State power and identification schemes in Rakhine 79 increasingly expensive and difficult, so his travel documents and Hajj visa were later obtained from Bangladesh instead.29 These mobilities and links with Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Pakistan were framed as a security threat in contemporary Myanmar, just as they were in 20th-century British India embodying concerns relating to a potential pan-Islamic, anti-nationalist movement. This framing underpinned the everyday experiences for the Rohingya in north Rakhine. Female participants in particular explained how extortion rates, accusations, and harassment during household checks increased if security forces believed there were family members who had travelled to Saudi Arabia.30 Controlling internal movement For travel to the interior of British India, Europeans, and other foreigners required passports during the period of the East India Company. These rules were implemented in order to maintain the Company’s monopoly control over trade and access to resources. A variety of internal travel documents were issued by district officers to Indians. These documents functioned to provide safe passage to prominent persons (Singha 2013). By 1864, when the Foreigners Act was introduced, attempts had been made to consolidate the administrative processes under British Crown and thus attempt to monopolise control over movement within British India. In order to do this, a ban was enforced on the issuance of non-standardised internal passports (Singha 2013). The 1864 Foreigners Act was the first law to govern migration into British India including lower Burma. It was meant to prevent unauthorised movement of non-British subjects into, within, and through British India, and was not initially meant to stem the flow of ‘native’ populations between the regions of the British Empire within the Bay of Bengal (Amrith 2013). Burma was run as a province of India by the British from the time it was annexed (in three stages as a result of three wars from 1824 to 1885) until its separation from India in 1937. During this time, there was a free flow of largely undocumented populations between these areas of the British Empire. At end of the 19th century increased, as agricultural production and industry intensified, these population movements increased (Mohan 1955; The Riot Inquiry Committee 1939). However, Amrith (2013) characterises movements of this period as largely ‘circular’ in the people tended to move back and forth rather than settle in other parts of the British Empire within the Bay of Bengal. With the advent and aftermath of WWI, the internal borders between India, the provinces (including Burma) and the ‘princely states’31 became more significant. Rising British concerns relating to the threat of pan-Islamic and anti-imperial movements across the Empire and, later, over the spread of Bolshevism hardened internal borders. Although the 1864 Foreigners Act was introduced to ward against outside economic and security threats, as resistance to colonial rule grew the law was increasingly deployed against Indians/Burmese who were viewed to be ‘troublesome.’ By 1917, the rules