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Walter Armbrust, Martyrs & Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution, Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). Pp. 344. $99.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780691162638

throughout the book—the issue of control. British policies towards Waziristan, whether in terms of the forward orclosed border policyor the “peaceful penetration” pursued during the interwar years, were all intended to assert British influence over this region. But what did “control” actually look like?Was it merely a matter of pacifying local populations and maintaining a buffer zone between Afghanistan and colonial India? Or did British officials hope to incorporate the region and its population? While the book documents the decisionmaking taking place among British civilian andmilitary officials on the ground, what is not always clear is how choices to send in troops or conduct aerial bombardments fit into broader imperial strategy or aspirations. How the British ultimately envisioned Waziristan fitting into colonial India, the greater British Empire, or, in the era of decolonization, a world increasingly dominated by nation-states remains vague. Perhaps this reflects the nature of British policy towards the region or the Raj’s ambivalent relationship with Waziristan’s population, but this point would have benefited from further explanation in the text. Likewise, contextualizing British policy towards Waziristan in terms of colonial approaches to other areas along the Indo-Afghan frontier would have helped emphasize the region’s significance and potential uniqueness. Empire and Tribe does not particularly break new ground in terms of its analytical findings regarding British policy towards Waziristan. Instead its value lies in the painstaking detail Beattie offers in describing how British policy evolved over a century as well as in its chronological approach, which allows the reader to easily follow the shifts in British relations with Waziristan. It will be of particular use to students and scholars newly arriving to the study of the colonial Indo-Afghan frontier and serves to reemphasize how violence became an institutionalized part of state rule towards this border region.