Managing a Borderland: Eastern Duars and Bhutan relations in Colonial Northeast India

Abstract

The East India Company annexed the Ahom kingdom and this led to the modification of existing relations between hills and plains and frontier regions. With the EIC flexing its muscles in the region, the dissolution of earlier power structures, which used to arbitrate over disputes previously, saw the rise in conflict over the narrow space of the foothills and the Duars. This period witnessed increase in skirmishes between the hill dwellers and plains settlers over the control of these strategic paths, the Bhutan Duars and EIC interfered in this to establish their authority over the subject population and territory.