Introduction: Empire, Colony and Diplomacy

Abstract

This chapter introduces the British Legation in Kabul (1922-1948) as an institution whose history visualises the transformation of the Indian colonial state into a conduit of international relations after 1919. The period between 1919 and 1947 reframed the ‘Anglo-Afghan’ relations of the nineteenth century for the age of statal independence. The chapter establishes the book’s location in current historiographical thinking about space, such as empire and the frontier, as well as time, such as independence and decolonisation, modernity and development. It argues that ‘empire’ was a processual cluster in constant flux as well as a multicentred space. The introduction employs the concept of synchronic and diachronic coloniality to trace the continued impact of colonialism in the absence of colonialism itself.