abstract - Zomi Online Library

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submission of the tribes was accepted. At the close of the expedition frontier posts were built to protect the border and
bazaars were opened to encourage the Lushais to trade.*
Assam now enjoyed comparative peace until 1888-89, when the hillmen, as already described, raided into Chittagong,
and Assam furnished a force of 400 police under the command of Mr. Daly to co-operate with General Tregear‘s
column. Entering the hills from Cachar, the police, with a detached force of the Chittagong column, attacked and
destroyed several villages which were implicated in the outrages committed in Chittagong in 1888. When the troops
retired at the close of the operation, they left two posts in the North Lushai hills - one at Aijal, the other at Changsil -
and a Political Officer was appointed to adminster the North Lushai Tract, with headquarters at Aijal.
9.3.5 The Arakan Hill Tracts.
In 1826, at the close of the First[Anglo-]Burmese war, the division of Arakan was annexed by the British. On account
of the formidable ranges of mountains and the wild tribes which inhabited them on northern boundary of our possessions
was fixed, nor was our administration on the frontier anything more than nominal. The hill tracts, from the time of the
annexation until a comparatively recent date, appear to have been raided by the same Chins and Lushais as raided into
Chittagong. In 1842 an expedition under Captain Phayre and Lieutenant Fytche was undertaken to punish the border
tribes, and between 1863 and 1869 there were 30 separate raids reported, in which 65 persons were killed and 268
carried into slavery...
In 1866 it was decided that the Chief Commissioner of British Burma should assume the direct administration of the
hill country and that an inner or administrative boundary should be laid down, within which internal crime could be
effectively repressed and protection afforded against aggressions from the exterior. Within this boundary adminstrative
measures were to be introduced, and at the same time friendly relations with the tribesmen outside the border were to be
cultivated. In 1870 the first Superintendent of the Hill Tract was appointed and the country within the inner boundary
garrisoned by police posts. These arrangements hold good to this day and have worked well. The administrative
boundary has not advanced and, as Arakan played no further part in the final occupation of the Chin-Lushai country, the
history of this tract and its relations with the Chins will now drop out of this book.
9.3.6 The Manipur border.
In the early times occasional communications passed between the British Government and the Manipur State, but our
present relations with the State may be said to have originated in the First Burmese war. Manipur had been devastated
by the Burmese, and its ruling family had fled to Cachar. The British troops, aided by a Manipuri contingent, drove the
Burmese out of the State and, when peace was made with the British in 1826, the independence of Manipur was
recognized by Burma in the Treaty of Yandaboo. A Political Agent was then appointed to Manipur. The country of
Manipur is flat, but it is girded about with mountain chains. The most southern village in the plains of Manipur is
Shuganu, the Siberia of the State, to which offenders until a recent date were banished. South of this village the hills
spring from the plains and immediately rise to an elevation of 4,000 feet; and in these hills live Chins, who in Nur Singh‘s
time(1834-50) are known to have been raiding and preying on the plains and, as we shall notice, continued to do so up
to a very recent date.
Before 1850 the Chins took possession of Mombee, a hill village overlooking the plains of Manipur. In 1857, in
consequence of a serious outrage on a hill village in Manipur territory, the Maharajah sent an expedition against the
Chins. Although the Maharajah himself accompanied the force, the expedition was unsuccessful...In a memorandum
written in 1861, Major Culloch, the Political Agent at Manipur, wrote:-
“South of the Namsailung are some powerful tribes, amongst whom Manipur is nothing; in fact to that
part no Manipuri has ever penetrated and even as far as the Namsailung no one but myself has ever
attempted to proceed. The people as far as the Namsailung have all submitted to me and will obey my
orders, and my name is amongst those to the south of it...Beyond the Manipur boundary are the
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* Footnote 1 on p. 16(Carey & Tuck): “This account is condensed from Mackenzie‘s ‘North-Eastern Frontier of Bengal. pages 313-316.‘