ABSTRACT
That the British never intended to conquer the Naga hills and that this was forced on them by the Nagas themselves is a myth in the modern sense. The aim to defeat the Burmese, to expel them from Assam and to reinstall the native governments in between as a buffer zone, made the hill people surrounding Assam initially into potential allies, to be drawn into the violent conflict and made instrumental in the war efforts. At this stage they are by no means portrayed as negative and are treated as equals in the colonial documents. The prospect for economic profit, and the discovery of the strategic value of the mountains surrounding Assam, then led to the decision to keep Assam and to reinstall only some of the native governments, and then only as dependent ones. The hill people now were turned from sensible and potential allies into irrational, irresponsible, barbarous savages, from whom the Assamese had to be protected. The reason for keeping Assam under British rule was to safeguard it from these ‘viles’. In the case of the Nagas, the dependent government of Manipur was encouraged to subjugate them. When that stratagem failed and led to retaliation, carried out by the Nagas, the British in turn changed tactics and tried to make them comply with what they called ‘punitive expeditions’. These punitive expeditions involved foraging into the Nagas’ territory, destroying their villages and defences together with their grain stores, leaving them resourceless and defenceless, at the mercy of often hostile neighbours, and trying to overawe them into subjugation. Yet when this also failed to achieve the desired effect, the British added to their strategy the component of the economic break-up and incorporation of the Naga hills into their market sphere, combined with the threat of military force. Simultaneously they were closing in on the Naga hills by settling other cultivator populations around them, as well as allowing the extensions of the tea estates up to the foothills. But this was all to no avail. The Nagas were under no central rule that could have made them comply. The terrain and the weather were so difficult for the British that the Nagas, when changing to guerrilla tactics, could not be controlled easily by them. Hence a rational calculation brought the British to disengage from the Naga hills. More than a decade later the British reversed that policy; for reasons lying beyond the Naga hills, they attempted to progressively conquer them, but never brought them entirely under their control
arrival were organised in a ranked clan system that can be taken as a segmentary political system (see chapter two). The clans rivalled each other for hegemony that expressed itself in tribute and enforced following in case of external threat, thus constituting a parallel, penetrated, territorial polity based on conflict and consensus. Historically Southeast Asian, the Tengimas inhabited a refuge area whose inhabitants had developed their identity by stressing individual autonomy and collective consensus in conscious opposition to the hierarchically constituted lowland societies. Since they were aware of the numerical, material and technological superiority of their centrally organised plains neighbours, they carefully tuned their policy towards them, appeased at one time and deterred the other. Being at the same time conscious of the fact that it was the very inaccessible nature of their territory that allowed for their independent way of life, they put up staunch resistance when threatened with large-scale invasions, but gave in when resistance seemed futile. Plains kingdoms in Southeast Asia had thus far not seen any incentive to direct control or to subjugate hill regions.
