ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the criminal tribes policy of the 1870s by taking a number of backward and sideways steps. It examines two such cases. It begins in 1818 in the scrubby hill country of Rajputana, in what is now modern- day Rajasthan, to trace the military government of criminal, predatory tribes. The flexibility of what might constitute evidence of such character and livelihood was evidenced in the case of the Akola Minas with which this chapter began. The chapter therefore begins to trace the complex lineage and identities of colonial governmentality, illustrating the way in which similar problems of governance were refracted through different lenses and prompted quite differing forms of analysis and intervention across different spheres of colonial government. British territorial conquest in India expanded rapidly in the years after 1817 when, having put down the Maratha powers of central India, the East India Company became the paramount power on the subcontinent.
