvió trayendo un cajón de pino, con tapa corrediza. Lo abrió y saco de el una porción de bolsas de zaraza con jareta. Era su archive. Cada bolsita contenía notas oficiales, cartas, borradores, periódicos. El conocía cada papel perfectamente. Podía apuntar con el dedo a párrafo que quería referirse.

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NOTES TO PAGES 176–178 Revolvió su archivó, tomo una bolsita, descorrió la jareta y saco de ella un impreso muy doblado y arrugado, revelando que había sido manoseado muchas veces. Era La Tribuna de Buenos Aires. En ella había marcado un articulo sobre el gran ferrocarril interoceánico. Me lo indico, diciéndome:—­ Lea, hermano.” Quoted in Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 29. Mariano Rosas was named a­ fter the famed Argentine caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas. 101. He had been educated in Chile and served as Juan Calfacurá’s secretary. Upon Calfacurá’s death, the parlamento de los indios de Salinas Grandes (Indian parliament of Salinas Grandes) elected a triumvirate to lead them, including himself, Manuel Namuncurá, and Alvarito Reumay. Manuel quickly established himself as sole leader, ­after which Bernardo served as both a secretary and counselor. Hux, Caciques huilliches y salineros, 193–96. Bernardo at times served as his brother-­in-­law’s translator. Bechis, “La ‘organización nacional,’ ” 3. During the period between Namuncurá’s expulsion from the Salinas Grandes and his surrender in 1884, he was served by an additional secretary, Juan Paillecura. Clifton Goldney, Monografia del indio, 53. Additionally, white cautivos (captives) kidnapped during raids, as well as passing merchants and traders, served as translators. Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 30. 102. Julio Estaban Vezub, “Mapuche-­Tehuelche Spanish Writing and Argentinian-­ Chilean Expansion during the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” in Written Culture in a Colonial Context: Africa and the Amer­i­cas, 1500–1900, ed. Adrien Delmas and Nigel Penn (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 215. 103. It was also seen as a resource by caciques for establishing their own primacy among the indios. Vezub, “Mapuche-­Tehuelche Spanish Writing,” 229. 104. Interestingly, Lavalle’s find was part of a larger discovery that included the tomb of Juan Calfacurá. In addition to the two boxes of papers full of Namuncurá’s papers, his expedition also took the skull of Calfacurá, which was ­later deposited in the ethnographic museum of La Plata. Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos, 44–49. 105. See Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geo­graph­i­cal Construc­ tion of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 106. See C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 107. “El antiguo rey de la Pampa, el antes temido y poderoso Namuncurá, es ahora agricultor de una colonia indígena.” Benjamin Victoria, “Memoria de Ministerio de Guerra y Marina,” 1884, BEM, 6. 108. Bechis, “La ‘organización nacional,’ ” 9, 15. 109. Saygüeque is the subject of the superb work of Julio Vezub, the most impor­ tant and complete part of which is his biography of the cacique. Julio Vezub, Val­ entin Saygüeque y la “gobernació n indigena de Las Manzanas”: Poder y etnicidad en la Patagonia septentrional (1860–1881) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2009). Nearly the entirety of this correspondence can be found in the Barros papers in the Archivo General de la Nacion in Buenos Aires in Sala VII, Legajo 723, “Angel Justiniano Carranza,” and Legajo 155, “Alvaro Barros.”

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NOTES TO PAGES 178–181 110. For a reproduction of this treaty, see Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 176–80. 111. This correspondence included treaty relations that promised the delivery of rations to the cacique and his followers. For a discussion of such rations, see, for example, “Frontera,” 11 February  1878, No.  16–7966, Frontera con los Indios, AGE. 112. Maria Paula Irurtia, “El avance de la frontera. La vision indigena respecto de los blancos en Pampa y Patagonia en el siglo XIX,” in Fronteras: Espacios de interacción en las tierras bajas del sur de Amer­ic­a, ed. Carina  P. Lucaioli and Lidia R. Nacuzzi (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Argentina de Anthropologia, 2010). 113. The area is known as such for its agricultural productivity, especially along the Río Negro. ­Today it constitutes one of the most agriculturally productive parts of the country. Much of its fruit produce is exported for hard currency. 114. This is best translated as “Governorship of the Country of the Apples.” 115. “Villegas a Saygüeque,” 19 August 1879, Sala VII Leg. 723, Archivo Angel Justiniano Carranza, AGN. This is only one of many such examples that can be found in this collection, as well as the Barros Papers (Leg. 155). 116. Article 5. See Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 178. 117. With a reduced salary and minus the appointment as a lieutenant coronel. Briones, Carrasco, and IWGIA, Pacta sunt servanda, 181–83. 118. Even in his posed photographed image, his authenticity is challenged by national authorities who insist he is an Araucano, and thus a Chilean Indian. 119. “. . . ​un aliado impor­tantísimo, que cooperara a la consolidación de los intereses argentinos en el Río Negro.” Estanislao Severo Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas: Estudio sobre la traslación de la frontera sur de la república al Río Negro (n.p.: Forgotten Books, 2016), 365. Zeballos also characterized him as the most power­ful chief in Patagonia (364). 120. Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 378–79. 121. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 529–30. 122. Elizabeth Garrels, “Sobre indios, afroamericanos y los racismos de Sarmiento,” Revista Iberoamericana 63, no. 178–79 (1997): 99–113. 123. Martin Garcia itself served as a l­abor reservoir for the city of Buenos Aires. Con­temporary newspaper accounts, and even advertisements, attest to the use of Indian captives as l­ abor by both the army and private individuals. Mariano Nagy, “La conquista del desierto,” http://­www​.­congresojudio​.­org​.­ar​/­coloquio​ _­nota​.­php​?­id​=­140, accessed 17 January 2018. See also Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide,” 77. 124. See J.  E. Vezub, “The Convoy of Musters and Casimiro: The ‘Tehuelche Issue’ Revisited by Social Networks Analy­sis. Punta Arenas-­Carmen de Patagones, 1869–70 [La caravana de musters y Casimiro: La ‘cuestión Tehuelche’ revisitada por el análisis de redes. Punta Arenas-­Carmen],” Magallania 43, no.  1 (2015): 15–35. 125. Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 353. 126. For a reproduction of the treaty recognizing Casimiro’s status, see Hux, Caciques huilliches y salineros, 415–15; Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 353–55.

257

NOTES TO PAGES 182–185 127. See generally Brendan Lanctot, “The Tiger and the Daguerreotype: Early Photography and Sovereignty in Post-­Revolutionary Latin Amer­i­ca,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 1–17. 128. See, for example, Mateo Martinic, “Consideraciones sobre el primer retrato fotografico de un Patagon,” Magallania 32 (2004): 23–27. 129. “Retrato del Cacique Patagòn Casimiro en 1866,” No. 289897, Archivo General de la Nación, Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos, Buenos Aires. 130. See Beverly Chico, “Liberty Cap,” in Hats and Headwear around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2013). 131. When revolting slaves donned them during the Haitian Revolution ­under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, Eu­ro­pe­ans trembled at the potential excesses of the revolution in the overturning of the Atlantic’s racial order. Philippe R. Girard, Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of In­de­pen­dence, 1801–1804 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014), 262–63. And the British East India Com­pany faced one of its indigenous mortal threats in the person of Tipu Sultan, whose armies defending his capital of Seringapatam also wore ­these markers of liberty. C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Em­ pire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), 173. 132. On the pro­cess of bordering and its importance in Argentina, see Harambour, “Borderland Sovereignties.” 133. Lenton et  al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide”; Gabriela Nacach, “Cuestión de paradigmas: Conquista, representaciones y pensamiento racial en la Pampa y Patagonia Argentina (1860–1915),” Eä: Revista de Humanidades Médicas & Estudios Sociales de La Ciencia y La Tecnología 1, no. 2 (2009). Lazzari and Lenton trace the assertion of the Indian’s Chilean roots to Estanislao Zeballos’s La conquista de las quince mil leguas. Lazzari and Lenton, “Araucanization and the Nation,” 35. See also Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, chap. 8. 134. This is not to say that it prevented f­ uture competition within that order. 135. Richard White, The ­Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the ­Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 136. Irurtia, “El avance de la frontera,” 233. 137. B. D. Hopkins, The Making of Modern Af­ghan­i­stan, ed. Megan Vaughan and Richard Drayton, Cambridge Imperial and Post-­Colonial Studies Series (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 138. “Geografia operaciones recientes de frontera . . . ​extracto,” n.d., Sala VII Leg. 1382, Archivo Julio A. Roca, AGN, 121–30. 139. George Victor Rauch, “The Argentine-­Chilean Boundary Dispute and the Development of the Argentine Armed Forces” (New York University, 1989). 140. See Lazzari and Lenton, “Araucanization and the Nation”; Diana Lenton, “De centauros a protegidos: La construccion del sujeto de la politica indigenista Argentina desde los debated parlamentarios (1880–1970)” (Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2005); Richard O. Perry, “Argentina and Chile: The Strug­gle for Patagonia 1843–1881,” Amer­i­cas 36, no. 3 (1980): 347–63. 258

NOTES TO PAGES 185–187 141. Elizabeth Baigent, “Holdich, Sir Thomas Hungerford (1843–1929), Surveyor and Geographer,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33932. Holdich authored a volume about Argentina and Chile based on his experiences demarcating their southern border. Thomas Hungerford Holdich, The Countries of the King’s Award (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1904). I thank Kyle Gardner for this reference. 142. Fotheringham authored a hyperbolically self-­serving autobiography. Interestingly, his account of the conquest of the desert in his autobiography, La vida de un soldado, makes hardly any mention of Indians. He portrays cold, rather than the Indians, as the army’s main antagonist (337–54). The work was initially published in 1925 and was dedicated to his patron and mentor, Julio A. Roca. For an overview of Fotheringham’s life and biographical details, see Eduardo M. Tyrell, “Gral de Bgada Ignacio Hamilton Fotheringham inglés, de nacimiento, Argentino y niocuarteuse po adopción,” (n.d.), http://letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com/aaa​ /tyrrell_eduardo/gral_de_bgada_ignacio_hamilton.htm. 143. For a discussion of Fotheringham’s role in the conquest of the Chaco, see Christine Joy Mathias, “South Amer­i­ca’s Final Frontier: Indigenous Leadership and the Conquestion of the Gran Chaco, 1870–1955” (Yale University, 2015), 44–46. 144. This was undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the ­family’s Catholicism. 145. Upon his arrival in Bombay, he was assigned as a midshipman first to the Elphinstone and then to the Semiramis where he served as the Commodore’s Midshipman to the commander of the Persian Gulf squadron, William Balfour. His ser­vice rec­ords are listed in India Register, 2nd ed. (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1859 / 1860), p. 96 of Bombay section, as well as Indian Army and Civil Ser­vice List, 2nd ed. (London: W. H. Allen & Co., January 1861 / 1862), p. 457. According to t­ hese rec­ords, where Fotheringham is mistakenly listed as “J. Fotheringham” (though in the index he is correctly listed as “Ignatius Fotheringham”), he was appointed a captain’s clerk on 3 December 1858, though his assignment to the Elphinstone was not recorded ­until the 1860 volume. His 1861 rec­ord notes his promotion to Commodore’s Clerk on the Falkland; he was l­ater transferred to the Tigris (1862 volume), which also notes his impending reassignment to the Ajdaha. 146. Fotheringham claimed his dismissal was due to a diplomatic incident he caused while visiting a mosque in Bushire, the port with the Residency for the Persian Gulf. He vaguely hints his dismissal was as much a consequence of anti-­ Catholic sentiment within the Com­pany as a just punishment for his transgression. 147. See, for instance, Abraham Matthews, Crónica de la colonia galesa de la Patagonia (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Alfonsina, 1995). 148. The painting was completed in 1896. It is currently ­housed in the National Historical Museum in Buenos Aires. 149. The scene depicted never happened, and many of the subjects included ­were never in such close proximity to one another. 150. In the original painting, to the left of Roca in the foreground, Indians are depicted being ministered to by a Catholic priest, Manuel Espinosa. However, the image was cut to exclude them on the bill, just as they have been cut out of the Argentine national memory. Briones and Delrio, “ ‘Conquest of the Desert,’ ” 77, 259

NOTES TO PAGES 188–196 n. 13. Similarly excised are the scientists and naval officers standing on the right side of the painting, representing the conquest as a scientific undertaking and ­technological pro­gress. Roberto Amigo, “Region y nacion: Juan Manuel Blanes en la Argentina,” in Exposicion Juan Manuel Blanes: La nacion naciente, 1830–1901 (Buenos Aires: Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blanes: Asociacion Amigos del Museo Juan Manual Blanes, 2001), 72–74. 151. The image was placed on the bill in 1980, during the last military dictatorship, which, interestingly enough, was called “el pro­cesso de reorganización nacional” and is t­oday popularly referred to simply as “el pro­cesso.” Clearly, the dictatorship sought to place the military at the center of the national memory in order to secure its own place in the then national pre­sent.

conclusion 1. Karl Adalbert Hampel, “The Dark(er) Side of ‘State Failure’: State Formation and Socio-­Political Variation,” Third World Quarterly (July 2015): 1–20. 2. “President Approves FATA-­KP Merger Bill,” Dawn, 1 June 2018, https://­www​ .­dawn​.­com​/­news​/­1411320, accessed on 14 August 2018. The amendment amalgamates the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which are ruled by the FCR, with the province of Khyber-­Pakhtunkhwa, thus extending normal civil administration over the entirety of the frontier. For background, see Imtiaz Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” Special Report 421 (Washington, DC, 2018). 3. Such integration w ­ ill undoubtedly run the gauntlet of many prob­lems—­ political as well as bureaucratic. See Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas”; Harrison Akins, “Mashar versus Kashar in Pakistan’s FATA: Intra-­Tribal Conflict and the Obstacles to Reform,” Asian Survey 58, no. 6 (2018): 1136–59; Khan Zeb and Zahid Shahab Ahmed, “Structural Vio­lence and Terrorism in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” Civil Wars 21, no. 1 (2019): 1–24. 4. See Chapter 2. 5. Alexandre Kedar, Ahmad Amara, and Oren Yiftachel, Emptied Lands: A ­Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018). 6. Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, eds., The Taliban and the Crisis of Af­ghan­ i­stan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 231; Anatol Lieven, “Counter-­Insurgency in Pakistan: The Role of Legitimacy,” Small Wars and Insur­ gencies 28, no. 1 (2 January 2017): 166–90. 7. Magnus Marsden and Benjamin Hopkins, eds., Beyond Swat: History, So­ ciety and Economy along the Afghanistan-­Pakistan Frontier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 8. As spectacularly, the stand-­off and eventual storming of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in 2007 is considered by many analysts, scholars, and Pakistanis to have been a definitional moment in the Global War on Terror when the vio­lence was domesticated within Pakistan itself. See, for instance, Joshua White, “Vigilante Islamism in Pakistan: Religious Party Responses to the Lal Masjid Crisis,” 260

NOTES TO PAGES 196–199 Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 7 (n.d.): 50–65, 130; Adam Dolnik and Khuram Iqbal, Negotiating the Siege of the Lal Masjid (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2016). 9. Ahmad Amara, Ismael Abu-­Saad, and Oren Yiftachel, Indigenous (In)justice: ­Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab / Negev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel, Emptied Lands. 10. Selected Economic Characteristics, 2012–16 American Community Survey 5-­Year Estimates, https://­factfinder​.­census​.­gov​/­faces​/­tableservices​/­jsf​/­pages​ /­productview​.­xhtml​?­src​=­CF, accessed 13 August 2018. The national averages are 15.1 ­percent and $55,322, respectively. 11. See, for example, “The Thin Red Line,” Earth Island Journal 30, no. 3 (September 2015): 21; Lydia Millet, “Selling Off the Holy Land,” New York Times, 29 May 2015. 12. See Emily Bregel, “Senate Passes Defense Bill, Including Mine Land-­Swap in Superior,” Arizona Daily Star, n.d.; “Sen. Sanders Introduces Save Oak Flat Act,” US Fed News Ser­vice, Including US State News, 30 November  2015, ProQuest 1737408711; “Statement by Senator John McCain on Protest of Resolution Copper Land Exchange in Washington, D.C. ­Today,” VoteSmart​.­org, 22 July 2015, https://­votesmart​.­org​/­public​-­statement​/­1001325​/­statement​-­by​-­senator​-­john​-­mccain​ -­on​-­protest​-­of​-­resolution​-­copper​-­land​-­exchange​-­in​-­washington​-­dc​-­today#​.­XcWZQl​ VKipo, accessed on 8 November, 2019; John McCain, “Copper Mine ­Will Boost Economy, Protect Sacred Sites,” AZCentral​.­com, 28 December 2018, https://­www​ .­azcentral​.­com​/­story​/­opinion​/­op​-­ed​/­2014​/­12​/­29​/­resolution​-­copper​-­pro​/­20865455​/­, accessed on 13 August 2018; “Sanders Fights BHP, Rio Tinto,” Australian Finan­ cial Review, 29 March 2016. 13. Ali, “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” 4. 14. The Morenci mine, now run by Freeport-­McMoRan, has long been a source of pollution affecting the San Carlos reservation and its inhabitants. Phelps Dodge agreed to pay $9 million in penalties and remediation for the mine in the 1980s. See “Phelps Dodge Corp. ­Settles U.S. Charges on ­Water Pollution,” Wall Street Journal (1923–­Current file), n.d., http://­search​.­proquest​.­com​/­docview​/­135166754​/­, accessed 13 August 2019. For the recent settlement between the US government and Freeport-­McMoRan for environmental damage caused by the mine, see “Freeport-­McMoRan Corp. and Freeport McMoRan Morenci Inc. ­Will Pay $6.8 Million in Damages for Injuries to Natu­ral Resources from the Morenci Copper Mine in Arizona,” States News Ser­ vice, 24 April 2012. 15. On the use of Apache Scouts, see Edwin R Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014); John G. Bourke, “The Use of Apache Scouts, 1873–1886,” in Spencer C. Tucker, The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Po­liti­cal, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-­CLIO, 2011), eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), accessed 13 August  2018). On the Navajo, and other Native American “code talkers,” see William  C. Meadows, “ ‘They Had a Chance to Talk to One Another . . .’: The Role of Incidence in Native American Code Talking,” Ethnohistory 56, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 269–84. 261

NOTES TO PAGES 199–204 16. Nikolas Gardner, “Morale and Discipline in a Multiethnic Army: The Indian Army in Mesopotamia (1914–1917),” Journal of the ­Middle East and Africa 4, no. 1 (1 January 2013): 1–20; Charles Townshend, Desert Hell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 17. See generally Scott Rushforth, “Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of Chiricahua National Monument and Fort Bowie National Historic Site. National Park Ser­vice Task Agreement J1233040013” (Denver, 2010). 18. See Radikha Singha, The Coolie’s ­Great War: Indian ­Labour in a Global Conflict, 1914–1921 (London: C. Hurst and Co Publishers Ltd, 2019). 19. Robert Nichols, A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), chaps. 4–6. 20. Claudia Salomón Tarquini, “Procesos de subalternización de la población indígena en Argentina: Los ranqueles en la Pampa, 1870–1970,” Revista de Indias 71, no. 252 (2011): 555; Mariano Nagy, “Circulación e incorporación en la frontera: Trayectorias indígenas tras la ‘conquista del desierto,’  ” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (Online), October  5, 2012, https://­journals​.­openedition​.­org​ /­nuevomundo​/­64156#quotation, accessed October 25, 2019. 21. Mariano Nagy and Alexis Papazian, “El campo de concentración de Martín García: Entre el control estatal dentro de la isla y las prácticas de distribución de indígenas (1871–1886),” Corpus 1, no. 2 (2011). 22. T.  R. Moreman, “The Arms Trade and the North-­West Frontier Pathan Tribes, 1890–1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, no.  2 (1994): 187–216; B. D. Hopkins, “Race, Sex and Slavery: ‘Forced L ­ abour’ in Central Asia and Af­ ghan­ i­ stan in the Early Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 2 (2007): 629–71. 23. See, for instance, Jonathan Goodhand, Bandits, Borderlands and Opium Wars: Afghan State-­Building Viewed from the Margins (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2009). 24. Theodore Christov, Before Anarchy: Hobbes and His Critics in Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jeremy Larkins, From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and Politics before Westphalia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner, eds., Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Pre­sent and ­Future of a Contested Concept (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 25. This is not unique to the American government, as demonstrated by the treatment of the Mohawk nation, whose reservation at Akwesasne, straddling the  US-­Canadian border, remains a hotly disputed site of sovereignty. See, for instance, Audra Simpson, “Subjects of Sovereignty: Indigeneity, the Revenue ­ Rule, and Juridics of Failed Consent,” Law and Con­temporary Prob­lems 71, no. 3 (2008). 26. See, for instance, Pekka Hämäläinen and S. Truett, “On Borderlands,” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (2011): 338–61. 27. The newly in­de­pen­dent South Sudan, however, may be a case of such frontier genesis. 28. John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of ­Free Trade,” Economic History Review 6, no. 1 (1953): 1–15. 262

NOTES TO PAGES 204–205 29. David Rock, “The British in Argentina: From Informal Empire to Postcolonialism,” in Informal Empire in Latin Amer­i­ca: Culture, Commerce and Capital, ed. Matthew Brown (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2009), 49–77. 30. Jens Uwe Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-­ West Africa: German Colonialism, Indians, and American Westward Expansion,” Modern Intel­ lectual History 7, no. 3 (2010): 523–52. 31. Christian Tripodi, “Good for One but Not the Other: The ‘Sandeman System’ of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-­West Frontier 1877–1947,” Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 772–86. 32. Paul  D. Barclay, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018); Robert Eskildsen, “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (2002): 388–418; Reo Matsuzaki, Statebuilding by Imposition: Re­sis­tance and Control in Colonial Taiwan and the Philippines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019); Ronald G. Knapp and Laurence Hauptman, “ ‘Civilization and Savagery’: The Japa­ nese and the United States Indian Policy, 1895–1915,” Pacific Historical Review (1980): 647–52; Kirsten L. Ziomek, Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial ­Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). 33. Steven Sabol, The Touch of Civilization: Comparing American and Rus­sian Internal Colonization (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017); Dominik Gutmeyr, Borderlands Orientalism or How the Savage Lost His Nobility: The Rus­sian Perception of the Caucasus between 1817 and 1878 (Vienna: LIT, 2017); Eva Maria Stolberg, “The Siberian Frontier between ‘White Mission’ and ‘Yellow Peril,’ 1890s–1920s,” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (2004): 165–81; Andrew A. Gentes, “Peopling the Rus­sian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, and: Sibir ´ v Sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii [Siberia as Part of the Rus­sian Empire] (Review).” Kritika: Explorations in Rus­sian and Eurasian History 10, no. 4 (2018): 963–73; Timothy K. Blauvelt, “Military-­Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–83,” Kritika: Explorations in Rus­sian and Eur­ asian History 11, no. 2 (2010): 221–55. For a discussion of the formative role the frontier has played in Rus­sian history, see Brian J. Boeck, Imperial Bound­aries: Cos­ sack Communities and Empire-­Building in the Age of Peter the G ­ reat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), chap. 1; Michael Khodarkovsky, Rus­sia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). The FATA has rather bafflingly been held up as a model for con­temporary Rus­ sian Chechnya. Maria Sultan, “The Quest for Peace in Chechnya: The Relevance of Pakistan’s Tribal Areas Experience,” Central Asian Survey 22, no. 4 (2003): 437–57. 34. John P. Clum, “Lo, the Poor Indian Agent,” 1930, AZ003, Box 1, Folder 9, pp.  12–14, Papers of John  P. Clum, UAL. See also Matsuzaki, Statebuilding by Imposition; Rick Baldoz and Cesar Ayala, “The Bordering of Amer­i­ca: Colonialism and Citizenship in the Philippines and Puerto Rico,” Centro Journal 25, no.  1 (2013): 76–105; Alfred W. McCoy, “Covert Netherworld: An Invisible Interstice in the Modern World System,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 4 (2016): 847–79. 263

NOTES TO PAGES 205–206 35. Andres Rodriguez, “Nation-­Building and Anthropology during the Republican Period: The Missionary Anthropological Enterprise in Western Sichuan (1922–1945)” [Minguo Shiqi de Mingzugoujian he Renleixue: Sichuan Xibu de Chuanjiao Renleixue Shiye (1922–1945)], in Duoyuan zuqun yu Zhongxi wenhua jiaoliu, ed. Temule (Shanghai: Renmin Chubanshe, 2010), 105–33. On Chinese frontier policy generally, see Matthew  W. Mosca, From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Diana Lary, ed., The Chinese State at the Borders (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007); Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eur­ asia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010); Xiaofei Kang and Donald S. Sutton, Contesting the Yellow Dragon: Ethnicity, Religion, and the State in the Sino-­Tibetan Borderland (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Eric Vanden Bussche, “Contested Realms: Colonial Rivalry, Border Demarcation, and State-­Building in Southwest China, 1885– 1960” (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Charles Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 36. See, for example, Carwil Bjork-­James, “Hunting Indians: Globally Circulating Ideas and Frontier Practices in the Colombian Llanos,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no.  1 (6 January  2015): 98–129; Catherine Legrand, Frontier Expansion and Peasant Protest in Colombia, 1850–1936 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986); Cynthia Radding Murrieta, Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 37. Remarks by President Trump to the 72nd  Session of the United Nations General Assembly, 19 September  2017, https://­www​.­whitehouse​.­gov​/­briefings​ -­s tatements​ /­r emarks​ -­p resident​ -­t rump​ -­7 2nd​ -­s ession​ -­u nited​ -­n ations​ -­g eneral​ -­assembly​/­, accessed on 13 August 2018. See also Stewart M. Patrick, “Trump’s Sovereignty Doctrine,” Council on Foreign Affairs, https://­www​.­cfr​.­org​/­blog​/­trumps​ -­sovereignty​-­doctrine, accessed on 13 August 2018.

264

Archives Consulted

Archivo General de la Nación, Argentina —­Archivo Angel Justiniano Carranza —­Archivo del Cnel Alvaro Barros —­Archivo Julio A. Roca Archivo General del Ejército, Argentina Biblioteca del Estado Mayor del Ejército Argentino, Argentina Bodleian Library, Rhodes House, UK —­Private Papers of Frederick Lugard British Library, India Office Rec­ords Library of Congress, USA National Archives, UK National Archives and Rec­ords Administration, USA National Archives of India Tribal Research Cell, Pakistan University of Arizona Library, Special Collections, USA —­Private Papers of John P. Clum

265

Acknowl­edgments

Like many of the ­peoples portrayed ­here, the origins of this book lay in a seemingly ethereal, indefinite past. Though I can recall fragments of the proj­ect coming together, I cannot pinpoint a single moment of genesis. I remember giving a job pre­ sen­ta­tion at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008 vaguely talking about a proj­ect focusing on “tribe” as a category of colonial control. That was at best the early stages, understandable given that my first book only appeared that year. I had the g­ reat fortune of enjoying a three-­year postdoc as a Ju­nior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. That, combined with a year at the LSE as well as a further year at Trinity College Cambridge, afforded me the unparalleled opportunity to mine the archives and think. I spent much of that time in the National Archives in India, as well as the British Library. And somewhere between t­hose two, and in writing one book and editing another on the Afghan frontier with my good friend Magnus Marsden, I stumbled across the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). My initial reaction to the FCR was something to the effect of “That’s so wrong.” But in looking at the spaces to which it applied—­the colonial tribal agencies and the postcolonial Federally Administered Tribal Areas—­I felt I recognized ­those places, and not ­because of my previous scholarship. Though they ­were not called such in the colonial, postcolonial, or scholarly lit­er­a­ture, t­hese ­were clearly reservations, much like the ones I was vaguely familiar with growing up in the United States. And so the seed was planted. With nurturing and a g­ reat deal of patience—­not all of which was mine—it has fi­nally come to fruition ­here. Initially, I thought the FCR would provide an in­ter­est­ing article about a gross, and continuing, colonial injustice. Yet the more I looked into it, the more perversely gripping the story grew. I soon arrived at a point where I had too much for an article, yet not enough for a book, which nobody would read in any case. But I had something more—­something invaluable: an idea that the FCR was itself not the story, but rather a character in the story. And that story is frontier governmentality—­the tale of how bureaucrats, administrators, colonial and national officials, and men 267

Acknowl­e dgments on the spot ruled the p ­ eople of the proverbial hills—be they a­ ctual hills, marshlands, or desert “wastes.” I have been both fascinated by and fortunate to follow the leads of this story around the globe. And while I know the argument and narrative I pre­sent ­here are incomplete, I believe they make a good start. That start would not have been pos­si­ble without incurring an enormous number of debts along the way—­from individuals and institutions around the world. Intellectually, I ­shall forever be indebted to a long list of mentors, colleagues, and friends who have pushed, prodded, and supported me at ­every step of the journey. I would not be where I am t­ oday without the belief, support, and friendship of Joya Chatterji. I am still not sure what she saw in an inarticulate undergraduate, but what­ ever she did, she de­cided to invest in me. And I am forever grateful. My PhD supervisor, Chris Bayly, trained me well and instilled in me a humility before his erudition, breadth, and inquisitiveness even before I met him. When I moved to the United States to take up my tenure-­track position, I had the ­great fortune to become the intellectual mentee of Dane Kennedy. A kind and caring colleague, he has an incisive wit that is matched only by his solicitude and graciousness. Dane’s generosity of spirit has been matched by many of my colleagues at the George Washington (GW) University, including Paula Alonso, Dina Khoury, Deepa Ollapally, Katrin Schultheiss, David Silverman, Denver Brunsman, and Tyler Anbinder, among many ­others. I am thankful daily for my happy home at GW. Of course, ­there is a wider body of scholars to whom I owe a ­great deal of gratitude—­intellectual as well as emotional. The relatively small but growing band of scholars who work on Af­ghan­i­stan has proven time and again to be an extremely supportive community of knowledge, and my work bears the marks of its members’ individual and collective contributions. More widely, I have benefited from the insight, knowledge, and forbearance of colleagues whose own specializations range much further afield than my own. Though I ­will undoubtedly, and unintentionally, leave some out, it would be remiss of me not to mention some fellow travelers by name: Magnus Marsden, Shah Mahmud Hanifi, Robert Nichols, Robert Crews, Amna Qayyum, Elisabeth Leake, Martin Bayly, Naysan Adlparvar, Ayesha Jalal, Ben Johnson, Andrew Greybill, Keren Weitzberg, Hannah Whittaker, Bill Callahan, Taylor Sherman, Justin Jones, Kyle Gardner, Bérénice Guyot-­Réchard, Julio Vezub, Geraldine Davies Lenoble, Amanda Cheney, Tom Simpson, Yaqoob Bangash, Dan Haines, Sabrina Katz, and Brandon Roselius. My editors at Harvard, Joyce Seltzer and Kathleen McDermott, have been an absolute joy to work with. And the comments and insights of the three anonymous readers for the Press both encouraged and challenged me. The research for this work was supported by a wide variety of institutions spanning the globe, including Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the George Washington University; the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, where I enjoyed a fellowship in 2015; the Leverhulme Trust, which supported a major grant award; the School of Oriental and African Studies; STANCE at Lund University; the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, where I had the good fortune to take a Se­nior Research fellowship; the Sigur Center for Asian Studies (of which I am now director); and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supported my participation in a summer seminar. The staff and ar268

Acknowl­e dgments chivists at the British Library, the National Archives in the United Kingdom, the National Archives of India, the Archivo General de la Nación (Argentina), and the Archivo General del Ejército (Argentina), as well ­those of the Special Collections at the University of Arizona all provided critical assistance to the proj­ect. Portions of Chapter 2 ­were first published as “The Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 2 (2015): 369–89. I thank the editors of JAS for granting their permission for the material to be reprinted. Fi­nally, none of this would have been pos­si­ble without the love, support, and tolerance of my ­family. They have quite literally followed me across the globe in pursuit of this work. My wife, Lila, has been a rock of support like no other. I ­will never be able to express my gratitude or love sufficiently in words. This book roughly coincides with the life of our eldest d ­ aughter, so t­ hese pages w ­ ill forever be indelibly marked by the memories of our ­children. And it is to them this book is dedicated, with all my love.

269

Index

Note: Figures are indexed in italic. Abbott, James, 112; Abbottabad, 112 Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, An (Elphinstone), 17 Af­ghan­i­stan: border conflict with Pakistan, 195–196; as buffer state, 25; Frontier Crimes Regulation, 43–44; in­de­pen­dence, 215n11, 215n14; treaty of friendship with Britain, 225n8 (see also Treaty of Rawalpindi). See also British India’s North-­West Frontier Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa. See Frere Agror Valley Act III, 50 All-­India Congress, 66 Al-­Shabaab terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196 Alsina, Adolfo, 163 American Civil War, 118 American frontier: characteristics, 100–101, 146; closure, 14–15; construction, 150–151; financial resources, 146; governance, 146, 150 American Indians: administrative control, 141–142; assimilation policy, 137, 146; boarding schools, 137; cap­i­tal­ist economy and, 101–102; Chris­tian­ity and, 102; citizenship status, 132, 133–134, 135, 149, 194, 196, 245n78; comparison to

Pashtuns, 135, 144; customs, 136; efforts to civilize, 101–102, 103; federal government relations with, 130–132, 135, 136–137; indirect rule, 150; land rights, 131, 135; ­legal status, 20, 136, 147; military ­labor, 199; post-­colonial fate, 196–197; potential advancement, 148; property owner­ship, 134, 136, 146; reservations, 11, 58–59, 102, 118, 241n23 (see also Chiricahua reservation; Ojo Caliente reservation; San Carlos Apache reservation); restorative justice, 136; sovereignty, 133, 135, 147, 150, 262n25; taxation, 134; territory, 150; treaties, 132, 147, 150 Amery, Leo, 74, 226n22, 231n83 Anglo-­Zulu War, 88–89, 91, 92, 97, 185, 193 Anwar, Rao, 27 Apache: about, 117; po­liti­cal economy of plunder, 117, 118, 125; in popu­lar imagination, 152; reputation for “savagery,” 120; settlements, 117; sovereignty, 149; territory, 117, 118; U.S. government relations with, 117, 118, 119–120, 123. See also Chiricahua Apache

271

Index Apache Pass, ­Battle of, 120 Apache scouts, 22, 141 apartheid, 86, 89 Argentina: agricultural revolution, 162; army, 163; British influence of, 161–162; carceral state, 200; citizenship, 166–167; criollos population, 168, 169; economic development, 157, 188; finances, 188; frontier governmentality system, 155–158, 159, 188, 190, 191; as global periphery, 189; historical background, 156, 160–161; Home Law, 251n48; indigenous population, 158, 167–168, 247n8; indios policy, 155, 157, 159, 164, 165–173, 190–191; international capital, 161, 162; Land Act, 249n26; map, 154; national framework, 159–160; one-­ hundred-­peso bill, 187, 188–189, 189, 259n150, 260n151; relations with Chile, 185; state building, 163, 183; territorial expansion, 11, 155, 158, 161, 162, 184–185, 191; treaty-­based relationship with indigenous ­people, 168–169, 170, 180, 252n63; vs. United States, 148; weakness of state power, 158, 189–190 Argentina’s conquest of the desert: as act of imperial vio­lence, 193; in comparative perspective, 185; cost, 158, 161, 163; displacement of indios, 146, 164–165, 250n40; driving forces, 161–162, 183; as genocide, 250n39; impact on state-­ building, 153, 155, 160, 191; land rewards, 161, 249n26, 249n27; manpower prob­lem, 163; onset of, 162–163; scholarly debates on, 250n39; time span, 153 Argentine Pampas: Argentine expansion into, 155, 161; barbarism of, 106, 153; as biblical Palestine, 108; characteristics, 6; Christian savages of, 107; as empty wasteland, 106; frontier governmentality practices, 26; as frontier territory, 185; gauchos of, 108–109; indios’ erasure from, 165; land owner­ship, 165; map, 9, 154; poverty, 107–108; productive value, 163–164, 189. See also Sarmiento Arizona Citizen, 126, 140, 141

Arizona Territory, 11, 26, 115, 118, 122, 198 Army Public School attack, 1, 12, 196 Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), 65 Avellaneda, Nicolas, 164, 165 Baathist coup, 194 Baluchistan, 29, 30, 53, 72, 143, 215n10, 222n100; Baluchistan Agency, 10, 55–56, 73 Baluch ­people: ­legal identity, 46–47; military ­labor, 199; vs. Pashtuns, 30–31, 48; social order, 31 Bantustans of South Africa, 22, 86 Barros, Alvaro, 178 Bascom Affair, 120 Basra, 65, 66 Beauford, Clyde, 127 Bedouin of the Negev: blood feuds, 18; British rule, 72, 73; ­under Israeli jurisdiction, 70, 90, 194, 196; tribal courts, 69, 72, 227n32. See also Palestine Bengal Regulation, 56, 218n40 Benton, A. H., 46, 48, 49, 216n27 Bhola Ram v. Emperor, 46 Bigua, Casimiro (also known as Patagón Casimiro), 173, 181–182, 183 Bin Laden, Osama, 112, 113 Blanes, Juan Manuel: La ocupación militar de Río Negro, 187–188, 188, 189, 259n150 Boko Haram terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196 British Empire: challenge to supremacy, 64–65; colonial governance, 2, 64, 144–145; defeats, 89, 91; map, 62; sovereign pluralism, 149 British India: administrative power, 31, 41; vs. American republic, 143, 144, 151; capital of, 203; colonial administration, 235n10; communal civil codes, 20; criminal justice system, 21, 218n47, 219n56; decennial census, 49; in the First World War, 11; influence over ­people of periphery, 56, 57, 143, 145; judicial authority, 43–44, 46; Muslim law statutes, 21; po­liti­cal relations, 35–36, 45;

272

Index rhe­toric, 32; Scheduled Districts Act, 215n4; singular sovereignty, 201. See also tribal areas in colonial India British India’s North-­West Frontier: administration, 17, 31–32, 33, 56; Criminal Tribes Act, 38; demarcation, 10, 56; Deputy Commissioners reports, 39, 40, 41–42; frontier governmentality practices, 25–26, 114, 144; imperial policy, 236n26; in­de­pen­dent tribal areas, 32–34, 35–36, 37; indigenous forms of rule, 18; indirect rule, 37; judicial regulations, 37, 38–40; l­abor migration, 222n105; land allocation, 135; liminal lands, 30; maps, 9, 29; murder rate, 39; Pashtun inhabitants, 30; po­liti­cal communities, 30; topography of, 30; tribal agencies, 217n37; tribal militia system, 52–53, 54; tribal population, 31, 36; vio­lence against bania merchants, 222n104 British Raj. See British India buffer states, 25 Burma Frontier Tribes Regulation, 57 Calfacurá, Juan, 173, 178, 256n104 Camp Grant Agency, 123 capitalism: civilization and, 94–95, 101–102; global expansion, 16 Carlisle School, 137 census: as practice of governmentality, 17 center / periphery dichotomy, 203 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 131, 133 Chile, 154, 181, 184, 185, 193 Chin Hills, 57 Chiricahua Apache: about, 120; federal government and, 120, 127; governance of, 142; lack of ­legal protection, 121; relations with White Mountain Apache, 243n49; relocation, 123–124, 142, 151; return to Southwest, 151; sovereign treaties, 169–170; subjugation of, 157 Chiricahua reservation, 121, 122, 125, 149 citizenship: liberal idea of, 147, 166–167; po­liti­cal identity and, 148 civilization: capitalism and, 94–95, 101–102, 105; Chris­tian­ity and, 102, 137; cities as

marker of, 105, 237n43; classic view of, 147; education and, 137, 237n56; property rights and, 94, 105–106, 107, 137; rule of law and, 94, 129; vs. savagery, 109–110, 234n5; Scottish Enlightenment and idea of, 234n4 civilizational / savagery dialectical divide, 92–93, 94–95, 96–97, 100 Clum, John Philip: annual reports, 138, 241n20, 242n30, 243n47, 246n105; Apache relocation, 123–124; archive, 241n29; ­career, 114, 126, 140, 240n6, 246n95; comparison to Robert Sandeman, 143–144; connections with Dutch Reformed Church, 115; control over San Carlos reservation, 125–126, 137–138; education, 115; federal government and, 140, 205; frontier administration, 114–115, 123, 126, 127–128, 141, 143, 145; opinion of Geronimo, 152; personality, 141; photo­graph, 116; punitive innovations, 138–139; relationship with the military, 125–126; resignation, 141, 245n94; support of territorial governor, 126; “supreme court” of, 138, 139–140; tribal police force, 126–127, 128, 137, 138; Tucson ring of merchants and, 146; writings, 240n8 Cochise (Chiricahua Apache chief), 120, 121 collective punishment, 38–39, 51, 57, 61, 68–69, 75, 83 Collective Punishment Ordinance, 74, 78 collective responsibility, 61, 67, 69, 70, 75, 88, 226n22 colonias, 170–172, 181, 200 colonial governmentality, 21 colonial / postcolonial dichotomy, 203–206 colonial states: civil codes, 20–21; po­liti­cal order, 19, 20; property in, 51; sovereign pluralism, 19–20 Cooper, James Fennimore, 109 Council of Elders (jirgah): comparative view, 139; establishment, 38; forms of, 38; sentences, 245n91; trial by oath, 42; use of customary law by, 38

273

Index Court of Indian Offenses, 78, 140, 245n91 Cox, Percy, 66 Cromer, Evelyn Baring, Earl of, 72 Crook, George, 122, 141, 142, 146 customary law, 38, 86–87, 219n57, 222n94 Dawes Severalty Act (also known as Dawes Act), 102, 106, 123, 134, 137, 146, 171, 196 Deputy Commissioners (DCs): authorities and responsibilities, 37, 38, 39, 41–42 Disraeli, Benjamin, 91 Dobbs, Henry, 64, 65–66, 68, 85, 114, 225n8 Drehan Khan v. Bahadur Khan, 47, 49 Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, The. See Lugard Durand Agreement, 10, 33, 44 East India Com­pany, 19, 51, 186, 187, 258n131. See also British India Egerton, Walter, 75 Elk v. Wilkins, 133 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 238n72; An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 17 Elsmie, George, 50 Empress v. Muhammad Umar Khan, 45 epistemic vio­lence, 51, 195 Facundo (Sarmiento), 95, 103–105, 108 Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA): agencies, 214n3, 217n37; amendments, 260n2; dissolution, 59; inhabitants, 27, 28; as model for Chechnya, 263n33; offensives against militants, 195–196 First Afghan War, 10 First World War, 64–65 Fort Bowie, 120 Fort Huachuca, 113 Fotheringham, Ignacio: autobiography, 259n142; background, 186–187; on Blanes’s painting, 187; c­ areer, 186, 259n145; diplomatic incident, 259n146; inheritance, 187; land grant, 249n26; military experience, 186, 187

Frere, Bartle: administrative practices, 10, 11, 99–100; Af­ghan­i­stan and South Africa, 95, 97, 99; Anglo-­Zulu War, 88, 89; ­career, 91–92, 99, 100, 111, 233n115; on ­causes of colonial wars, 97; on cult of the “man on the spot,” 98; discourse of savagery, 92, 95, 97, 98, 110; downfall, 92, 100; on expansion of Rus­sian Empire, 98, 236n23; founding member of Royal Geo­graph­i­cal Society, 236n22; on governance of frontier tribes, 98; letters to Gladstone, 91, 92, 96–97; on owner­ship regime, 98; po­liti­cal views, 234n3; portrait, 93; on protection of “uncivilized” races, 97–98; reputation, 11; response to criticism, 235n14; Sind frontier system, 99; support of Christian proselytization, 235n8; vision of the pro­gress of humanity, 110 frontier: as barren land, 3, 74; centers and, 12; changing nature of, 14–15; as dangerous place, 1; definitions, 13–14, 100; imperial wars and, 192–193; as laboratory of governance, 64; ­labor regime, 21, 22–23, 199–200; natu­ral resources, 198–199; as practice, 15, 26, 150, 193; in relation to the state, 12, 15, 202–203; as reservation, 58–59; sovereignty, 201, 202; as space of generative destruction, 100; spatiality and temporality of, 14, 15 Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR): adultery, treatment of, 39–40, 46; in Africa, 10–11, 83; annual reports, 41–42; applied to Baluch inhabitants, 215n4; banishment of blood feud, 39; in British India, 40–41, 63–64; collective punishment, 38–40; in comparative perspective, 58–59; contestation in colonial court, 45–46; creation, 28, 37, 144, 194; criticism, 220n66; jurisdictional reach, 43–45, 46, 47–48, 220n77; vs. Major Crimes Act, 144; in the ­Middle East, 61, 65, 72; as mode of governance, 70; ­postcolonial legacy, 59–60; preceding acts, 50, 51; princi­ples, 10; on property

274

Index owner­ship, 51; reporting requirements, 39, 40; Sandeman system and, 111, 114, 228n36, 230n74; in South East Asia, 55, 56–58; tribal judiciary ­under, 37–38 frontier economy: dependence on imperial economy, 21; illicit spheres, 23, 200; migratory ­labor flows, 22–23; military ­labor market, 21–22, 52, 53–54, 199; monetization of, 22 frontier governmentality: American Indians and, 149–150; British system of, 10; characteristics, 13, 83–84, 150; collapse, 194; vs. colonial governmentality, 21; as colonial practice, 192–193, 204–205; common forms, 151; defining ele­ments, 6, 11, 12, 17–18, 23, 77; development, 25–26; epistemic vio­lence, 195; FCR as template of, 72–73; frontier administrators and, 23–24, 98; global capitalism and, 10, 16; imperial state and, 7–8; legacies, 190, 191, 193–196, 197–198, 200–201; ­legal regime, 5, 23; vs. other forms of governance, 24–25; as personal administration system, 5; in postcolonial era, 89; roots, 25, 192; tribal p ­ eople’s role in, 5 frontier ­people: administrative regime, 4–5, 7, 18; categorization, 202; colonial rule, 6, 24; demarcating practices, 24–25; economic dependence, 6, 21–22, 23, 53–54, 55; exclusion from colonial ­legal sphere, 21; impact of FCR on, 54, 55; indigenous polities, 25; indirect rule, 74; ­labor market, 21–22; marginalization, 111; as “savages,” 2–3, 11, 24, 92–93, 195; as subjects to frontier governmentality, 111; vio­lence against, 193, 194–196, 197 frontier rule, 2, 3, 6–7 Gadsden Purchase, 115 Garissa University massacre, 1, 89, 196 General Allotment Act. See Dawes Severalty Act Geronimo: Apache War, 185; bin Laden as, 112, 152; federal government and, 113; hunt for, 243n49; leader of Chiricahua

band, 141; in popu­lar imagination, 152; re­sis­tance and capture, 113, 127, 140; in Roo­se­velt’s inauguration parade, 152; surrender, 142, 151 Gladstone, William: on Afghan hill tribes, 235n13; correspondence, 91, 92, 96–97; discourse of savagery, 92, 95; po­liti­cal ­career, 91; “Rights of the Savage” speech, 96, 99 Glubb, John (also known as “Glubb Pasha”): ­career, 23, 71, 73; criticism of Iraqi desert policy, 227n35; desert administration system, 71–72, 227n34; governance of TransJordan, 84; Sandeman’s influence on, 71, 84, 228n36 Glubb’s Desert Patrol, 22, 71, 72, 73, 127, 199 governmentality: census as practice of, 17; vs. governance, 16; as temporal signifier, 16–17 Grant, Ulysses S.: peace policy, 115, 241n18 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 117 Haggard, H. Rider, 93, 234n5; King Solomon’s Mines, 93 Haitian Revolution, 258n131 Hamilton, George Francis, Lord, 33–34 Hazara Settlement Rules, 50, 51, 134 Hindus, 46, 48, 49 Holdich, T. H., 185 Howard, O. O., 120, 128 Hussein, Saddam, 90 Ilbert, Courtenay, 57 imperial objecthood, 6, 20, 23, 77 Indian Appropriations Act, 132 Indian Citizenship Act, 82, 134, 171 Indian Civil Ser­vice (ICS), 65, 66 Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) “D,” 61, 65, 67, 68, 199 Indian Penal Code (IPC), 39, 51, 222n95 Indian police force, 128 Indian princely states, 35, 36, 75, 216n27, 217n33 Indian sovereignty, 130

275

Index indios population: agricultural colonies, 170–172; anthropologization, 167–168; araucanization, 184; archives of the chieftancy correspondence, 175–176, 177, 178; in Argentine po­liti­cal imaginary, 181–184; citizenship, 165–168, 172–173; colonias, 170–171, 172, 181, 200, 253n69, 253n73, 253n81; displacement and deaths, 165; forced ­labor, 172, 200, 254n88; governance, 173–174; land owner­ship claim, 167, 252n59; language of communication, 176–177; literacy and education, 176, 177; military operation against, 158, 163, 164–165; penal colonies for, 172; photo­graphs of chiefs, 182; po­liti­cal identity, 180–181; reservations, 253n70; statistics, 163, 165; subjugation, 146–147, 155, 157, 159, 164, 168, 183, 200; treaties with the Argentine state, 168–170, 252n63 indirect rule, 6, 11, 18, 23, 63, 74, 75 informal empire, 204 Inner Line Regulation, 56 Iraq: British rule of, 65–66, 68, 227n30; Collective Responsibility for Crimes Ordinance, 68; mandatory administration, 69; modernity danger, 66; uprising against British, 67. See also Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) Iraq Occupied Territories Code, 67 Jacob, John, 99 Jeffords, Tom, 121 Jewish Agency, 69 jirgah. See Council of Elders (jirgah) Johnson v. McIntosh, 131 Kachin Hills, 56–57 ­Kenya’s Northern Frontier Province: administration system, 78, 81–82; blood feuds, 18; Collective Punishment Ordinance, 78–79, 80, 82, 83, 194; frontier governmentality practices, 26; maps, 9, 79; migrations, 80; Special Districts Administration Ordinance

(SDAO), 78, 80, 81–82, 83, 89; tribal police, 82–83; tribesmen, 78, 79–80 Khyber-­Pakhtunkhwa Province, 59, 260n2 Khyber ­Rifles, 199 Kimberley, John Wode­house, earl of, 33 Klamath reservation, 128 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), 260n8 Lansdowne, Henry Charles, Marquess of, 32, 34, 35 Latif Wali Khan v. Empress, 45 Lavalle, Juan, 177, 256n104 League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, 77 liberty cap. See Phrygian cap Livingstone, David, 235n8 Louverture, Toussaint, 258n131 Lugard, Frederick: African governance, 64, 114; ­career, 23, 68, 76–77, 78, 229n56; The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 74; idea of collective punishment, 75; Po­liti­cal Memorandum, 75; posthumous critics, 229n51; system of indirect rule, 11, 18, 63, 74–75, 77, 85 Lyautey, Hubert, 204 Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 185 Maine, Henry, 34–35, 36, 216n25, 216n26, 217n36 Major Crimes Act, 78, 136, 140, 144; vs. Frontier Crimes Regulation, 144 Mangas Coloradas, 117 Mansilla, Lucio, 176 Marshall trilogy, 131, 132 Martin Garcia island, 172, 257n123 McCain, John, 197 McKinley, William, 205 Mehsud, Naqeebullah, 27, 28, 30, 60 Merewether, William, 126, 224n125 Mesopotamia: British rule, 61, 65–66; tribal governance, 71. See also Iraq Mexican-­American War, 115, 117 Miles, Nelson, 142, 151 military ­labor market, 21–22 Mitre, Bartolomé, 181 Modoc Indians, 128

276

Index Morenci Copper Mine, 198, 198, 261n14 Moreno, Francisco, 167 Namunará, Bernardo, 176, 256n101 Namuncurá, Manuel: archive of correspondence of, 175–176; as cacique of the Pampa, 173–174; defeat, 173, 177; land grants, 170–171; photo­graph, 174; po­liti­cal activities, 178, 181; state ­career, 255n95 Natal colony: administrative system, 84–85, 86, 88; chiefs, 85; collective responsibility and punishment, 88; economy, 87; l­ abor market, 87; Native Administration Act, 232n99; native courts, 86; Native Magistrates, 85, 86; native police force, 87; population, 88; property owner­ship, 87; taxes, 87, 232n107 Natal Native Code, 10, 86–87 Natal Native Trust, 87, 233n108 nation-­states, 204 Native Courts Ordinance, 75 Navajo Constabulary, 128 Nicholson, I. F., 229n51 Nigeria: Collective Punishment Ordinance, 68–69, 74, 75, 78, 83; colonial administration, 75–77; indirect rule system, 11, 74–75, 77, 85; Native Courts Ordinance, 75, 77–78, 229n62; taxation, 77 Northbrook, Thomas George Baring, earl of, 33 Oak Flat, 197, 198 Obama, Barack, 197 Ocupación militar de Río Negro, La (painting), 187–188, 188, 189, 259n150 Ojo Caliente Apache, 140 Ojo Caliente reservation, 125, 127 Orientalism, 238n73, 239n74 Ottoman Empire, 65 Pais de las Manzanas: agricultural productivity, 189, 257n113; comparison to Apache reservation, 6; conquest, 181; governance, 179; map, 154

Pakistan: border conflict, 195–196; ­labor migration, 222n105; legacy of frontier governmentality in, 60; repeal of Frontier Crimes Regulation, 194. See also Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Palestine: Bedouin Control Ordinance, 69; British mandate, 61; Collective Punishment Ordinance, 68, 69, 74, 194; Deputy Commissioners authority, 71; Prevention of Crime in Tribal Areas Ordinance, 68, 71; reproduction of the FCR, 69–70; tribal militia, 69–70; tribal unrest, 61, 225n2. See also Bedouin of the Negev Paraguayan War. See War of the ­Triple Alliance Pashtuns: vs. Baluch p ­ eople, 30–31, 48; blood feuds, 18, 39; British rule, 27–28; in colonial imagination, 30; Frontier Crimes Regulation, 38–40; l­egal status, 28, 46–47, 48; migratory l­abor, 200; military employment, 199; nominal in­de­pen­dence, 32–34, 35, 36, 56; origin of the term, 214n2; in Pakistan, treatment of, 27–28; parallel with American Indians, 144; railway workers, 23; social order, 31; in tribal militia, 52; vio­lence, 39, 40 Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement, 27, 28, 59, 60, 190, 194 Patagonia: Argentine expansion into, 155, 161; barbarism, 153; as frontier territory, 185; indios’ erasure from, 165; land owner­ship, 165; map, 154; productive value, 164, 189; state presence in, 248n14 Peake, Frederick, 72–73 penal colonies: vs. concentration camps, 254n89. See also Martin Garcia island periphery: as space of administrative innovation, 64 Peshawar, 1, 11, 17, 44, 45, 50, 76, 196, 215n4, 229n56 Phelps Dodge, 125, 198, 242n38, 261n14 Phrygian cap, 182 Plowden, H. M., 42, 47 po­liti­cal economy, 16 postcolonial colonialism, 225n136

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Index Pottinger, Henry, 231n87 property rights, 94, 106, 134–135, 165, 234n7 Punjab Field Force, 22 Punjab Regulation, 57 Quiroga, Juan Facundo, 103 Rawalpindi, Treaty of, 44 ­Reece, Gerald, 82 Resolution Copper, 197, 198 Ricardo, David, 16 Ripon, George Frederick, marquess of, 33 Roca, Julio A.: conquest of the desert, 157, 158, 162–163, 187; idea of agricultural colonies, 170; on indios population, 164–165, 250n40; relations with Saygüeque, 180; on reservation system, 170; on system of colonias, 253n73 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, 102, 106, 152, 237n45, 245n78 Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 103, 160 Rosas, Mariano, 176 Rus­sian Empire: colonial expansion, 98, 235n8, 236n23; governance of periphery, 204; imperial ambitions of, 185 Safford, Anson, 126 Samuel, Herbert, 61, 68, 74, 90, 225n2 San Carlos Apache, 196–197, 199 San Carlos Apache reservation: administration, 114, 115, 145; Agency buildings, 124, 245n90; army scouts, 141–142; civilian control over, 125, 129; climate, 122; copper mines, 125; creation, 121; crime and punishment, 137, 138–139, 140; governance, 121, 136, 142–143; inhabitants, 122–123, 242n31; ­labor force, 243n50; ­legal regulations, 129, 132; map, 9, 122; police force, 127, 128, 137, 141–142, 243n54; relocations to, 124, 140–141; restorative justice, 138; “supreme court,” 138, 139–140; tribal breakouts from, 123, 141 Sandeman, Robert Groves: ­career, 10, 23, 63, 126; comparison to Clum, 143–144;

creation of tribal militia, 52–53; frontier administration system, 33, 73, 84, 88, 126, 224n125; idea of border management, 143; legacy, 114; portrait, 53 Sarmiento, Domingo: on Argentine society, 103–104, 107; on Asiatic barbarians, 108; on the city of Cordoba, 105; on civilizing effect of the city, 105, 106; Cooper’s influence on, 109; discourse of civilization and barbarism, 104–106, 107, 108–109; Facundo, 95, 103–104; on individual owner­ship, 106; literary works, 102–103; on native socie­ties, 108–109, 110; Orientalism, 108–109, 238n73, 239n75; po­liti­cal ­career, 103; portrait, 104; reputation, 11; Scott’s influence on, 107, 108; on Spanish conquest of Amer­i­ca, 107; vision of the Pampas, 106, 108, 153, 155; vision of the pro­gress of humanity, 110 savages / savagery: vs. barbarians, 24, 213n41; citizenship and, 147; vs. civilized order, 3, 100–101, 234n5; in colonial imagination, 93, 110; imperial discourse, 92–94, 95–96; poverty and, 107–108; property rights, 94, 106, 110; state strategies against, 110–111 Saygüeque, Valentin: archive, 176; correspondence, 178–179; defeat, 173, 181; imprisonment, 200; land grants, 171; photo­graph, 179, 257n118; po­liti­cal authority, 178–180; power, 181, 184; salary, 179; signature, 178, 179 scientific racism, 147–148 Scott, Walter, 107; Waverly, 108 Scottish Enlightenment, 108 Second Anglo-­Afghan War, 89, 91, 97, 185, 192–193 Shaka, King of the Zulu, 85–86, 88 Shepstone, Theo­philus: ­career, 84, 85, 231n87; colonial affairs, 86–87, 88, 89; education, 84; legacy, 84; Natal Code, 10; title, 85; writings, 231n88 Shepstone system: apartheid regime and, 86, 89; creation, 84–85, 88; critique, 231n84,

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Index 231n86, 232n94; economic effects, 87–88; Henry Pottinger and, 231n87 Sherman, William T., 157 Sind frontier system, 99 Smith, Adam, 16 South Africa: British rule, 10; Indian coolie ­labor, 22. See also Natal colony sovereign pluralism, 6, 19–20, 23, 149, 193 sovereignty, 19, 59, 148, 149, 201–202, 211n19 Special Districts Administration Ordinance (SDAO-­Kenya), 78, 80, 81, 82, 82, 89,114, 194 Standing Bear v. Crook, 136, 212n25, 245n83 states: development of modern, 16; intrusion into individuals’ lives, 17. See also colonial states statistical sciences, 16, 17 Sumner, E. V., 117 suzerainty, 18–19

61, 67; as replication of the FCR, 65–66, 114; on tribal shaykhs, 67 tribal militia, 22, 52–53, 54, 69–70, 71, 230n81 Tsarist Rus­sia. See Rus­sian Empire Tupper, C. L., 36, 216n27; Indian Po­liti­cal Practice, 216n26 Turner, Frederick Jackson: on American frontier, 95, 100–101, 102, 113; on American Indians, 110; on capitalism and civilization, 102; on Chris­tian­ity, 102; on cities and civilization, 237n43; on civilizational / savagery divide, 100–101; reputation, 11; vision of the pro­gress of humanity, 110

Taft, William Howard, 205 Taliban terrorist attacks, 1, 12, 196 Third Anglo-­Afghan War, 44, 215n11 Tiffany, Joseph C., 246n97 traditional society, 216n25. See also Henry Maine TransJordan: Arab Legion, 70, 71; British rule, 227n30; mandatory government, 70; replication of FCR, 84; Tribal Control Board, 70, 71; tribal courts, 72, 227n32; tribal governance, 70–71, 72, 84; tribal militia, 71. See also Glubb’s Desert Patrol tribal areas in colonial India: banishment of dangerous fanatics, 39; British governance, 37; collective punishment, 38; military interventions, 36; Parliamentary debate on in­de­pen­dence of, 32–34, 35, 36; vs. princely states, 35–36. See also FATA Tribal Civil and Criminal Disputes Regulation (TCCDR): abolition, 90, 194; on adultery, 68; amendments, 67; authority, 71; on collective punishment, 67; development, 67–68; proclamation,

United States: Apache campaigns, 193; birthright citizenship, 244n74; comparison to Argentine state, 148; vs. Eu­ro­pean colonial empires, 149, 151; foreign policy, 117; frontier governmentality, 205; Homestead Acts, 251n48; Indian relations, 112–113, 119, 130–131, 194, 196; Mexican border, 118; National Defense Authorization Act, 197; norms of governance, 151; peace policy, 119; reservation system, 11, 102. See also Dawes Severalty Act United States v. Kagama, 136 Unsettled Districts Ordinance, 75 Uriburu, Napoleon, 180 Victoria, Benjamin, 177 Victorio’s War, 193 Villegas, Conrado, 178 Wace, E. G., 50 Warburton, Robert, 41, 222n100 War of the ­Triple Alliance, 158, 161 War on Terror, 112, 152, 196, 260n8 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 186 White Mountain Apache, 123, 243n49 Worcester v. Georgia, 131 Zeballos, Estanisloa, 167, 177, 180, 252n58 Zulu kingdom, 88, 97

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