The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia, by James Hevia

Abstract

Based solidly on archival sources in the India Office Records, The National Archives (including Foreign Office and War Office papers) and a wide range of secondary material, this book by James Hevia explores two historical dimensions. One is the ways in which the Intelligence Branch of the Indian Army exploited its methods of collecting topographical, statistical and human (anthropological) information to plan military campaigns; and the second is to explain the importance of intelligence collecting to our understanding of the creation of the modern state. In short, Hevia’s argument is that imperial expansion, notably in India, created the techniques for modern state self-preservation. By de-romanticising the Great Game of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, the author claims to locate the origins of United States and British counter-insurgency ‘operations systems’ employed during the Cold War with the Soviet Union (pp. 258–60). This review will, first, examine Indian Army methods behind military planning; and, second, it will evaluate the claim of continuity into the twentieth century.