Charles Allen

Holding the East in fee

Never a great fan of the British Raj, the maverick ex-ICS historian Sir Penderel Moon judged nevertheless that its establishment was ‘an achievement that ought to excite wonder’. At the heart of that achievement was a paradox: how was it that so few were able to subdue so many, of whom large numbers were warriors by caste and profession? This is the question that our foremost and busiest military historian sets out to answer in Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750-1914. Having extensively chronicled the two world wars, re-evaluated the achievements of some of our leading military heroes (French, Wellington, Churchill) and explored the lives of the humble footsoldier (in Redcoat and Tommy), Richard Holmes now turns the searchlight on the British military man in India.

Four distinct types went a-soldiering in India’s sunny clime.

There were the European adventurers, who offered their services to the highest bidder; the best, French and Italian officers, left without occupation after Waterloo and the worst, usually deserters from the British army. They reforged the armies of the Sikhs and Marathas, brought Indian gunnery up to European levels, and gave doubtful service to a number of princely states right through to the end of the century.

A second, more conventional line of soldiering in India was to be found in the ranks of the three armies of the East India Company: each presidency recruited officers and private soldiers to man its forts in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, out of which grew a number of European regiments such as the Bengal Fusiliers who for some generations provided John Company’s shock troops.

Then, as the Company’s ambitions grew, it became necessary to rely on locally recruited sepoys.

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