East View Archive Editions

Tribes of the North-West Frontier: British Records, 1836–1960

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Tribes of the North-West Frontier: British Records, 1836–1960 presents documentary evidence of British interests in the North-West Frontier of the British Indian Empire, as this was understood in the mid-nineteenth century. The region in question now comprises the western frontier of Pakistan. This collection brings together a wide range of official British documents spanning the period 1836–1960, including telegrams, letters, and memoranda authored by various historical figures both famous and obscure, all of which serve to present a primary record of developments along the North-West Frontier from the earliest days of control by the British East India Company to border disputes between the newly formed government of Pakistan and the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The region stretching from the Pamir Mountains in the north to the Malik Siah Mountains in the south is the ancestral homeland of numerous Pashtun tribes, and the history of the North-West Frontier in many ways documents the history of these tribes, as their actions have alternately hindered and helped attempts by major powers to exert influence in the area throughout the centuries.

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Tribes of the North-West Frontier

Key Stats

  • Date Coverage: 1836-1960
  • City: Minneapolis
  • Country: USA
  • Format: PDF, page-based
  • Producer: East View Information Services
  • Platform: East View Archive Editions

The texts which comprise Tribes of the North-West Frontier: British Records, 1836–1960 are all official British government documents drawn from British archives and therefore provide an exclusively British perspective on the history of the North-West Frontier. The earliest of the presented items date from just before the start of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, which arose out of British concerns over instability in the region, as well as fears of a possible Russian invasion from the north. The remainder of the collection deals primarily with events of the later nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, including major conflicts such as the Second and Third Anglo-Afghan Wars, as well as more obscure incidents such as the frequent raids and counterraids by British forces and Pashtun tribesmen across the Durand Line. The most recent documents date to the 1960s, after the establishment of the independent states of India and Pakistan, and chiefly comprise British reports and observations on border disputes and negotiations between Pakistan and the Kingdom of Afghanistan.

Each document in this collection is richly tagged, full-text searchable, and dynamically discoverable. Users can browse by people, places, and topics (as identified by the collection’s editors), as well as document types (e.g., despatch, map, telegram, letter, etc.). Each object is also georeferenced in a map view, both by geographic origin of the document and by locations associated with items in the collection.

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