Despite the advances made by social science as an aid to colonial control during the early twentieth century, one of the most revealing case studies of imperial ‘understanding’ in action during this period comes not from Africa, where trained ‘anthropologists’ had become part of the British colonial government’s administrative repertoire. Instead it came from the isolated and violent enclave of the North-West Frontier, where ‘classical’ forms of knowledge-gathering continued to dominate up to and post-World War II. Here was a hotbed of government activism, where officials sought to actively manipulate and shape local social and political structures in the pursuit of peace and stability.1 Ostensibly focused upon keeping tribal resistance to imperial rule at palatable levels through cost-effective administration, in reality these actions hid determined attempts by officials of the Indian Political Service – the so-called politicals – to effect transformative change upon aspects of native Pashtun society.