Table Of ContentPOLITICS OF SOUTH ASIA
Armed Coexistence
The Dynamics of the Intractable
Sino-Indian Border Dispute
Stephen P. Westcott
Politics of South Asia
Series Editors
Sumit Ganguly, Department of Political Science, Indiana University
Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
Ronojoy Sen, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of
Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Neil DeVotta, Department of Politics and International Affairs, Wake
Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Katharine Adeney, School of Politics and International Relations,
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
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Stephen P. Westcott
Armed Coexistence
The Dynamics of the Intractable Sino-Indian
Border Dispute
Stephen P. Westcott
Murdoch University
Murdoch, WA, Australia
ISSN 2523-8345 ISSN 2523-8353 (electronic)
Politics of South Asia
ISBN 978-981-16-7449-5 ISBN 978-981-16-7450-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7450-1
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Acknowledgments
Aswithalmostanyprojectofthislengthandscope,therehavebeenmany
people who have assisted me professionally and personally along the way.
I first started down this path in 2014 when I was sitting in the office of
mysoontobePh.D.supervisor,Dr.RajatGanguly,brainstormingfeasible
dissertationideas.Theideaoflookinginto‘contestedborders’wasfloated
and after some research I was hooked. Needless to say, without Rajat’s
various inputs and discussions throughout the years of my Ph.D. studies
and after, this monograph would not have been half as good. I also wish
to thank Professor Samuel Makinda, whose sage advice and wealth of
experience has been of great help to me in many ways throughout my
many years of study and beyond.
In 2015, I travelled to India to conduct some research into the Sino-
Indianborderdisputeandgenerallygetafeelforthepositionsandpolitics
of that country. As such, I owe a debt to all the residents of Gwyer Hall,
Delhi University, for making my stay so enjoyable and Professor Bidyut
Chakrabartyespeciallyforfacilitatingmyaccommodationduringmystay.
Special thanks must go to Professor Suba Chandran, Dr. Teshu Singh,
Ms. Ruhee Neog, Ms. Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy and all the crew at the
InstituteforPeaceandConflictStudiesforgivingmeabaseofoperations
to work from during my stay in Delhi. I wish to single out for special
thanks my fellow research intern at ICPS, Kalpana Jha, whose assistance,
directionsandcompanywasofincalculablevaluetomeduringmystayin
India.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the original
manuscript for their insightful comments and suggestions for improve-
ments. Special thanks are owed to John Firth of Flat Earth Mapping for
hisworkingeneratingthemaps;Ifeelasthoughtheyreallyhelpillustrate
the areas at stake in the border dispute.
Finally, I must thank my colleagues and officemates Sharifa Ahjum,
Doreen Alusa, Charles Roche, Kazi Haque and Andrew Morant for their
willingnesstochataboutideasandlifeovercoffeeorsomethingstronger.
Last, but not least, I must of course thank my family and my friends,
especially my parents Fiona and Peter Westcott, Rhiannon Emery, Phillip
Jenkins,GraemePatonandAndreMaujeanforhelpingmekeepthingsin
perspective over the years.
A Note on the Spelling of Names
and Places
Owingtothenatureofthetopic,thisstudynaturallyengageswithseveral
areasthatarenotjustcontestedterritorybutoftenreferredtobydifferent
names by China and India. Where I have found a divergence in the
place names, I have deferred to the more commonly used Anglo-Indian
spelling; for example, I have written the ‘Doklam Plateau’ instead of
‘Donglang’. However, this has been done simply for the reader’s conve-
nience and should not be seen as an endorsement of the correct name.
Where relevant, I have provided a footnote or otherwise indicated what
the alternative name for the location is.
For the names in Chinese, I have primarily used the Hanyu Pinyin
method of Romanising Chinese that has been officially adopted in the
People’sRepublicofChinasincethe1950sandhaslargelysupplantedthe
traditionalWade-GilesmethodintheWestsincethe1980s.Forexample,
I have used ‘Xinjiang’ instead ‘Sinkiang’ and ‘Zhou Enlai’ instead of
‘Chou En Lai’. However, several sources I have used were written either
before the Pinyin method was adopted or before it became the new stan-
dard. Hence, I have kept the Wade-Giles spelling when quoting from or
citing the original source. Additionally, where the Wade-Giles spelling of
a name is still more common in the West, I have also taken the liberty to
keep the old spelling to avoid confusion; for example, ‘Sun Tzu’ instead
of ‘Sunzi’.
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Map 2 Proposed border alignments for the north-western British Raj between
1847 and 1899
