ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the raids of the early 1860s, the administration resorted to tougher policies to control, deter and counteract the raiders of the eastern hills. This chapter will suggest that these measures were not designed only to protect the British subjects in the Hills, but also to exert greater political and economic control over the frontier territory. The creation of an economy based on the deployment of fiscal instruments and plough cultivation was imagined to be the most effective tool for civilising the ‘savages’. By setting up institutions of economic control, as well as by modifying, and at times doing away with existing centres of political power in the Hills, these measures were intended to bring order for the Raj in capturing both the polities and the economies of the territory.
