Building Peshawar: Labor, Security, and Infrastructure at the Edge of Empire

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the recruitment and organization of labor for projects of colonial state infrastructure in the city of Peshawar between 1849 and 1947. Providing access to the Khyber Pass—and thus Afghanistan—Peshawar was an urban center from which the colonial state sought to organize security on the Indo-Afghan frontier. Peshawari laborers, recruited to support the city’s large colonial military cantonment, railways, jail, and other infrastructure projects, were regulated according to colonial narratives about the security threats posed by the city’s geography and ethnic composition. This article contributes to our understanding of the labor of colonial security and border-making by uncovering the circular logic that connected security and labor in colonial-era Peshawar. The colonial state sought to build physical infrastructure to protect the city from the perceived threats posed by the Indo-Afghan frontier. But to build this infrastructure of security, colonial administrators relied on a porous border. Through the porous border they recruited labor from regional populations who they characterized as intrinsically prone to violence or difficult to discipline, spurring a continuous expansion of security infrastructure. Therefore, though an analysis of how laborers were recruited for state projects, the article argues that the colonial regime reified ethnic and social hierarchies within the city.