Trans-Himalayan trade in an imperial environment

Abstract

This chapter explores how the Bhotiyas dealt with imperial forms of power and authority in order to realize their trade under British colonial rule in nineteenth-century Kumaon. Based on a combined analysis of oral and written historical sources I show that British imperial sovereignty, similar to that of older regimes in the area, remained malleable and contested within the wider relational field of the Bhotiyas’ trans-Himalayan trade. When the British East India Company annexed Kumaon in 1815 it was recognized as a so-called Non-regulation Province, which meant that government officials could flexibly interpret executive orders to suit the realities on the ground. Procedural simplicity and discretionary decisions created scope for both shaping and contesting British hegemony, leading to an adaptive transformation of imperial rule. Through a close examination of British interactions with Kumaon’s traders, the chapter will reveal the frictions that arose from this exceptional legal status. This focus serves to address the broader question of how sovereign claims work through multiple and shifting articulations, from frontier narratives to cartographic representations and from fluid relationships of allegiance to fixed state boundaries. The analysis considers a previous call to conceive High Asia as a continuous zone and an agentive site of political action by arguing that confluent territories and overlapping sovereignties are key to understanding trans-Himalayan trade in an imperial environment.