In the early part of the 13th century, the Shans from Upper Burma established the Ahom kingdom in the Brahmaputra valley. Towards the 17th century, however, repeated invasions by Burmese army from present-day Myanmar, weakened the six-century-old kingdom that had successfully resisted the Mughals. The first expedition of the Ahom Kingdom took place when Ahom king Gaurinath Singha sought assistance from the British to save the kingdom from repeated Burmese attacks. Little did he realise that this move would go on to decide the history of state formation in the Northeastern region.
Responding to the king, Governor-General Lord Cornwallis, in the first expedition, in 1792, sent a team of British officials under Captain Welsh. The British emerged victorious in the First Anglo-Burmese war (1824-26). In 1826, through the Treaty of Yandabo, Welsh acquired complete control over Assam, Manipur, Cachar, and Jaintia, as well as Arakan province and Tenasserim in modern-day Myanmar. “Although few Englishmen ever heard the name of Captain Welsh, his memory still held in reverence by such of the Assamese as have retained the tradition of his expedition, and it is probable that the remembrance of his mild and just rule (for he virtually governed the country for 18 months) made the Assamese the more readily accept us as true friends, when we annexed the province 31 years after he left it,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel J. Johnstone, Political Agent, Manipur, in his book Captain Welsh’s expedition to Assam in 1792, 1793 and 1794.
However, the complex geography, multi-ethnicity and vivid culture posed a significant challenge for the British to draw a solid boundary of the region that they wanted to take over from the Ahom kingdom.
Notably, the Treaty of Yandabo mentioned just four ‘valley kingdoms’—Assam, Manipur, Cachar and Jaintia. It left out the tribal communities affected by the Burmese occupation. To maintain peace between the hills and the plains, and avert raids of hill tribes in plain villages, Ahom kings followed an appeasement policy. The Nagas, who often came down from the Naga Hills, were granted revenue free land called ‘khat’ and fishing waters called ‘bheel’ in the plains. The Adis from Arunachal Hills were granted rights over the fish and gold in Dihong river, an upstream tributary of Brahmaputra. Likewise, the Bhutias, Akas, Nyishis and Miris tribes were granted ‘posa’, a kind of annual revenue payment from villages in the plains.
The British Raj, however, were ignorant about the region’s political texture, and diluted these systems after 1826. Deprived of their resources, the hill people organied frequent raids. The British officials posted in the region responded to these raids with retaliatory measures. They established outposts, sent expeditions and even interfered in internal disputes of the tribal societies. The hill tribes, oblivious to the newly drawn boundaries and the physical limits that it set up, tried to protect their lands, territories and resources by raiding the plains. The mere existence of the tribes, based on their land and territory and the complex tapestry of their language and culture, were neglected by the British while they demarcated their territory and set down the physical limits of their administration.
According to Dhiren A. Sadokpam, an Imphal based independent researcher and journalist, “Post the Burmese invasion and the Treaty of Yandaboo, the contours of border issues took a new turn. In short, what I want to put across is the fact that weak rulers of the Northeast region and their inability to settle internal crisis and ward off aggressions from neighbouring kingdoms made them invite the British. Once the British entered the into this realm, the colonial approach to impose spatial demarcation denoting political geography became the norms whether or not the people inhabiting the Northeast space liked it or not. And hence, the seed of perennial conflict was sown.”