Shadow States : India, China and the Himalayas, 1910–1962

This book provides both a fresh examination of Indian state-making and nation-building through the experience of the eastern Himalayas and an exploration of competition between China and India in the region from 1910 to the outbreak of open conflict in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 - a tension which still informs Sino-Indian relations today.

Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Berenice Guyot-Rechard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.