Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India- Compiled in the Intelligence Branch, Army Headquarters, India (Set of 7 Volumes)

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IN 1866 the Punjab Government considered it desirable that a "Record should be composed of the expeditions made from time to time against the North-West Frontier Tribes, with such further information as might render the work a valuable guide to those who might have future dealings with these turbulent neighbours." The first edition of the work was compiled in 1873 by Colonel W. H. Paget, 5th Punjab Cavalry, under the title of "A Record of Expeditions against the North-West Frontier Tribes," and was revised and brought up to date in 1884 by Lieutenant A. H. Mason, R.E.

Similar considerations have now prompted the compilation of a record of expeditions against frontier tribes on all the frontiers of India, and of operations embarked in by the Indian Government overseas; and as the latest edition of Paget and Mason had become out of print, it was decided to incorporate that work, revised and brought up to date, in the present volumes, instead of again issuing it as a separate compilation.

SINCE 1884, the year in which Paget and Mason's "Records of Expeditions against the North-West Frontier Tribes" was published, the Frontier of British Influence has, by the Durand Agreement, extended far beyond the limits therein described, and now, including as it does nearly all the frontier tribes, is coterminous with Afghanistan from the Kilik pass in the north to the borders of Persia in the west.

The boundary line of 1884 was what is now, roughly, the administrative border of the North-West Frontier Province. In the present work, in order to differentiate between these two boundary lines, that of British Influence and that of British Administration, the former will be called the Frontier and the latter the Administrative Border Line.

The border line skirts the six districts of Hazara, Kohat, Peshawar, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and Dera Ghazi Khan, the first five of which belong to the North-West Frontier Province, and the last to the province of the Punjab. Of these six districts, two, Hazara and Kohat, are hilly and in parts mountainous. The other four are almost level plains, only broken by deep ravines and torrent beds, which make even the Peshawar valley difficult for the movements of cavalry and guns. The characteristics of the people inhabiting them differ very greatly, and it is necessary, in as few words as possible, to describe each district before giving an account of the tribes beyond their border.

**Contents and Sample Pages**