Il Baluchistan e la difesa dell'India. Note sulla strategia territoriale britannica nel nord-ovest

From both a political and a strategic point of view, the importance of Baluchistan has always been linked to its particular location. This oblong, desert stretch of country, bordering Persia, India and Afghanistan, has always played a crucial role in the mosaic of Central and Southern Asian. Under British rule, Baluchistan presented the Indian authorities with perhaps their most pressing problem - how to protect this wide, open area from invasions coming both from North or West without charging the exchequer with an overwhelming financial burden? The article looks at this issue, analysing the ways in which, over the time, the militaries and civilians worked together or, more commonly, came into conflict, in the search for the best solution to this strategic problem. More specifically, after a brief historical review of the events which led the British authorities and the khan of Kalat to sign, in 1876, the Jacobabad treaty, the article will focus on the different military structures emerging in British Baluchistan and in the Agency Territories of the one hand, and in the Kalat State, on the other, and on their relationships with the different geographic and geo-morphologic features of these areas. Using a historically based analysis, the article will aim, in conclusion, to show how both the adoption of a form of static defence in the North-Eastern areas (the so called “cantonment+garrison system”) and the creation, in the South-Western ones, of a sort of mobile defence (mainly entrusted to the Levy Corps) sprang from a common need, i.e., from the need to rationalise the traditional Indian military structures in order to face the ever changing challenges posed by the international environment.