Balochistan, the British and the Great Game. The Struggle for the Bolan Pass, Gateway to India

摘要

Balochi nationalism has been an organised force for ninety years and in some versions threatens the integrity of Iran, Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. The Pakistani province of Balochistan, about the same size as Germany, comprises only five percent of the country's population but 43% of its land area, most of its mineral resources and 75% of its sea board where, in recent decades, Chinese investment has transformed the port of Gwadur. Thus, any work which throws fresh light on the history of Balochistan is to be welcomed. This detailed military history is primarily concerned with British India's western borderland in the nineteenth century, and especially with Kalat, the largest of the khanates whose memory still animates some contemporary nationalists. Baloch and Brahui notables people Heathcote's pages but they are seen through the records of the East India Company and the Government of India and the private papers of the leading British army officers and politicians. Appended to the text are the four treaties which chronicle the stages by which Kalat lost its external sovereignty: the Treaties of Kalat, 1839 and 1841; ofMastung, 1854; and of Jacobabad, 1876. There are interesting photographs, but a book that pays such meticulous attention to local detail deserves better than the two single-page maps.