ABSTRACT
The first chapter discusses the importance of the location of the Indo-Burma frontier at a crossroads of India’s economic relations with China and Burma in the precolonial period. It seeks to situate the frontier within the larger context of British imperial policy by examining the expansion of the British Indian Empire in the ‘North-Eastern Frontier’ and the debates surrounding the establishment of ‘formal’ empire in Burma. While arguing that the Indo-Burma frontier is a sub-region of Zomia, this chapter also dwells on the land and the people of the Chin Hills, explains the etymology of the term ‘Chin’ and ‘Zo’, both of which are being employed in this work to refer to the people of the Chin Hills in general, examines indigenous hill polity and society, and early relationship between the hills Chin/Zo and plains Burmans.
