During peacetime, Holdich was largely occupied with the survey of India. He was the chief surveyor on the Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884–86. The Commission soon found itself in the midst of a crisis, inflamed by the Panjdeh incident; when this nearly led to war with Russia, Holdich was put in charge of fortifying Herat against a potential Russian invasion.[3] He later served on the Tasmar Boundary Commission of 1894, the Pamir Boundary Commission of 1895 and the Perso-Baluchistan Boundary Commission of 1896. He was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1887 in recognition of his work on the Afghan frontier.
On his retirement to half-pay in 1898, he thanked "that providence which had been good to me in that during that last year of my Indian career I had been able to put a round finish on the last of our frontier maps". He was placed on the Retired list with an Indian pension 13 February 1900.[5]
In later years, he wrote and lectured extensively on geographical issues, and served as president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1917 to 1919. He also served as President of the Geographical Association between 1917 and 1918. He contributed a number of entries to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Boundaries are the inevitable product of advancing civilisation; they are human inventions not necessarily supported by nature's dispositions, and as such they are only of solid value so long as they can be made strong enough and secure enough to prevent
their violation and infringement. – Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich (1916)[6]
His thought on international boundaries emphasized a need for them to be, or have the potential to become, militarily strong.[7]
Holdich died in 1929 at his home at Parklands in Merrow, Surrey, near Guildford, at the age of 86.
T H Holdich. (Editor). Peru-Bolivia Boundary Commission Report 1911-1913. 1918.
T H Holdich. Boundaries in Europe and the Near East, 1918.
T H Holdich. Frontiers and Boundary Making, 1916.
T H Holdich, Leonard Arthur Bethell and Hamilton Bower. The Abor Expedition: Geographical Results: Discussion. Geographical Journal, Feb., 1913, vol. 41, no. 2, pages 109–114.
T H Holdich. Gates of India, Being an Historical Narrative of Early Relations Between the East and the West, 1910.
Holdich was married to Ada Vanrenen, and had two daughters and two sons.
His elder daughter Laura Holdich married in 1898 Major Edmund Peach (1865–1902), Indian Staff Corps.[9]
^Williams, Glyn (1975). "Cwm Hyfryd". The desert and the dream: A study of Welsh colonization in Chubut 1865 – 1915. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p. 140. ISBN978-0-7083-0579-9.
^"Obituary: Sir Thomas Holdich – A Maker of Frontiers". The Times. 4 November 1929. p. 14.
