The Indian Borderland, 1880-1900

An English geographer of great distinction, Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich (1843-1929) is best remembered as Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India. He served on a number of boundary commissions including the one on Afghanistan that settled the country's border with British India in 1884-6. He was also invited by the governments of Argentina and Chile in 1892 to define their boundary along the Andes Mountains. Holdich wrote and lectured extensively on geographical issues in the later part of his life. In 1887 his work on the Afghan frontier received the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (of which he was President from 1917 to 1919). This work of 1901 describes the geography and border disputes of the north-west frontier, including the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in which Holdich himself fought. The book also contains illustrations, and an appendix that provides a short history of Afghanistan.