From frontier to strategic buffer: the North-Eastern borderland of India in Olaf Caroe’s plans during the Second World War

Abstract

The article analyzes the views of the British colonial administration on the security system along the north-eastern borderland of India during the Second World War. It examines strategic projects developed by British officials in the early 1940s in the context of the Japanese advance in Burma and the reconsideration of the region’s future political and strategic configuration. Particular attention is paid to the concept of the “two rings of buffers” proposed by Foreign Secretary to the Government of India Olaf Caroe, according to which the defence of India in the North-East was to be based on a combination of an external belt of buffer states (primarily Tibet and Burma) and an internal defensive zone composed of the tribal areas of the North-East Frontier of India. The article shows that in British strategic planning of that period, the North-East gradually acquired increasing importance in the context of possible external threats to India’s security, the most significant of which was perceived to be the potential rise of China. At the same time, the political developments of the mid-1940s and the preparations for granting independence to India prevented the implementation of plans for the reorganization of the northeastern borderland, many of which remained at the level of strategic proposals.

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