Sub-imperialism and the Loss of the Khyber: The Politics of Imperial Defence on British India's North-West Frontier

In 1897 the British were confronted with a formidable revolt in their turbulent North-West Frontier of India. On 25 August they lost the historic and strategically important Khyber Pass to the attacking Afridi tribesmen. The loss of the Khyber was seen as a humiliating defeat and a heavy blow to British prestige. In order to recover this prestige and exact reparations from the Afridis, the British sanctioned the punitive Tirah campaign-one of the biggest and costliest expeditions in colonial warfare. Drawing upon original evidence, this article revisits the fall of the Khyber to examine the circumstances that led to its loss. In shifting our vantage point from grand schemes of imperial defence to on the ground military decision-making, conceptualised here as sub-imperialism, core assumptions about imperial defence are problematised, bringing forth a new perspective on the inconsistencies and contradictions within British imperialism on the North-West Frontier in the late nineteenth century.