ABSTRACT
Both in North-West and North-East India, as the East India Company (EIC) expanded its realm, it came in contact with expanding indigenous powers. While in North-West India the British feared an Afghan attack or later a Russian attack through Afghanistan and its adverse consequences on the Indus tribes, in North-East India, the EIC's officials were threatened by a possible Burmese attack through Assam. Protection of the North-East Frontier required defeat of Burma and power projection against the tribes inhabiting the intervening borderlands of British India and Burma. Marxist scholars explain imperialism by focusing on the economic motives of the imperial power. In 1793, at the request of the Raja of Assam who was facing internal rebellion, a detachment comprising of 15 infantry companies was sent under Captain Thomas Welsh to the province. Both the kingdom of Burma and the EIC were in an expanding spree during the early nineteenth century.
