A deeply researched history that examines colonial and post-colonial faultlines, from Aden to Myanmar

Earlier this summer, amid renewed tensions between India and Pakistan following a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, Donald Trump remarked that the two countries had been fighting over Kashmir for “a thousand years”. It was a glib, ahistorical comment, and was widely ridiculed. Shattered Lands, Sam Dalrymple’s urgent and ambitious debut, offers a more comprehensive rebuttal. Far from being a region riven by ancient hatreds, the lands that comprise modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar – as well as parts of the Gulf – were divided up within living memory from an empire in retreat.

“You can’t actually see the Great Wall of China from space,” Dalrymple begins, “but the border wall dividing India from Pakistan is unmistakable.” Stretching more than 3,000km and flanked by floodlights, thermal vision sensors and landmines, this is more a physical scar left by the hurried dismantling of British India than a traditional geopolitical divide. What might now seem like natural frontiers were shaped by five key events: Burma’s exit from the empire in 1937; the separation of Aden that same year, and of the Gulf protectorates in 1947; the division of India and Pakistan, also in 1947; the absorption of more than 550 princely states; and, in 1971, the secession of East Pakistan. Neither ancient nor inevitable, these lines were hastily drawn in committee rooms, colonial offices and war cabinets.