JAMMU AND KASHMIR AND THE DEFENCE OF BRITISH INDIA: THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHERN FRONTIER. PART 1

LADAKH AND THE GILGIT AGENCY

The Treaty Road in Ladakh and the Gilgit Agency n Indian scholar, Dr. H.L. Saxena, maintained not so long ago A that at the heart of the Kashmir problem lay the nature of British strategic interests in the region and the manner in which the British hoped that those interests would be maintained following the Transfer of Power in 1947.' Everything that happened in the State of Jammu and Kashmir between 1846 and 1947 was in some way a product of this strategic policy. What the British really wanted was control over the Gilgit Agency, that key observation point into the affairs of Central Asia and defensive outpost against any hostile incursions from that direction. Dr. Saxena claimed that the Government of India used Sheikh Abdullah as its agent to stir up communal trouble in Srinagar in 193 1 so as to destabilise the State of Jammu and Kashmir and thereby force the Maharaja Sir Hari Singh to give in to British pressure and hand over the Gilgit region on a long lease. In 1947, Dr. Saxena continued, Mountbatten made sure that Gilgit somehow did not revert to the State of Jammu and Kashmir but passed into the hands of Pakistan so as to enable the "Anglo-Americans" to maintain their base in this key Central Asian outpost after the Transfer of Power. There was, it need hardlv be said, much distortion in all this: and the records do not support the basic thesis. The British did not create or inspire the disturbances in Srinagar during the earlv 1930s which are described in Chapter 5. Nor, as we shall see. did Lord Mountbatten make the slightest effort to hand oIrer the Gilgit .-\ge~-rc\ to Pakistan; indeed. he did his best, although without success. to create the circumstances which would lead to the e\.entual Indian domination over this key strategic region. Writers like Dr. Snsena are  forever searching for traces of the sinister hand of British policy behind the recent history of the subcontinent. The law of averages would suggest that from time to time they will hit a target of some kind, though it may not be that at which they have aimed. This is a case in point. While Mountbatten did not lift a finger to push the Gilgit Agency towards Pakistan, as Dr. Saxena suggests, yet British policy for a century or more, culminating in Mountbatten's ultimate Viceroyalty, was directed towards the security of that part of the frontier of the subcontinent which is symbolised by the name "Gilgit Agency"; and the history of the State of Jammu and Kashmir from its creation in 1846 until the crisis of 1947 was dominated by the implications of that policy. In 1846 the British could probably, despite considerable practical difficulties, have held on to the Vale of Kashmir after they acquired it from the Sikhs whom they had defeated at the battle of Sobraon on 10 February 1845.~ Instead, as we have already seen, they decided to transfer it to the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, to bring into existence the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This creation the Indian Government of Sir Henry (later Lord) Hardinge resolved to exploit as its chosen instrument for the protection of what came to be known as the Northern Frontier. The Northern Frontier ran along the high mountains of the Karakoram and associated ranges which create the main watershed between the Tarim basin, that vast expanses of internal drainage which is now part of Sinkiang Province of China, and the Indus river system flowing into the Indian Ocean. To the west these mountains run into both the Pamirs in what is today Soviet Tadzhikistan and the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan: to the east they meet the western edge of the high Tibetan plateau, bounded to its north by the Kunlun and to its south by the Himalayas. All these formidable ranges can be imagined schematically in the form of a very erratic letter H, with the Karakoram representing the horizontal line connecting the two verticals. Over the horizontal line run two major routes across the main watershed. On the east there is the Ladakh route, the approach to Khotan (Hotan), Yarkand (Shache) and Kashgar (Kasha) in Sinkiang (Xinjiang) from Leh in Ladakh by way of the Karakoram Pass (or near it). On the west is the Gilgit route, a line of communication from Gilgit, on a tributary of the Indus, through Hunza to ash gar over the Mintaka, Khunjerab and other passes of the western Karakoram Range. Both can be approached from Srinagar which not only controls the easiest access to Leh but also until 1947 was a logical starting place whence to set out overland for Gilgit; and both pass out of the subcontinent through territory which was technically part of the old State of Jammu and Kashmir as it evolved during the final century of the British Raj.  a result of the Kashmir dispute in 1947 the Northern FI-0ntit.r was partitioned and the two routes across it distributed between the successors to the British Raj. India acquired the Ladakh route which soon became inextricably bound up with the Western Sector of the Sine-Indian boundary dispute, where Indian claims to the Aksai chin (now under Chinese occupation) derive to a considerable extent ffom British interest in this potential approach to Chinese Central ~sia. The Gilgit route went to Pakistan. In recent years it has evolved into the Karakoram Highway, that motor road which was formally opened in 1978 to provide a direct link between China and the Arabian Sea (and which will be described in greater detail in Chapter 13). In 1846 there was much that the Government had yet to learn about the structure of the Northern Frontier. It was well aware, however, of the major features of its geopolitical and commercial importance, in great measure because of the travels of William Moorcroft in the early 1820s. Ostensibly concerned with the supply of horses for the East India Company, between 18 12 and his death in northern Afghanistan in 1825 Moorcroft travelled widely in the north-western corner of the Indian subcontinent and beyond, investigating its trade, natural resources and politics. He studied the sources of pashm, the undercoat wool from Western Tibet which was the basis of the valuable shawl industry of Kashmir; he reported on the route to Chinese Turkistan from Ladakh by way of the Karakoram Pass (which was visited by one of his assistants, Mir Izzat Ullah); and he warned of Russian interest in India, including a correspondence with the ruler of the Sikhs, Ranjit Singh. When he was in Leh (the capital of Ladakh) in 1820-2 1, he noted the presence of Chinese official visitors. He urged the Government of India to seize every opportunity, including that provided by Ladakhi requests for British assistance against the ambitions of the Sikhs (who had just acquired the Vale of Kashmir), to extend the influence of the East India Company into this region which offered access not only to the rich trade of Central Asia, he argued, but also, perhaps, to the Government of the Manchu Dynasty in Peking which had resisted British overtures from other directions. While Moorcroft was technically an unofficial traveller, he was in communication with the highest echelons of the British administration in India. In 1841 a two volume edition of his journals covering the final six years of his life (1819-25) was published. It enjoyed a wide circulation; and there can be no doubt that those officials in the Government of India who were responsible for the sale of the Vale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh were aware of its contents. Moorcroft was the true pioneer both of British commercial interest in Central Asia and of British strategic concern with those territories which were to constitute the State of Jammu and Kashmir.' Official British exploration of this hinterland of Golab Singh's dominions began immediately after the sale of the Vale of Kashmir in 1846 when the Government of India despatched a Boundary Commission to work out exactly where the limits of the new State were.4 The main British interest at this time was the eastern border where Ladakh (which Gulab Singh had acquired in the 1830s) marched with Tibet, then deemed by the British to be in some way a part of the Chinese Empire; and in 1846-47 the British members of the Boundary Commission, without the hoped for Tibetan or Chinese participation, explored that border from the edge of Lahul to the mountains to the north of the Panggong Lake. There were, of course, other frontier tracts which merited examination even though their inspection was not strictly within the terms of the Amritsar Treaty. Thus in 1847 a member of the Boundary Commission, Vans Agnew, accompanied by Lt. Young of the Bengal Engineers, penetrated to the north-west of Gulab Singh's dominions into what is sometimes called for convenience Dardistan, that group of mountain polities extending from the north-western edge of the Vale of Kashmir up to the Karakoram crest.5 He was able to get to Gilgit, which then marked the somewhat insecure limits of the former Sikh Kashmir now transferred to the Dogras. Another Boundary Commission member, its naturalist Dr. Thomas Thomson, in the following year reached the Karakoram Pass to the north of Ladakh; but he did not cross over to set foot in Chinese Turkistan which lay beyond.6 Thus by 1848 the British had become officially aware of both the Ladakh and the Gilgit routes, though there remained a great deal to discover about their geopolitical potential and practical administrative problems in the context of their relationship with the State of Jammu and Kashmir which the British had just brought into being. In the 1860s British policy began to take increasing note of the Ladakh route. By this time the leading edge of Tsarist imperialism in Central Asia was getting alarmingly close to the Indian Northern Frontier with the initial stages of Russian penetration of those petty states (including the Khanates of Khiva, Kokand and Bokhara) situated in a rough triangle south-east of the Aral Sea, north of Afghanistan and west of Chinese Turkistan in a part of the world where precise territorial boundaries were all too often either lacking or, if they existed, quite unknown to the British authorities in Calcutta. Not only did the Russians appear to be on the point of acquiring a common border with Afghanistan but also they were fast approaching Chinese Turkistan at a moment when it looked as if Chinese rule over its Muslim subjects in Central Asia would collapse to leave what in British eyes was perceived as an extremely dangerous power vacuum. By 1865 it was evident to British strategists that security of the Northern Frontier of India either was being, or shortly would he, threatened.' The collapse of Manchu domination in Chinese Turkistan began  in 1861 when the Chinese Muslims (Tungans or Hui) in Kansu rebelled, thereby severing the main line of communication between metropolitan China and this vast area of Central Asia where Chinese domination had been consolidated only a century earlier by the Manchu Emperor Ch'ien Lung. The whole region had been divided into two main administrative districts, Kashgaria and Dzungaria (the latter with its capital at Urumchi), presided over by Manchu Ambans (Governors) who depended greatly for the local government of the mainly Turkic and Mongol population upon indigenous Muslim officials and institutions; and Chinese power was maintained far more by the prestige of the Empire than by its military force. The Taiping Rebellion, which the Manchu Dynasty had just managed to survive in 1864, had severely weakened the authority of the Government in Peking which was accordingly unable, when risings erupted against its rule in Central Asia, to take effective steps to retain its position as overlord. The memory of an independent existence wai still srrong among the various tribes and clans who had come under Chinese suzerainty; and it was inevitable that regional loyalties should revive and traditional chieftains strive to establish themselves as sovereign once more. The whole area would probably have broken up into a confusion of petty sultanates had not a centralising force been provided in early 1865 by a number of adventurers who made their way to Chinese Turkistan from neighbouring Kokand which was then coming under intense Russian pressure. One such, Buzurg Khan, quickly established himself in Kashgaria (the extreme western corner of Chinese Turkistan with its centre at Kashgar) as a powerful warlord. He was soon (1868) replaced by one of his lieutenants, Yakub Beg, who proceeded with extraordinary energy to consolidate most of Chinese Turkistan into a new polity in Central Asia which extended to the borders of China proper and embraced not only the oases of Kashgaria but also, far to the east, the city of Urumchi (Tihua), the valley of the Ili river and the Mongolian borderlands along the Altai mountains. Would Yakub Beg's creation produce something permanent? Or would the Russians seize this opportunity for imperial expansion, first by establishing their protection over Yakub Beg and then, as a possible final stage, by outright annexation, so that Tsarist territory actually touched the Indian Northern Frontier? That the Russians were extremely interested in what was happening in the former Chinese dominion and that they were trying to establish a special diplomatic relationship with Yakub Beg was soon apparent to the British; and the Government of India, as we shall see, lost no time in sending its own envoys to the court of this new star in the Asian firmament.n The Yakub Beg era lasted for just over a decade. &'hen \iatub Beg died in 1877 the Chinese were beginning to restore their control under the command of one of those extraordinary soldier-bureaucrats whom China was still able to produce in the middle of the 19th century when it seemed on the point of total disintegration, Tso Tsung-t'ang. This formidable character was well over sixty years old when in 1873, as a reward for his achievements against the Taiping rebels, he was appointed Governor of Shensi and Kansu Provinces bordering on Chinese Turkistan. From this base, and largely on his own initiative and with financial support which he had himself raised from merchants in Shanghai, he set out to put an end to Yakub Beg's ambitions. By 1878 Kashgar was recaptured; and six years later, in 1884, the Manchu Dynasty was able to declare the whole of Chinese Turkistan a province of metropolitan China, Sinkiang ("The New ~ominion").%hinese Turkistan was not going, after all, to become a fresh region of Muslim states to be absorbed inevitably into the Russian or British Empires. It was to remain, however, a zone of Chinese vulnerability; and for the remainder of the British Raj there were strategists in India who anticipated that it would eventually become, if not Russian territory, at least a Russian protectorate (what in a later period would be called a "satellite"). It is against this background that the history of the Northern Frontier must be examined. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Ranbir Singh (who had succeeded Gulab Singh in 1857), appreciated quickly enough the significance of the changes then taking place to his north in Chinese Turkistan. The collapse of Chinese rule created a tempting opportunity for his State to enlarge, if not its territorial extent at least its diplomatic and commercial influence. In 1864 he despatched a small garrison some sixty miles as the crow flies north across the Karakoram Pass to Shahidulla (Xaidulla) on the caravan road from Leh to Kashgar, where a military post was established; and at the same time he entered into a correspondence with the Amir of Khotan, Haji Habibulla Khan, who had assumed power in that town in the absence of Chinese authority. In quest of possible allies in turbulent and uncertain times, the Amir of Khotan had written to Maharaja Ranbir Singh enclosing a message to be handed on to the Government of 1ndia.l' Ranbir Singh saw that the Amir's overtures could well be exploited to the advantage of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. He wanted to expand his State's trade with Eastern ~urkistan," to protect it from bandit raids, and to ensure that it was ~ro~erly taxed to the benefit of his treasury: these were the major objectives of the Shahidulla garrison. What he did not want, however, was the intervention of the British on his behalf: he did not go out of his way to inform the Government of India of his contacts with the Amir and the nature of the Amir's request for assistance (which embraced, as we have seen, the British as well as Ranbir Singh).  In 1865 Maharaja Ranbir Singh managed to bring the Government of India into the affair without, he evidently hoped, their being aware of the fact. Since 1855 the British had been surveying the State of Jammu and Kashmir as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The task was now almost complete.'2 There remained the north-east corner of Ladakh including the route from Leh to the Karakoram Pass, the mapping of which was entrusted to one W.H. Johnson, an embittered man who felt that his British employers had failed to give his merits their due (perhaps because of his Eurasian ancestry) and who had transferred his allegiance from the Survey to the Maharaja. In return for the promise of future employment with the State, Johnson had agreed to act in a diplomatic capacity on behalf of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In 1865 Johnson crossed over from Leh to Khotan, following not the usual Karakoram route but a path further to the east which ran across the high Aksai Chin wasteland on the edge of the Tibetan plateau and descended towards Khotan by way of the Karakash ~iver.'~ There had been some use of this approach to the Tibetan plateau from the Chinese Turkistan side over the centuries because the upper reaches of the Karakash were a valuable source of jade, a mineral much appreciated in the Chinese world; and it seems that Amir Haji Habibulla Khan had been trying to improve the way as a an alternative to the Karakoram Pass which he could use as his private access to India. Johnson's journey, from the Maharaja's point of view, achieved three objectives. First: it established contact between the State of Jammu and Kashmir and Khotan through what appeared to be the mediation of a British official, which no doubt impressed the Amir. Second: it explored a route which might, as Amir Habibulla Khan had apparently already concluded, turn out to be a way round the Karakoram Pass (which was extremely high - over 18,000 feet - and difficult and, in times of Chinese strength, efficiently guarded); and as such, it might be of use both for secret contacts and, particularly if the Chinese ever came back, for clandestine trade. Finally: the resulting survey included on official British maps a considerable tract of territory as part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir which had hitherto been considered to be outside the Maharaja's dominions. The Johnson map pushed the north-eastern border of the State some hundred miles to the north of the Karakoram Pass (and far beyond the watershed) into what had until very recently been, without doubt, Chinese territory. The State of Jammu and Kashmir, according to Johnson, now extended to within about fifty miles of Khotan and. it was calculated by at least one British observer, had been expanded by some 2 1,000 square miles. '' When the British authorities found out about all this, the\. Lvere extremely annoyed. There were a number of disturbing features of  the episode which would seem to involve violations of at least the spirit of the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar; but the Treaty was rather vague and could perhaps be interpreted in various ways.15 The Maharaja had clearly been executing his own foreign policy and, indeed, could also be said with his Shahidulla garrison to have launched a military venture beyond the Indian frontier (if it were accepted, contrary to Johnson's map, that Shahidulla was not in the State of Jammu and Kashmir). Johnson, an employee of the British Government of India, was apparently acting far outside any authority conferred upon him by his legitimate masters. Johnson was rebuked and it was made plain to the Maharaja that the new border was not accepted iry Calcutta. On the other hand, as the only survey available, Joh$son1s map found its way into the official corpus of Indian cartography to influence British maps for years to come (and to lay one of the foundations for the post-1947 Indian claim to the Aksai Chin).16 Moreover, while deprecating the political background to the Johnson survey, the Government of India was no\ unaware that the new route he had discovered could well be of some value. The official British reaction to the Johnson episode, therefore, was rather muted. The lesson, however, was clear enough: a careful watch would now have to be kept on what was going on in this newly explored frontier tract of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and beyond, wherever the boundary line might eventually prove to be. The events in Chinese Turkistan, above all the rise of Yakub Beg, were studied with the greatest interest by the Government of India. They gave rise to a policy directed both towards encouraging trade and establishing diplomatic relations with the new regime in Kashgaria. In 1863 a commercial treaty had been negotiated by the British with Maharaja Ranbir Singh which was intended in part to improve trade between India and Eastern Turkistan across Ladakh. Because the Maharaja's agents, however, continued to impose as onerous dues on transit trade as they had in the past, the Government of India soon decided that a British commercial agent should be stationed in Leh to keep an eye on what was going on: in 1867 Dr. Henry Cayley was appointed to this post and established a tradition of special British supervision of the affairs of Ladakh which endured until the end of the British Raj. There followed a series of British missions to the rulers of Eastern Turkistan, some official and some carried out by ostensibly private travellers. The journeys of Robert Shaw, George Hayward and Sir Thomas Douglas Forsyth over the period 1869 to 1875 culminated in a commercial treaty between the British and Yakub Beg in 1874 (ratified the following year) which in theory at least opened up Eastern Turkistan to British Indian trade in a manner which, if It would produce little profit in practice, was at least pleasing to a vocal mercantile lobby in Britain. Among its provisions the 1874 treaty  permitted the establishment of a permanent British representative in Yarkand or Kashgar; but this was not implemented during the ~akub Beg era. l7 There can be no doubt that there was a powerful British ~olitical motive behind these ventures, the need to counter the main international implications of the new dispensation in Central Asia. From the moment that Yakub Beg came to power he was being courted by the Russians, whose nearest outpost was but a few days journey from the population centres of Kashgaria (in contrast to the British who were faced with the arduous approach through Ladakh and over the great heights of their border ranges). In 1872 the Russian diplomat Baron Kaulbars secured a commercial treaty from Yakub Beg (to which the 1874 British treaty was a direct response). Yakub Beg was also approached by Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Jammu and Kashmir in yet another of those covert forays into independent diplomacy which caused the Government of India such corlcern (while at the same time, even more covertly, the Dogra ruler was writing to the Russians to suggest that, with his help, they should advance to the Northern Frontier through Yakub Beg's territory by way of Sarikol and the Taghdumbash ~amir)." Finally, Yakub Beg was known to be in touch with agents of the Ottoman Empire which, while in no position to intervene directly in Kashgarian affairs, was still able to confirm him as the legitimate ruler of the country under Ottoman suzerainty: this may well have carried weight in the Islamic world of the day.'" An immediate consequence of the opening of relations between the Government of India and Yakub Beg was the British decision to try to develop that new track between Leh and Kashgaria across the Aksai Chin which Johnson had surveyed. The old route ran eastward from Leh to Tangtse where it turned north to join the Shyok tributary of the Indus leading to the Karakoram Pass. The new route turned east up the Changchenmo where that stream joined the Shyok a few miles north of Tangtse. From the upper Changchenmo it reached the Tibetan plateau at a basin of internal drainage called Lingzitang, from which it passed north by way of the Loqzung range and the Aksai Chin plain to the Karakash River at a site known as Haji Langar (a shelter for travellers established by Amir Haji Habibulla Khan). Following the Karakash northward downstream the new route eventually joined the old road, having avoided the Karakoram Pass, in the region of ~hahidulla."' A Treaty was negotiated with the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir in 1870 by which the new route, often referred to as the Changchenmo (or "Treaty") Road was to be "a free highway in perpetuity and at all times for all travellers and traders". Its maintenance, and the supervision of traffic along it. would be the concern of a pair of Joint Comn~issione~-s. one appointed by the Maharaja and the other bjr the Government of  India. The Maharaja would levy no transit dues or other taxes on trade going this way between India and Kashgaria." During the period of British missions to Yakub Beg extensive official use was made of the Changchenmo or Treaty Road; but it had no appeal whatsoever for ordinary traders. It has been calculated that, British diplomatic missions apart, only 388 travellers used this road between 1870 and 1877; and with the return of the Chinese to Kashgar at the end of the decade it ceased to be a trade route at all. The term Treaty Road then came to be applied to the old Karakoram Pass route, which was supervised by the Joint Commissioners (with their headquarters at Leh) under the terms of the 1870 Treaty which were in effect transferred to it from the Changchenmo route. Thus Johnson's dream in 1865, that across the Lingzitang and Aksai Chin wastelands there might be constructed an all-weather road suitable for wheeled vehicles, was abandoned, only to be revived in the 1950s by the Peoples' Republic of China, which exploited the northern part of the route, including the approach by way of the Karakash, for their motor road linking Sinkiang with Tibet. While the Changchenmo Road was still being used, if only by official British missions, there remained a case for establishing a northern border of the State of Jammu and Kashmir somewhere in the Aksai Chin region, at least to include the point where the road joined the Karakash at Haji Langar (if only to ensure that the rest houses, fodder stores, camps for road repair gangs and other such establishments which were either specified in or implied by the 1870 Treaty would be in British protected territory). While nearly all British observers of this period agreed that the Maharaja, by virtue of his occupation of Ladakh, possessed no valid claims much beyond the Changchenmo valley, yet it seemed prudent not to press the matter with him other than make it clear that the Shahidulla post was well beyond the limits of his dominions (and, indeed, it had been abandoned by 1867 or 1868). Thus in 1888 the Government of India vetoed a proposal by the Jammu and Kashmir Government to reoccupy Shahidulla (in order to protect it from marauding bands of Kanjutis, the men of Hunza of whom more later) on the grounds that to push the border of the State so far to the north might result in troublesome arguments with the Chinese in what, now, was Sinkiang Province. When the State Government revived this scheme in 1892, it was told firmly enough by the British Resident that Shahidulla, and Suget to its south, "were situated in a district inhabited by Kirghiz who had for many years paid tribute to China". The summit of the Karakoram Pass, where the Chinese authorities in Kashgar had recently erected a boundary pillar, in the eyes of the Government of India marked the limit of the Indian ~m~ire.~' In the 1890s, though there were to be British strategists who advocated an advanced border in Ladakh including an extensive tract of territory on the Sinkiang side of the main watershed (to serve as a kind of glacis where intruding Russians would be forced to reveal their intentions before they could cross the high passes), notably Sir John Ardagh, Director of British Military Intelligence from 1896 to 1901 (and from 1888 to 1894 Private Secretary to Lord ~ansdowne while Viceroy of ~ndia),'~ the consensus of British official opinion was inclined to accept that the border here ought not to run much to the north of the Changchenmo valley. As a vantage point from which the British might exercise influence in, and defend themselves against threats from, Sinkiang, this desolate corner of Ladakh in the State of Jammu and Kashmir had lost most of its strategic attraction^.'^ The emphasis had shifted to the west, to the Gilgit route. The episode of Maharaja Ranbir Singh's Shahidulla adventure and the Johnson visit to Khotan, as well as his various contacts with the Russians, Yakub Beg and the Afghans in 1868-72 (of which the British did not at first know the full details), had demonstrated clearly enough to the Government of India that the State of Jammu and Kashmir, unless carefully watched, could well pursue an independent foreign policy for which its geographical position presented it with unique opportunities. While by the late 1860s surveillance in Ladakh over the Maharaja's external relationships was in practice exercised easily enough by the British Joint Commissioner at Leh, great opportunities for the application of the Maharaja's initiative remained along the Gilgit route, through that mountain tract which from 1877 onwards the British usually referred to as the Gilgit Agency (and today forms part of Pakistan's Northern Areas). The 1846 Treaty of Amritsar was extremely vague about the whereabouts of the Maharaja's boundary in Dardistan. There was a reference in Article 1 to the River Indus, to the "eastward" of which lay the State of Jammu and Kashmir. But what was the situation to the northward of that river, in that the Indus for much of its course through the State ran in a generally east-west direction? Here, between the Indus and the unexplored mountain crests beyond which lay Eastern Turkistan, there were a number of small states, Chitral, Hunza, Nagar, Gilgit, Punial, Ishkuman, Yasin and the like (as well as some polities like Chilas and Astor which either lay on the Jammu and Kashmir bank of the Indus or straddled it). The key to this whole region was Gilgit. Situated on a river flowing into the Indus from the north, Gilgit controlled access to Hunza (the capital of which was Baltit) and the passes leading into Eastern Turkistan over which a trade route of sorts had existed throughout recorded history, though difficult in the extreme and subject to the depredations of bandits: the people of Hunza, the Kanjutis as they were sometimes called, were particularly notable in this respect in the 19th centur~.'~ From Gilgit it was also possible to travel to Chitral and that remote and mysterious corner of what is today Afghanistan,  Kafiristan (the land of "unbelievers"). Not long before the Amritsar Treaty, the Sikhs had established a tenuous hold on Gilgit which Gulab Singh inherited in 1846. In 1852, however, his tenure of this outpost was shattered by tribal rebellion and his effective frontier was perforce withdrawn to Bunji on the left (east at this point) bank of the Indus. Gilgit was finally recaptured by Maharaja Ranbir Singh in 1860 and annexed to the State of Jammu and Kashmir as the capital of the Gilgit Wazarat. Hunza (and Nagar, its traditional rival to its immediate east) had long been in contact with ~il~it.~~ It was inevitable, therefore, that Maharaja Ranbir Singh should try to extend his influence northward into this mountain state which dominated the frontier passes. By 1870 some treaty relationship had been established between the ruler of Hunza (the Mir or Thum) and the Dogras which was interpreted by Maharaja Ranbir Singh to mean that Hunza had accepted Dogra suzerainty. In fact, Hunza already possessed an elaborate system of relationships with the authorities in Eastern Turkistan (Chinese until the 1860s); and it rulers certainly would have denied that they were subjects of the Government of Jammu and ~ashmir.~' InChinese eyes Hunza was a minor tributary state and, as such, part of the Empire presided over by the Manchu ~~nast~.~' The ambitions of the Dogras in Dardistan were viewed with considerable hostility by the ruler of Chitral, the Mehtar, who in the 1860s reigned over what was to all intents and purposes an independent kingdom. Chitral competed with the Dogras for influence over other Dardistan polities, notably Yasin; and it posed a constant challenge to the Dogra position in Gilgit. Chitral had long been involved in the world of Afghan politics. Geopolitically, in the 1860s it was in fact a buffer of sorts between the State of Jammu and Kashmir and the sphere of authority of the rulers of Kabul. In the 1870s Chitral was to acknowledge Dogra suzerainty, confirmed formally under British supervision by the Mastuj Agreement of 1914; but in the history which concerns us here it belongs less to the story of the State of Jammu and Kashmir than to the evolution of the North-West Frontier of British ~ndia.~' In the 1870s the strategic importance of Dardistan began to be studied by the British with some intensity. It was the barrier which protected British India from attack or subversion from northern Afghanistan and Chinese Turkistan, both of which were ~erceived by the Government of India as potential Tsarist targets. In these years, as the crisis leading to the second Afghan war developed (and suspicions of Russian intentions increased), the Government of India concluded that, as a substitute for direct British control, their best interests lay in supporting the Maharaja of Jammu and ~ashmir in establishing his influence in these northern tracts of Dardistan. In November 1876 the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, discussed the problem with Maharaja Ranbir Singh during a meeting at Madhopur. a town in British territory just south of the Jammu border. It was agreed that the Government of India would provide the Maharaja with arms and other military assistance for his penetration into Dardistan beyond Gilgit." In return, a British Agent would be stationed in Gilgit, much as a British representative had already been placed in Ladakh, to supervise the conduct of policy on this frontier. In 1877, despite the Maharaja's dislike of further British officials permanently on his soil, the first Gilgit Agency was put in place. The new Agency lasted until 1881. In the eyes of the Government of India it was a failure. Relations between the Political Agent, Major J. Biddulph, and the Maharaja were not always cordial; and he was unable, it was suspected in Calcutta, to prevent the Maharaja from establishing secret contacts with both the Russians and the Afghans which were not in the British interest. The intelligence derived from this outpost was considered to be disappointing. Hunza was not brought within the British sphere. The provision of logistic support for an official establishment so far removed from the nearest British military base proved to be extremely difficult (and costly). The Russian threat, which the Agency was designed to meet, appeared (at least in the opinion of a new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, who was very much Gladstone's man in his negative attitude towards imperial expansion, just as his predecessor Lytton had reflected the more adventurous outlook of Disraeli) for the moment to be less than had once been thought. In 1881 the Agency was ~ithdrawn.~' The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, in effect, was now left to guard the Northern Frontier unsupervised by any representative of the Government of India. This was a situation which could not endure. The 1880s saw AngloRussian competition in Asia rapidly coming to a climax. The Russians were approaching with alarming velocity the northern borders of Afghanistan both from what is today Turkmenistan and from the Pamirs. There was increasing evidence that Russian contacts had been established with the rulers of Chitral and Hunza. It was suspected that the new Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Pratap Singh, who had succeeded Maharaja Ranbir Singh in 1885, had been engaged in treasonable correspondence with Tsarist representatives (as well as with the deposed heir to the Sikh empire, Dalip Singh, now exiled in ~n~land)." The Maharaja's administration of the State, in any case. was notoriously inefficient, corrupt and oppressive, a fact which had aroused considerable comment in the press both in Ellgland and in India. 111 these circumstances the C;overnment of India could onlv conclude that the defence of the Northern Frontier was too gl-are a matter to be entrusted to the Maharaja. By I886 some British officials were arguing tllst the nilole Gilgit region should be taken over lock, stock and bar1.el by the C'.ovel.llnlent  of India and a new Gilgit Agency established, this time to rule directly and not merely keep an eye on the antics of the Government of Jammu and ~ashmir.)) There was a real risk unless appropriate precautions were taken, so the British diplomat Ney Elias concluded after his mission to Yarkand and Kashgar in 1885, that the Chinese would attempt the outright annexation of ~unza.)~ Others, with the enthusiastic support of a number of politicians in Britain (including Lord Randolph Churchill), favoured the annexation of all of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (and not merely some of its dependencies). In 1889 what amounted to a compromise was adopted. As we have already seen, Maharaja Pratap Singh was stripped of his powers and the entire State placed under the control of a Council of State closely supervised by a British Resident in Srinagar. Hitherto, as a symbol of the rather special status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the Government of India had been represented in the State not by a Resident but by the somewhat less formal mechanism of an Officer on Special From the point of view of the Northern Frontier this new arrangement had many advantages. It avoided arousing Indian public opinion: ever since 1857 the Government of India had been extremely wary of annexing Princely States. The British would be in control of frontier policy, yet many of the resultant costs could be charged to the State Government which would also both provide a considerable proportion of the military force required and maintain the major access route from Srinagar through ~unji.~~ Under these conditions, in 1889 Algernon Durand was instructed to re-establish the Gilgit Agency, but this time on a much firmer footing. The most urgent task now facing the Agency under Durand was to deal with Hunza.

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