On a September day in 1863, Abdul Hamid entered the Central Asian city
of Yarkand. Disguised as a merchant, Hamid was actually an employee of
the Survey of India, carrying concealed instruments to enable him to
map the geography of the area. Hamid did not live to provide a
first-hand count of his travels. Nevertheless, he was the advance
guard of an elite group of Indian trans-Himalayan
explorers—recruited, trained, and directed by the officers of the
Great Trigonometrical Survey of India—who were to traverse much of
Tibet and Central Asia during the next thirty years.
Derek Waller presents the history of these explorers, who came to be
called "native explorers" or "pundits" in the public documents of the
Survey of India. In the closed files of the government of British
India, however, they were given their true designation as spies. As
they moved northward within the Indian subcontinent, the British
demanded precise frontiers and sought orderly political and economic
relationships with their neighbors. They were also becoming
increasingly aware of and concerned with their ignorance of the
geographical, political, and military complexion of the territories
beyond the mountain frontiers of the Indian empire. This was
particularly true of Tibet.
Though use of pundits was phased out in the 1890s in favor of purely
British expeditions, they gathered an immense amount of information on
the topography of the region, the customs of its inhabitants, and the
nature of its government and military resources. They were able to
travel to places where virtually no European count venture, and did so
under conditions of extreme deprivation and great danger. They are
responsible for documenting an area of over one million square miles,
most of it completely unknown territory to the West. Now, thanks to
Waller's efforts, their contributions to history will no longer remain
forgotten.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780813184296
Publisert
2021
Utgiver
Vendor
The University Press of Kentucky
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter