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This chapter focuses on the two schools that emerged in the internal debate over boundary. One school favoured the Kuen Lun range as the boundary; the other, the Karakoram range. This chapter also outlines Francis Younghusband's efforts to define the limits of the British Empire in India. and discusses the ‘no man’s land on which neither China or India had any claim..

This chapter reviews the status of India's boundaries as of 15 August 1947. It also considers propositions, based on the history of boundary-making, that are of direct relevance to the policies pursued by India and China after 1947. It discusses the Ladakh–Tibet Treaty of 1842; the undefined Karakoram and the Kuen Lun boundary; the northern and eastern boundary of Kashmir that was not only undemarcated on the ground but also undefined by a formal treaty or even an informal understanding; and China's refusal to occupy an area that would create a buffer between India and expansionist Russia.

Travelling by bus across the northern areas of Pakistan on my way back to England after our first climbing expedition to Kulu in 1978, I remember it being hot, dry, and dusty down in the plains of the Peshawar basin, but the distant sight of glinting snowfields way to the north of Swat and Gilgit heralded the mightiest mountain range of them all. The Karakoram Range has the highest concentration of mountains over 7,000 metres anywhere in the world including K2, at 8,614 metres high the second highest peak, and three other mountains which are over 8 kilometres above sea level (Broad Peak 8,047 m, Gasherbrum II 8,034 m, Gasherbrum I also called Hidden Peak, 8,068 m). Literally hundreds of peaks over 6 kilometres high are clustered along the length and breadth of the range, which spans the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang, also just clipping the far northern Indian state of Ladakh. The Karakoram Range contains the longest continental glaciers outside the polar regions, the four longest being the Siachen (73 km long), and the Hispar, Biafo, and Baltoro Glaciers, all about 60 km long. In the middle of the Karakoram is a huge continental icecap, Snow Lake or the Lukpe-lawa, surrounded by glistening, improbably steep and high granite spires. The mountains here leap out of the glacier like the wildly imaginative lines of a child’s drawing. During the later stages of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, the chaotic array of contours and mountain ranges around the north-western Himalaya was surveyed. The main Himalayan Ranges extend west into the Zanskar and Kashmir regions, but to the north of the Indus River lie another whole series of ranges, the Ladakh Range (the ‘Transhimalaya’ of Sven Hedin, the greatest of all Tibetan explorers), the Karakoram, and the Pamir Ranges. In 1856, Colonel T. G. Montgomery first spied the great peaks bordering the Baltoro Glacier from the distant Kashmir foothills over 150 km away. Two giants stood above the rest, K1 (Masherbrum) and K2. Everest had just been computed as the highest mountain at 29,002 feet (8,829 m), later increased to its now widely accepted height of 29,064 feet (8,848 m).

Villages in Sai catchment in Gilgit-Baltistan were integrated into mainstream Pakistan when the Karakoram Highway was completed in the 1980s. Previous to the road, local food security depended solely on local subsistence production. Now, household food security is more dependent upon purchasing power achieved through outside employment and access to markets on the plains. Food security is vulnerable because the Highway is frequently blocked by natural hazards and political unrest.

This chapter shows how in early antiquity the universal appeal of silk spread across Eurasia through a trade network known as the Silk Roads. Silk inspired the economic exchange of trading goods, which produced a network of trade centers and cities. The value of silk was so great that traders endured harsh conditions as they passed through the great mountain ranges of the Tien Shan, Karakorams, and Hindu Kush and skirted inhospitable deserts, such as the Taklamakan and Gobi. Caravanserais, rest stops along the Silk Roads, allowed travelers to exchange ideas and innovations and created awareness of different cultures and religions. The product of the domestic silkworm figured prominently in the development of dominant Central and Western Asian empires and Chinese dynasties and produced significant historical figures, such as Timur and Mongol leader, Genghis Khan. As this chapter shows, that rich, arcane history developed because of the domestic silkworm.

The final three chapters scrutinise the impact on Indo-central Asian trade on the conquest and incorporation of the Eurasian interior into the British and Russian empires, typical of the penetration of European political or commercial regimes into the continental interiors of Afro-Eurasia and America during the era of the New Imperialism. The advent of new railway and shipping routes, as well as the development of new and existing roads, was integral to this process. The result was the revitalisation of a range of routes criss-crossing and connecting the inner continental spaces and their greater integration into the larger world economy. This chapter surveys these developments, focusing on maritime and overland routes from India across the Arabian Sea, over the Karakoram, and those along the Grand Trunk Road through Afghanistan to central Asia.

Sino–Pakistani economic relations have been, broadly speaking, underwhelming. The exception has been infrastructure “mega-projects” financed by huge sums from Chinese state banks. Insecurity in Pakistan has posed a major risk to the overall economic relationship since Pakistan has gained a reputation as the most dangerous country in the world for overseas Chinese. The chapter discusses the role of and troubles with the Karakoram Highway, which has been intended as the cornerstone of a trade and energy corridor from the interior of China to the port of Gwadar on the Persian Gulf. Gwadar itself has not developed to the extent that was initially promised, due in part to Baloch militancy. However China sees the port as a potentially valuable naval facility. The chapter also details the history and effect of kidnapping of Chinese workers by extremists.