Against the Empire

This book explores the Kuki uprising against the British Empire during the First World War in the northeast frontier of India (then the Assam–Burma frontier). It sheds light on how the three-year war (1917–1919), spanning over 6,000 square miles, is crucial to understanding present-day Northeast India.

Companion to the seminal The Anglo-Kuki War, 1917–1919, the chapters in this volume:

• Examine several aspects of the Anglo-Kuki War, which had far-reaching consequences for the indigenous Kuki population, including economy, politics, identity, indigenous culture and belief systems, and traditional institutions during and after the First World War itself
• Highlight finer themes such as the role of the chiefs and war councils, symbols of communication, indigenous interpretation of the war, remembrance, and other policies which continued to confront the Kuki communities
• Interrogate themes of colonial geopolitics, colonialism and the missionaries, state making, and the frontier dimensions of the First World War

Moving away from colonial ethnographies, the volume taps on a variety of sources – from civilisational discourse to indigenous readings of the war, from tour diaries to oral accounts – meshing together the primitive with the modern, the tribal and the settled. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian Studies, area studies, modern history, military and strategic studies, insurgency and counterinsurgency studies, tribal warfare, and politics.