REGIONAL EXPANSION
The regions of India that would later become Pakistan were mostly the last to be joined into Company rule. The logic behind the Company’s conquest of Sindh, Punjab, and the areas now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa[16] and Balochistan was an attempt to secure the ‘natural borders’ of the subcontinent all the way to Kabul and beyond.
Embroiled in the imperial Great Game against Russia, the British feared for all their holdings in India, thanks to the Russian advance into vast areas of Central Asia.[17] In quick succession Balochistan in 1839, Sindh in 1843 and Punjab in 1849 were conquered. The British faced crippling defeat in their further advances towards current day Afghanistan in several campaigns.The territories acquired were administered in ways that both reflected the relative violence of conquest as well as British notions about the temperament of each region’s populace. Balochistan had become integral to British interests when British cavalry were forced to cross its territory on route to what became the first Afghan War.[18] They entered into a treaty with Khan of Kalat, who ruled over much of current day Balochistan, and continued to pay him tribute for the next century. Dismayed that the Khan was unable to secure them safe passage through what was in fact a tribal confederacy, the British engaged in palace intrigue rather than incorporate Balochistan into their larger bureaucratic and administrative enterprise.[19] The territory of Sindh was annexed to the Bombay presidency but left, in the manner of a mofussil, to be managed in customary fashion. Land was allowed to be held in perpetuity by existing landholders and tribal chiefs in exchange for revenue extraction.
The conquest of the Punjab began with an attempt to exert influence on the child regent and successor to the long-standing Emperor Ranjt Singh.[20] Competing regional claims on power enabled the British to enter the fray and to annex a region seen as pivotal to their security concerns. While sporadic resistance against British rule continued early on, there was also a quick amelioration of dissent owing to British willingness to win the loyalty of the populace of this relatively wealthy region, including by way of channelling investment into the building of canal networks to aid agricultural production.
In 1849 the British also annexed what was described as the NorthWest Frontier and brought it within the administrative sway of the Punjab province. Revenue extraction happened through an array of systems that transformed the local tribal structure in the subsequent decades. This region, north of the Indus River, had been paying tribute both to Sikh and Kabul Kingdoms and the Company faced continuing resistance to its assertion of sovereign control here.
IV