Abstract

The British Raj of the late nineteenth century has frequently been seen as an archetypal “modern state”, premised on principles of bureaucratic efficiency and distance from the subjects it dominated. Looking at attempts to institute government during this period in the frontier regions of Britain’s sprawling possessions in South Asia, it is possible to discern that officials on the ground were in fact occupied by very different, and often contradictory, sets of concerns. Operating in environs and among people thought to pose a variety of existential threats to officials, practices of government were inextricably entangled with a mixture of very personal fears and efforts to fashion heroic selves. Through linking a number of case studies into a broader theoretical framework, this talk will show how the concerns and idiosyncrasies of individual officials consistently impacted upon abortive and haphazard efforts to build the state at the edges of British India.