The book probes the lesser-known history of the Great Wars in the India-Myanmar borderland from the perspective of the indigenous people of the area. It critically studies how the indigenous hill people saw the Wars as an opportunity to defend their land and free themselves from the bondage of colonial rule. The volume provides an in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of unconventional warfare during the First and Second World Wars, where conventional methods of fighting seemed to be irrelevant in the mountainous Indo-Burma frontier, and studies the role played by the indigenous hill people who had traditional expertise in jungle warfare.

An important contribution to indigenous studies, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of history, Northeast India, frontier studies, military history, insurgency and counterinsurgency, colonialism, tribal studies, and the history of modern Southeast Asia.

Pum Khan Pau, Professor, Department of History & Archaeology, Nagaland University, Kohima. He was Raman Post-Doctoral Fellow at Arizona State University, USA (2014-15). His research interests include frontier and borderlands studies, history of North-East India under colonial rule, the two World Wars in the Indo-Burma borderland etc. Pau has published in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Asian Ethnicity, Journal of Burma Studies, Indian Historical Review, Mission Studies, Strategic Analysis etc. He is the author of Indo-Burma frontier and the making of the Chin Hills: Empire and Resistance (London, 2020).