 First up we have Mark Jones. Mark is from the ANU College of Agen and the Pacific and the title of his presentation tonight is George William Trail, Raja of Camorne. I've got a tip for all the budding imperialists in the audience. Don't take your empire into the mountains. Everywhere it's been tried, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Kashmir, you name it, empire has been a disaster. But maybe, just maybe, I found an exception to this rule. You see, I spent the last northern winter sitting in a cold and dusty archive in North India, going through the fading handwritten records of what happened in Kumon 200 years ago. Kumon is the little patch of the Himalayas, tucked up where India, Nepal and Tibet all meet, just a little to the northeast of Delhi. Those fading records from the edge of empire told me a different story. They told me about a young Scotsman, barely 20 years old, that the British put in charge of Kumon in 1816. His name was George William Trail. Trail was very aware of his tenuous military position, and he was very aware that he was in a space that was politically, economically and culturally very different from everything known. His response was to persuade the British that the laws of the rest of India should not apply in Kumon, and that he should have almost sole charge of the region's affairs. Using the rule of law as a weapon of empire, Trail set low taxes and made sure the peasants kept their land. He based the law on existing custom and practice, and perhaps most importantly, he made sure the law applied to everyone, especially the British. Trail stayed 20 years, and the local people really did speak of him as the Raja of Kumon. Together they began a series of transitions that rolled on through the 19th century. The Kumon people went from amongst the poorest to the best-off peasantry in India. They went from their social order being based in formal legal practices, to a social order based in formal legal practices, and they went from beyond the idea of India to being central to it. Be this as it may. My advice to budding imperialists still stands. Don't take your empire into the mountains, but if you do, have a look at what Young George Trail did in Kumon all those years ago.