William Johnson (surveyor)

William H. Johnson (died 3 March 1883[1]) was a British surveyor in the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.

He is noted for the first definition of the eastern boundary of Ladakh along Aksai Chin in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which has come to be called the 'Johnson Line'.

[1] After the Chinese rule collapsed in Turkestan in 1863, the governor of Ladakh, Mehta Mangal, sent a small force to Shahidullah, a strategic point between the Karakoram range and Kunlun Mountains, and constructed a chauki (police post).

He set out on his expedition two months later, with a party consisting of fifty coolies (porters), an attendant, five mules, six horses and a state trooper.

According to scholar John Lall, Johnson maintained an average speed of 19.2 miles a day through "barren country at heights between 15,000 to 19,500 feet".

[5] From this location, Johnson made a journey to Khotan (referred to as "Ilchi" in British records), spent 18 days there and returned via the Karakoram Pass.

He also states that Johnson was censured by the British government for crossing the frontier without permission and that he later changed his story to say that he was forcibly taken to Khotan.

He reported on it to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1866, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in the same year.

[14] During his tenure as the Wazir, Johnson facilitated the third covert journey of the native explorer Nain Singh Rawat into Tibet.

He cites Johnson's expedition to Khotan as an example of valuable knowledge that would have been gained had the (British) Government of India encouraged such work.